- After a long wait, Qualcomm has finally roll out it's nextg-gen Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Extreme Gen 6 to power future flagships.
- It arrives as the first-ever 5GHz processor with LPPDR5X/R RAM and UFS 5.0 storage.
- The chipsets are set to appear on the flagship phones from iQOO, Vivo, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Redmi, and other major brands.
Qualcomm’s latest flagship chipsets are here. Dubbed as the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 SoC and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, both chips are based on TSMC’s 2nm process, packing an Oryon CPU clocked at up to 5.0GHz. Let’s take a deeper dive to understand what both the SoCs bring to the table.
It has been almost a year since the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC was released as one of the most powerful processors of late 2025 and 2026. Technically, the next-gen Gen 6 series is set to break through the benchmarks set by its rivals.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 arrives with the first-ever 5GHz cores
Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 and 8 Elite Gen 6 are finally out. Clocked at a whopping 5.0GHz max frequency on the two prime Oryon cores, plus 6x performance cores running at a whopping 4.0GHz. For context, Gen 5 is capped at a 4.74 GHz max frequency. The chipsets support up to 24GB LPDDR5X/6 RAM running up to 5,300MHz plus; we have a UFS 5.0 storage system on-board.
Other specs that further make Gen 6 Duo better include a 16MB L2 Oryon FlexCache made to allow all cores on-board access to the same pool of memory.
Overall, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 is capable of generating 13% improved CPU performance, 37% better CPU power efficiency, a 44% better GPU, and 35% improved NPU performance when pitted against the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
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On the other hand, the vanilla Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 can deliver the same CPU power efficiency plus a 10% improvement in performance. On the GPU end, we have a 35% better GPU, a 14% better NPU, and a 20% improved AI performance per watt.
It is safe to say that Qualcomm’s latest flagship chipsets will make many previous releases feel underpowered (albeit slightly). The A20 Pro, Dimensity 9600 Pro, and Exynos 2600 are fabbed on 2nm nodes; however, it seems Snapdragon’s latest chipset will make a roar once it arrives on flagship phones.
On the optics front, we have Extreme SoC locked at 8K/60 fps, and it works on both at a time. This means you no longer have to sit with 8K footage at lower fps or a higher fps but with 4K resolution.
When it comes to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 and Elite Gen 6 rollouts, we are expecting a handful of flagship phones to bring either of these chipsets. For instance, today motorola Signature 27 was unveiled with the Extreme Gen 6 processor. Next on, the OnePlus 16 was recently spotted with an Extreme SoC on AnTuTu. Similarly, iQOO is readying its iQOO 16, Xiaomi’s 18 Pro, and RedMagic’s 12 Pro+, as well as other flagships out there.
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