Just
a
few
years
after
changing
its
mobile
chipset
naming
conventions,
Qualcomm
has
gone
and
done
it
again.
The
Snapdragon
8
Elite
is
the
company’s
newest
high-end
smartphone
SoC,
and
like
the
laptop
chips
it
borrows
its
“Elite”
name
from,
it
comes
with
a
new
Oryon
CPU.
The
company
says
that
this
shift
enables
faster
performance
and
—
lest
we
forget
about
AI
—
offers
on-device
support
for
multimodal
intelligence.
The
Oryon
CPU
inside
the
8
Elite
hasn’t
been
borrowed
directly
from
the
laptop
chips;
Qualcomm
is
calling
it
a
second-gen
chipset.
It
replaces
the
Kryo
CPUs
Qualcomm
has
used
in
previous
mobile
chipsets
and
comprises
two
prime
cores
with
six
performance
cores.
There’s
an
X80
5G
modem-RF
chip
and
an
Adreno
GPU
with
a
new
sliced
architecture,
with
dedicated
memory
allocated
to
each
slice.
I
asked
Chris
Patrick,
Qualcomm’s
mobile
handset
SVP,
what
all
of
that
upgraded
hardware
would
translate
to
in
the
hands
of
smartphone
users,
and
the
examples
he
gave
boiled
down
to
more
desktop-like
performance
from
a
phone.
Websites
that
aren’t
well
optimized
for
mobile
will
“run
very
quickly
and
feel
light,”
and
heavy
games
will
run
more
effortlessly.
“Your
chipset
kind
of
fades
into
the
background
and
you
just
do
whatever
you
want
to
do
—
just
like
we’re
kind
of
used
to
on
desktop
experiences.”
And
just
in
case
you
forgot
that
2024
is
the
year
of
AI
on
phones,
the
8
Elite
comes
with
some
NPU
upgrades,
too.
The
upgraded
Hexagon
NPU
supports
on-device
multimodal
AI
assistants
that
can
handle
text
input
as
well
as
visuals.
There’s
also
support
for
an
on-device
AI-powered
video
object
eraser
tool
to
remove
distractions
from
video
clips,
which
sounds
kind
of
wild
and
difficult
to
pull
off
convincingly.
We
won’t
know
just
how
effective
this
tool
might
be
until
an
OEM
puts
it
in
one
of
their
phones,
but
my
money
is
on
Samsung
introducing
it
as
a
feature
on
the
Galaxy
S25.
If
Samsung
launches
a
phone
with
the
Snapdragon
8
Elite,
we
likely
won’t
see
it
until
early
next
year,
but
we
probably
won’t
have
to
wait
that
long
for
a
good
look
at
the
new
chipset.
The
first
8
Elite
devices
from
brands
like
Asus,
Honor,
OnePlus,
Oppo,
and
Xiaomi
are
expected
to
launch
“in
the
coming
weeks.”
Original author: Allison Johnson
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