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The Snapdragon 8s Elite could be a major upgrade for affordable flagships
- New leaks have shed light on the next Snapdragon 8s chip, which could be the Snapdragon 8s Elite.
- The upper mid-range chip could be more powerful than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 but less powerful than the 8 Gen 3.
- It’s believed that the first phones with this processor could arrive in March or April.
Qualcomm just released the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, bringing major performance and efficiency upgrades over previous flagship Android chips. Now, it looks like this Elite name might extend to an upcoming mid-range Snapdragon chip.
Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station revealed details about an upcoming chipset with the model number SM8735. This chipset is expected to follow the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 and could be called the Snapdragon 8s Elite.
Nevertheless, Digital Chat Station asserted that this new processor would be more powerful than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 but less powerful than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The tipster also claimed that the first phones with this chip could launch in April and that some phones with this processor will offer ~7,000mAh batteries.
Meanwhile, fellow leaker Yogesh Brar claimed that this “Snapdragon 8s” processor will be joined by a new Snapdragon 7 Plus chipset (model number SM7775). The tipster says these chips will be released in March 2025 and will likely get off-the-shelf Arm Cortex CPU cores instead of Qualcomm’s custom Oryon CPU tech.
In any event, we thought the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 was a great upper mid-range processor. Our own testing revealed that the POCO F6 (Snapdragon 8s Gen 3) was able to beat the POCO F6 Pro (Snapdragon 8 Gen 2) for single-core CPU performance while staying competitive during GPU stress tests. So don’t be surprised if the Snapdragon 8s Elite takes the fight to phones like the Galaxy S24 series.
There aren’t any other Snapdragon 8s Elite/8s Gen 4 details just yet, but history tells us that the chipset will lag behind proper flagship processors in a few areas. For example, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 lacks 8K recording capabilities and has less impressive generative AI capabilities than the 8 Gen 3. Still, this new chip could be a great choice for OEMs wanting to deliver a powerful smartphone without paying a premium for the Snapdragon 8 Elite.