Analyst(s): Olivier Blanchard
Publication Date: October 24, 2024
An overview of Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Elite flagship tier mobile SOC, including gen-over-gen performance improvements, the role that Qualcomm’s new custom Oryon CPU plays into this and future releases, and the growing importance of delivering platforms that will drive rapid agentic AI innovations and next-gen ultra-personalized experiences.
What is Covered in this Article:
- Qualcomm has released its new Snapdragon 8 Elite flagship tier Mobile platform, replacing the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
- Snapdragon 8 Elite is the first Snapdragon Mobile Platform featuring Qualcomm’s next-gen custom Qualcomm Oryon CPU.
- Qualcomm’s new 2nd generation Qualcomm Oryon CPU packs impressive 4.32 GHz peak CPU speeds and delivers a 45% boost in CPU performance and 44% improved power efficiency.
- The mobile industry’s largest shared cache, as far as I can tell, also brings remarkably fast data retrieval.
- Oryon also delivers up to 27% in overall power savings, extending gaming time by up to 2.5 hours.
- The platform powers a new era of on-device generative AI, built to handle the complexities of multi-modal AI seamlessly while prioritizing privacy.
The News: Maui, Hawaii, October 21, 2024 – At its annual Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. unveiled the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform. This new platform debuts Qualcomm’s 2nd generation custom-built Oryon CPU, Adreno GPU, and enhanced Qualcomm Hexagon NPU, all of which are designed to deliver game-changing performance improvements to flagship handsets. The Snapdragon 8 Elite platform also brings on-device multi-modal generative AI applications to Snapdragon-powered mobile devices.
Qualcomm Launches Snapdragon 8 Elite: Android’s Smartest Flagship Tier Mobile SOC
Analyst Take: With its breakthrough CPU, GPU, and NPU capabilities, the new Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform is expected to deliver dramatic performance and power efficiency improvements to the Android handset ecosystem’s flagship tier.
But beyond the obvious faster, better, longer feeds-and-speeds features of the new platform, what I am paying particular attention to is how Qualcomm is also bringing personalized, multi-modal generative AI experiences to mobile devices. These new capabilities build on Qualcomm’s revolutionary text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and live translation capabilities to unlock entirely new on-device AI workloads that will power next-generation AI-enabled capabilities and experiences.
“We are excited to bring the power of Qualcomm Oryon to our Snapdragon mobile platforms for the first time,” explained Chris Patrick, SVP and GM of mobile handsets at Qualcomm. “Earlier this year, we debuted it in PCs, delivering remarkable experiences and unparalleled battery life to PC users, energizing the industry and getting the attention of consumers. 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.
Nomenclature Change
This year’s flagship mobile platform SOC could have followed previous iterations of Snapdragon 8 and been called Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. Instead, Qualcomm rebranded a bit and went with the simpler Snapdragon 8 Elite. This aligns well with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X PC platform, whose flagship processor is called Snapdragon X Elite.
Look for more nomenclature alignment and clarity of this kind across the Snapdragon ecosystem in the coming 12-24 months. Good move that will not only reset the nomenclature framework for Snapdragon as a whole, but make it clearer and less convoluted for partners and technology users alike.
This change is going to be critical to Qualcomm’s growth as the Snapdragon brand gains visibility and becomes more of a demand driver for devices and experiences.
Multimodal Gen AI
Multimodal Gen AI holds the key to radically improving user-device interactions, understanding not just voice and text (the realm of language models) but images and sounds as well.
Multimodal AI can also see the world through a device’s camera and help contextualize surroundings, identify objects, and help with tasks. It can also allow agents on or off the device to become expert on any subject by digesting entire book chapters, documents, and media. Snapdragon’s multimodal AI supports the largest global Gen AI model ecosystem, longer token inputs (entire book chapters or lengthy technical documents). Qualcomm Sensing Hub also understands personal context that allows your multimodal generative AI assistant to make suggestions and decisions that suit users best. This will be important to overall UX.
Qualcomm’s new 45% faster Hexagon NPU will also allow Snapdragon Elite devices to deliver best-in-class AI performance with significantly improved performance per watt, extending battery life.
Cameras
AI-powered cameras also get noticeable performance improvements with the Snapdragon 8 Elite: Its new AI ISP is deeply integrated with the Hexagon NPU for enhanced, intuitive capture and vivid videos at 4K60 FPS, even in near darkness. Limitless Segmentation can also create over 250 layers for a single image, each optimized to perfection. The feature recognizes and enhances virtually anything captured in the frame, including faces, hair, clothing, objects, backgrounds, pets, etc. (I may have to write a separate piece of analysis on AI-Based Pet Capture).
The new AI ISP will allow users to enhance everything from selfies to video chats, thanks to the overhauled Hexagon Direct Link. A new feature called Real-time Insight AI captures and enhances natural skin and sky tones even in the most challenging conditions. Truepic with C2PA adds cryptographic seals so photos, videos, and audio recordings can be authenticated as real and not AI-generated. Video Object Eraser can also remove unwanted elements from video footage directly on-device.
Gaming
Qualcomm’s custom-built Oryon CPU and first-ever Adreno GPU with sliced architecture will allow users to game with film-quality landscapes, destructible environments, and console-quality realistic action. Qualcomm’s new Adreno GPU uses a revolutionary sliced architecture with dedicated memory for each slice, ensuring faster, smoother performance and optimized battery life (40% GPU performance improvement and 40% greater power efficiency). It also delivers mobile-first support for Unreal Engine 5.3 with Nanite to render film-quality 3D environments for total gameplay immersion. Qualcomm has also optimized performance and support of Unreal Chaos Physics Engine to authentically render complex physics simulations and lifelike object interactions (like hyper-realistic waterfalls, avalanches, or rock falls).
Snapdragon Sound
Snapdragon 8 Elite also delivers studio-quality audio with the Snapdragon Sound Technology Suite. Every beat, note, lyric, voiceover, or sound effect is exactly as the artist or designer intended.
Qualcomm’s Expanded Personal Area Network (XPAN) technology, with higher bandwidth and greater range than Bluetooth wireless technology, also lets users wander from room-to-room (or beyond) with whole-building wireless coverage, ensuring consistent quality from smartphone to earbud.
Qualcomm aptX Lossless Technology also delivers crystal-clear lag-free spatial audio. (Ultra-low latency is especially important for lag-free gaming.)
Connectivity
The Snapdragon X80 5G Modem-RF System unites with Qualcomm 5G AI Suite Gen 3 for superior 5G performance and incredible multi-gig speeds. Qualcomm reports 30% improved location and positioning accuracy, even in parking structures. This is also the first 4×6 MIMO solution and the first DSDA (Dual Data) – now with global coverage – for greater versatility through two SIMs.
The Qualcomm FastConnect 7900 Mobile Connectivity System is also currently the world’s most capable Wi-Fi 7 solution, with integrated AI and up to 40% more power savings. The Wi-Fi system also supports High Band Simultaneous Multi-Link for the fastest global Wi-Fi speeds. It is the first platform to integrate Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and UWB for proximity capabilities (to help find lost items, access secure buildings, unlock doors, etc.)
First Impressions
Every year at its Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm delivers impressive new specs for its flagship mobile SOC. This year is no different: The Snapdragon 8 Elite breaks new ground yet again with significant performance gains and exciting new multimodal AI capabilities.
The timing couldn’t be more perfect for the latter, as my conversations last week with executives at Lenovo and Moto focused on multimodal AI, ultra-personalization, and device-to-cloud agentic AI. The platform that Qualcomm just unveiled seems uniquely well designed to position the Android handset market for this next evolutionary step in agentic AI innovation, which I believe will unlock the true potential of personalized agentic AI for everyone. (More on that innovation trend soon.)
I am also, as usual, very excited about the platform’s new camera, gaming, and audio features. As an avid photographer, Snapdragon’s camera IP continues to push the mobile segment ever closer to the quality of professional glass, and I couldn’t be happier about it. With the notable exception of Pixel phones, which also manage to create extremely high-quality images in lower-spec phones, flagship Snapdragon mobile SOCs consistently lead in image quality, realistic bokeh effects, night-time photography, on-device editing, and fast processing.
This year’s video improvements have also caught my attention. Android still tends to trail iPhones on the video quality front (in my opinion). I will spend the next few months testing Snapdragon 8 Elite powered phones to determine if this is the platform that finally breaks through and outperforms Apple, so keep an eye out for updates from me on that front.
I don’t think Qualcomm gets enough credit for the impressive work it does with lossless audio. Range improvements in XPAN are also high on my list of exciting new features to test: As someone who often leaves his phone in one room and walks around to take a meeting, go make myself a coffee, or just generally multitask while on a call or listening to music, extending the operational range of my earbuds with no discernible loss of audio quality has become one of my favorite tech perks.
I will also provide a deeper dive into the importance of Oryon to the Snapdragon ecosystem’s market trajectory soon.
What to Watch:
- Leading OEMs and smartphone brands including Samsung, ASUS, Honor, iQOO, OnePlus, OPPO, RealMe, Vivo, Xiaomi, and more, are poised to launch devices powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the coming weeks.
The new Snapdragon 8 Elite’s complete specs and feature set can be found on Qualcomm’s dedicated product page.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
Research Director Olivier Blanchard covers edge semiconductors and intelligent AI-capable devices for Futurum. In addition to having co-authored several books about digital transformation and AI with Futurum Group CEO Daniel Newman, Blanchard brings considerable experience demystifying new and emerging technologies, advising clients on how best to future-proof their organizations, and helping maximize the positive impacts of technology disruption while mitigating their potentially negative effects. Follow his extended analysis on X and LinkedIn.
