Qualcomm unveils non-premium Snapdragon 8 Gen 5

When Qualcomm announced the high-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset In November, it reported that a non-elite version was on the way, designed to power a less expensive tier of flagship phones. Now, this chip has finally arrived, with some drop in performance but with the same core set of features.

Qualcomm is comparing the 8th generation 5G to 2023 models 8 Gen 3It features a 36 percent improvement in CPU performance and an 11 percent improvement in GPU performance compared to this chip, in addition to efficiency improvements. But since the 8 Gen 3 is two years old, and Qualcomm has changed its CPU architecture in the meantime, the recent 8 Elite Gen 5 is a more useful comparison.

The 5th Gen has a similar Oryon CPU architecture to the Elite, but with slower clock speeds – the six performance cores clock in at 3.32GHz, with two cores clocked at 3.8GHz, compared to 3.62GHz and 4.6GHz respectively in the Elite. On paper, this also puts its performance below last year’s level Snapdragon 8 Elitethough we’ll have to wait and see how actual smartphones compare in practice.

There are a few other cuts from New Elite. The regular X80 5G modem has slightly slower 5G speeds, though Bluetooth and Wi-Fi performance should be the same, and both satellite and ultra-wideband (UWB) are supported. It also has slightly lower specs on the Adreno GPU and Hexagon AI NPU, though Qualcomm has gone into less detail about the exact comparisons there, and it can’t use the latest UFS 4.1 storage. But other specs are identical across the two chipsets, including charging capabilities, display support, and the vast majority of camera hardware options.

Qualcomm says several manufacturers, including Motorola, OnePlus, and Vivo, have already agreed to use the chip in new phones, and the first devices are scheduled to appear “in the coming weeks.” That might mean we’ll see him in OnePlus 15 Rhas been confirmed for release in the United States on December 17.