Qualcomm's new chipset that will power flagship Android phones makes the iPhone seem outdated

Behind every new smartphone feature is a powerful chipset that brings it to life. With the industry shift toward on-device AI, a need for an even more advanced and capable system-on-a-chip (SoC) has emerged, and Qualcomm’s latest iteration aims to meet this. 

On Monday, at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit, the company unveiled its newest mobile platform, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which it claims is the most powerful and fastest processor in the world. The chip is the first of the flagship mobile platforms under the new “Elite” branding, highlighting its improved graphical performance.

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The new mobile platform is powered by a combination of a second-generation Qualcomm Oryon CPU, Qualcomm Adreno GPU, and enhanced Qualcomm Hexagon NPU. The latter is integral for optimizing on-device AI tasks like image generation, text translation, etc.

Other key highlights of the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip include a 24MB total cache, 4.32 GHz CPU max frequency, 45% single-core improvement, and 62% faster web browsing, promising an enhanced user experience with superior processing capabilities. That’s all fancy jargon to suggest that this next wave of flagship Android phones, coming as soon as late 2024, will be well equipped for the ensuing advances in AI features.

“Today, our second generation of the Qualcomm Oryon CPU debuts in our flagship Mobile Platform — it’s a major leap forward, and we expect consumers to be thrilled with the new experiences enabled by our CPU technology,” said Chris Patrick, SVP and GM of mobile handsets at Qualcomm Technologies, in a press release.

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Notably, the Snapdragon 8 Elite makes multi-modal generative AI applications on Snapdragon-powered devices more possible. As generative AI applications become more advanced, they are evolving past the point of text inputs and outputs. Many can now accept multimodal data, such as photos, videos, and audio, for much more context-aware assistance.

“It (Snapdragon 8 Elite) revolutionizes mobile experiences by offering personalized, multi-modal generative AI directly on the device, enabling the understanding of speech, context, and images to enhance everything from productivity to creativity tasks while prioritizing user privacy,” added Patrick. 

The advantages of on-device processing include faster processing speed, as users experience less latency by forgoing sending data to the cloud, and increased security, as their data never leaves the device. Other benefits include minimizing energy used at data centers, making it a more sustainable business alternative. 

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The flagship chipset will also power other mobile features, such as the photo-taking and photo-editing experience, with features like AI relighting, a Video Magic Eraser, and an “AI Pet Suite. ” It will also enhance gaming with CPU-intensive multiplayer games and better visuals across the board.

Qualcomm has not revealed which flagship phones will sport the new chipset. However, it did share that the Snapdragon 8 Elite will be adopted by leading manufacturers, including Samsung, Asus, OnePlus, Oppo, Honor, iQOO, RealMe, Redmi, and Xiaomi — with the first device scheduled for launch in the coming weeks.

Disclosure: The cost of Sabrina Ortiz’s travel to Maui, Hawaii for Qualcomm Summit was covered by Qualcomm, a common industry practice for long-distance trips. The judgments and opinions of ZDNET’s writers and editors are always independent of the companies we cover.