Qualcomm unveiled its newest high-end smartphone SoC at its Snapdragon Summit, using an Oryon CPU first used in laptops.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC is billed as Qualcomm’s second-generation chipset for mobile devices designed to improve device AI functions, though the moniker is similar to its X Elite chip for laptops and PCs.

Qualcomm used the Oryon CPU in place of the Kryo CPUs used in previous mobile chipsets. It stated the Oryon CPU is 45 per cent faster than Kryo and uses 44 per cent less energy.

Qualcomm added the Oryon CPU is the fastest in the world, with 4.32GHz speeds.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite features two prime and six performance cores. Its new Adreno CPU uses a sliced architecture with dedicated memory for each segment.

Qualcomm’s upgraded Hexagon NPU is compatible with on-device multi-modal AI assistants for text and visual inputs.

There is also an AI-powered video eraser tool to remove unwanted elements from footage.

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon focused the company on embedding AI into devices rather than sending information to a cloud to improve response times.

Chris Patrick, SVP and GM of mobile handsets at Qualcomm Technologies, stated Snapdragon 8 Elite is “a major leap forward and we expect consumers to be thrilled with the new experiences enabled by our CPU technology”.

The first Snapdragon 8 Elite-enabled devices are expected to launch over the coming weeks by Asus, Honor, OnePlus, Oppo, RealMe, Samsung, Vivo and Xiaomi.

Ecosystem
Leo Gebbie, principal analyst and director, Americas at CCS Insight, said the Snapdragon 8 Elite platform is the strongest chipset launch to date from Qualcomm, providing the basis to accelerate the introduction of AI features into a host of third-party apps and “deeply integrated multi-modal assistants”.

However, he added the speed at which the Elite SoC and it’s associated features are implemented is down to the wider ecosystem. “Early backing from device makers including Honor, Samsung and Xiaomi is a strong start for Qualcomm as it looks to continue its dominance at the premium end of the Android smartphone market,” added Gebbie.