TL;DR
- Qualcomm unveiled a second premium-tier processor alongside its main Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
- Called the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, the chipset marks a new split within Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 8 family.
- The company says the split mirrors Apple’s two-chip iPhone strategy.
At its annual Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm introduced its expected flagship mobile processor for the next year, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. The processor is expected to power next-gen premium Android smartphones like the Galaxy S26 series. But the company also threw in a surprise at the end of its presentation, announcing a second premium-tier processor: the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5.
“We developed this chipset to give you more choices and flexibility, while still delivering flagship features,” Qualcomm said on stage. While details are scarce, the new processor will likely sit just below the Elite model. The idea is to create two distinct performance levels within Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 8 family.
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In a group interview where Android Authority’s C. Scott Brown was present, Alex Katouzian, Group GM of Mobile, Compute, and XR at Qualcomm, explained why the company took this step.
“What’s going to happen is we’re kind of bifurcating the premium tier into two. And you know you we have this Elite experience and we’re giving customers (phone makers) and an opportunity to tier in the premium tier. And I think they are asking for that as well.”
Katouzian compared Qualcomm’s move directly to Apple’s ongoing strategy. “If you look at Apple, you have the same thing. You have two different chipsets,” he said.
Apple started offering different chips in its flagship iPhones starting with the iPhone 15 Pro lineup in 2023, when it introduced the A17 Pro chip, distinguishing it from the standard A16 Bionic chip used in the base iPhone 15 models. This year, Apple is offering the A19 chip in the standard iPhone 17 while the iPhone 17 Pro models ship with the A19 Pro. Qualcomm seems to be taking a similar split approach, giving smartphone makers and buyers more flexibility when it comes to creating and choosing flagship phones.
Katouzian said Qualcomm had avoided this split in the past because its cores were already very efficient.
“We got away with it for a while because our cores in terms of performance per square millimeter are very efficient. At the end of the day, you just keep adding capabilities and more and more user experiences are going to demand a lot more in terms of where your performance is and how it benefits itself to your user experience, and so, we looked into bifurcating the premium tier, in a way where people can adjust what they want to put out into the market possible.”
Qualcomm has yet to share any technical details about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5. We’ll have to wait and see how it differs from the Elite experience and which smartphone makers adopt it.
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