If you’ve followed the smartphone market, you know how each year goes: New year, new chipsets, new devices, new performance records. This has been true for over a decade. It’s one of those few aspects where you can say with surety that a newer phone will be more powerful than a comparable older phone. While that’s generally a win for the consumers, have we gone too far?
No Thanks, Keep Reading
Unveiled in late 2024, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is Qualcomm’s new flagship chipset. You should see it power most high-end Android smartphones in 2025. It is an octa-core chip with no efficiency cores. Instead, it combines two prime cores running at a whopping 4.32GHz with six performance cores clocked at 3.53GHz. The battery life gains come from using TSMC’s second-gen 3nm N3E manufacturing process (the same as Apple’s A18).
What exactly does ‘Elite’ signify?
Elite battery life? Maybe not
Qualcomm might be on to something with this successful recipe, as the OnePlus 13, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, and the Asus ROG Phone 9 — the three popular Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered smartphones available in the US — have incredible battery life. Qualcomm claims to offer 45% improved CPU performance and 44% higher power efficiency, which are impressive upgrades in just one generation.
This led us to wonder how much better the battery life could be if the Snapdragon 8 Elite were designed with efficiency in mind. No, this isn’t wishful thinking. Historically, most chipsets have used a hybrid microarchitecture with varying mixes of performance and efficiency cores for different use cases. When a chipset maker wants to move to a new design or manufacturing node, it can lean towards performance, battery life, or something in the middle.
Qualcomm seems to have optimized for the top end by focusing on performance and not using efficiency cores. For context, its predecessor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, had two efficiency cores, while the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 had three. This is likely to produce some heat (requiring better thermal management infrastructure within a phone) during intensive tasks while also consuming more power. Even the new mid-range MediaTek Dimensity 8400 has no efficiency cores.
Not everyone needs elite performance
While that’s generally not a problem for today’s phablets, what about foldables, compact devices, or the new breed of slimmer phones? To avoid losing customers, Qualcomm made a new version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite with one fewer core than the original one. Model SM8750-3-AB has two Prime cores and five Performance cores instead of six.
This seven-core variant is yet to be featured in a smartphone, so we can’t deduce much, but there are a few possibilities. It could be for “affordable flagships” that aim to undercut true flagships while offering the new features of the platform. It could also be for devices where battery life and thermal management must be prioritized, such as foldables or thinner phones. Rumors suggest that a Snapdragon 8s Elite is in the works for similar use cases, adding more confusion.
A new breed of phones
I’d like Qualcomm to offer a platform that is tailored for efficiency. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that most modern chips — even the mid-range ones — are plenty powerful for most users. Unless you are a regular smartphone gamer or shoot and edit a ton of 4K videos on your phone, you are unlikely to be able to tell them apart. So why not stop this obsession with higher benchmark scores? Give users something they want and appreciate that they can charge their phones less frequently.
Most mainstream phones are better off maximizing efficiency instead of performance.
This could be a win for OEMs. Right now, flagships have the same spiel as they are all powered by the same SoC. Some are overclocked or have better cooling systems, but these are unlikely to be perceived by average users. By having a clear distinction by offering the same platform in performance and efficiency flavors, Qualcomm can enable OEMs to have more unique propositions. I’d say that apart from gaming phones, most other phones are better off with better battery life.
Everyone wins
For instance, the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge is expected to ship with a measly 3,900mAh battery while powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Such products are ideal candidates for an SoC that is built for better efficiency over performance. A chip of this nature could also do with a less robust cooling mechanism, allowing OEMs to design phones with fewer constraints.
This will need to be a joint effort. In the race between Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Apple, performance is generally the coolest specification to boast each year. In comparison, efficiency is neither easy to quantify nor does it sound as fancy. This leads to smartphone makers having to use computing power as the single most important metric, even when most users wouldn’t be able to make much of it.
The hepta-core Snapdragon 8 Elite proves that Qualcomm recognizes the need for products that don’t consider peak performance as the holy grail. Creating a new category of efficiency-focussed chips could encourage a new category of smartphones. On a macro level, by not keeping such components exclusive for foldables and compact devices, the higher volumes will bring down the prices of the chip, ensuring everyone is a winner. This has the potential to help foldables become mainstream.
