Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Is Here, and It’s a Beast.

Qualcomm is finally pulling back the curtain on its next big thing. At its annual Snapdragon Summit, the company confirmed the name of its next flagship mobile processor: the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. This isn't just a new chip; it's a new era of naming conventions that's designed to bring a little more clarity to the top of its lineup.

Forget the confusing, seemingly random name changes. The new "Gen 5" name is a direct continuation of the Snapdragon 8-series line, following the original Gen 1 through Gen 3, and treating last year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite as the de facto "Gen 4." Now that we’ve got that straight, let’s get to the good stuff.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is expected to be a performance powerhouse. It’s built on Qualcomm’s custom Oryon CPU architecture that blew us away last time, and now it’s rumored to be running with a crazy-fast 4.61 GHz clock speed on its main cores. On the graphics side, we’re looking at the all-new Adreno 840 GPU, which could offer up to a 40 percent boost in graphics performance. That’s enough to make even the most graphically demanding mobile games feel buttery smooth.

Of course, this isn't just about raw speed. The new chip also comes with an upgraded Hexagon NPU for AI tasks, promising a serious jump in on-device AI efficiency. And to keep everything connected, it’s packing the new Snapdragon X80 Modem for screaming-fast 5G, along with support for the latest Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0 standards.

So when can you expect to get your hands on a phone with this new silicon? Both the Xiaomi 17 series and the Samsung Galaxy S26 series are rumored to be among the first to feature the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, so start saving up now.