Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit is off with a bang in 2024; not only has the company announced the next-gen mobile chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, but the manufacturer got OEMs like Xiaomi, Honor and Asus to tease their upcoming Elite-equipped smartphones.
The headline of Snapdragon Summit 2024 is undeniably the Snapdragon 8 Elite, a new top-end mobile chipset headed to the next generation of premium devices.
The new chipset utilises the Oryon architecture of the laptop-focused Snapdragon X Elite to bring massive CPU gains compared to the 8 Gen 3, and it means that the X Elite could be more powerful than any other chipset on the market – including Apple’s A18 Pro – with Geekbench 6 multi-core scores of 10,000+.
There’s also an upgraded GPU and a boosted NPU to further improve gaming and AI performance respectively, all while being much more power efficient, which should translate to longer battery life, even when gaming – according to Qualcomm, anyway.
With such a massive generational leap, it seems that OEMs are very keen to get Snapdragon 8 Elite devices out of the door, as showcased by Chinese OEMs Xiaomi and Honor at the Snapdragon Summit keynote.
First up, Xiaomi’s SVP, Adam Zeng, took to the stage to tease the announcement of the Xiaomi 15 series which, unsurprisingly, will utilise the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset.
This wasn’t a massive surprise as the OEM also announced the Xiaomi 14 at last year’s Summit. Zeng also teased the next-gen HyperOS 2 update coming alongside the flagship smartphone, as well as massively improved gaming performance thanks to AI smarts.
However, the appearance of Honor CMO Dr. Ray Guo kicked things up a notch; it not only confirmed that the upcoming Honor Magic 7 series will utilise the top-end chipset, but went into a little more detail about what to expect from the smartphone.
Rather than focus on core specs – display, camera, battery life – it instead focused on new AI capabilities powered by the new chipset.
That comes mainly in the form of Honor AI Agent, a totally new AI toolkit that looks to perform actions on-device. Honor gives examples of being able to perform actions like collating a list of your subscriptions on your phone and cancelling any you don’t want, all using the AI Agent.
It can also perform actions like ordering your favourite coffee, without having to touch any app yourself.
The idea behind the AI Agent is that it can use the information on your device to learn your preferences and perform these actions on your behalf. It’s interesting stuff for sure, though it’s highly likely that, as with MagicLM, it’ll be China-only – for now, anyway.
Not only that, but both Honor and Xiaomi confirmed the launch dates for their next-gen smartphones – and they’re much sooner than anticipated. Xiaomi confirmed that the Xiaomi 15 series will launch ‘at the end of October’, while Honor confirmed that the Magic 7 series will make its debut at an event on 30 October.
Then, during a separate Snapdragon 8 Elite deep dive session not streamed online, Asus teased the gaming-focused ROG Phone 9 which, you guessed it, will also feature the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. It’ll be revealed sometime in November.
Now, these are likely the China-only launches, with wider launches coming a little further down the line, but it shows that OEMs are very keen to get these Snapdragon 8 Elite-equipped devices out of the door – much more than with previous years.
Last year, Xiaomi had the 8 Gen 3-equipped Xiaomi 14 out within weeks of Snapdragon Summit, but it took manufacturers like Honor, OnePlus and Samsung much longer to get these devices out of the door – either in their home regions or worldwide.
The massive uptick in teased devices at this year’s Snapdragon Summit could mean that we might not have to wait until early 2025 to see the next generation of Snapdragon devices land in the UK market. Hopefully, anyway.
