Qualcomm revealed its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip in September to energy absolutely the top-tier Android telephones popping out in 2026. The $900 OnePlus 15 launched this month and is the primary cellphone obtainable with the brand new chip within the US. Now, the corporate is providing a brand new chip — the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 — for handsets that want barely much less digital horsepower for decrease value, resulting in cheaper however nonetheless highly effective telephones.
Qualcomm usually provides a number of variations of its chips at various efficiency ranges and costs to swimsuit the wants of phone-makers. Even inside the cream of the crop — telephones that value $700 or extra — corporations could go for a much less highly effective and, presumably, a inexpensive chip to energy their lower-priced gadgets. This might embody telephones just like the just-announced OnePlus 15R, which does not have a value however follows different R-series handsets which have barely much less spectacular specs and value lower than their premium siblings.
The brand new Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 has a posh lineage, however Qualcomm sees it as a follow-up to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, launched in 2023 — which is why the corporate solely launched comparable figures to that 2023 chip. The key improve between the 2 is that the brand new 8 Gen 5 has the corporate’s proprietary Oryon central processing unit with 36% improved efficiency and 42% higher energy effectivity in comparison with the 8 Gen 3. Comparably, the brand new chip’s graphics processing unit has 11% better efficiency and 28% higher energy effectivity than its predecessor’s GPU.
The Oryon CPU within the 8 Gen 5 allows the AI agent options, like contextual options primarily based on private information, that debuted in final 12 months’s Snapdragon 8 Elite cellphone chip and have continued within the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. The corporate launched the “Elite” moniker to model them as the brand new highest bar for efficiency. The 8 Gen 5’s CPU reaches speeds of three.8GHz, whereas the 8 Elite Gen 5 reaches as much as 4.6GHz, exhibiting a transparent hole in functionality — however apart from that, Qualcomm did not launch efficiency figures for a way the 8 Gen 5 compares to its even higher-end chip sibling.
Regardless, the 8 Gen 5 will energy flagship telephones from corporations like OnePlus, Qualcomm mentioned in a press launch. The primary gadgets utilizing the chip will launch within the coming weeks, which possible contains the OnePlus 15R that the phone-maker confirmed will launch on Dec. 17. OnePlus’ R-series telephones have been barely much less highly effective than their flagship counterparts however have been priced decrease in consequence. As an illustration, the OnePlus 13R (powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3) launched again in January was much less highly effective than the OnePlus 13 but in addition $300 cheaper at launch.