Snapdragon, the company behind some of the most powerful smartphone chips in the world, hosts its Snapdragon Summit every year. But this year, Qualcomm changed things up.
Instead of announcing one flagship chip, it unveiled two: the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. Both are built on TSMC's 2nm process. Both are designed for flagship Android phones. And one of them is almost certainly headed for the Galaxy S27 Ultra.
The big question now is: what's the difference between these two chips, and does it actually matter?
Oyinebiladou Omemu
Both chips share the same flagship foundation
On paper, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 have a lot in common.
Both feature an octa-core CPU with two Prime cores clocked at up to 5GHz and six Performance cores running at up to 4GHz. They also share 16MB of Oryon FlexCache.
Memory support is identical too. Both chips support up to 24GB of LPDDR5X or LPDDR6 RAM alongside UFS 5.0 storage. Connectivity is equally premium. Both include Qualcomm's X105 5G modem with peak download speeds of 14.8Gbps, satellite connectivity, Wi-Fi 8, Bluetooth 6.0, Ultra Wideband (UWB), and NFC.
They're also Qualcomm's answer to Apple's A20 Pro and MediaTek's Dimensity 9600, with both chips built on the same next-generation 2nm manufacturing process.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 is already a big upgrade
The standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 (SM8950) is still a significant leap over last year's chip.
Qualcomm says it delivers a 10% faster CPU while improving power efficiency by 37% compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. The new Adreno 845 GPU brings 35% better graphics performance and 40% better efficiency, making it a solid upgrade for gaming and demanding apps.
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