With every passing year, our phones get smarter, more capable and more adept at handling anything we throw at them with speed and precision. Perhaps the biggest contributing factor in enabling this never-ending cycle of improvement is the fresh set of chips that we get on a yearly basis.
When it comes to the top Android phones, almost all of the major manufacturers, Google aside, use Snapdragon chips from Qualcomm. On Wednesday, at the Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, Qualcomm announced its latest flagship chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
This is the processor that will power your next Android flagship phone — whether it’s from Samsung, Xiaomi, Honor or OnePlus, you can pretty much bet on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 being tucked away inside.
Every generation of chip brings crucial speed improvements to a phone’s performance, and Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the fastest mobile CPU in the world. But that’s not all. Qualcomm has tailored the chip to offer feature-specific improvements — three of which have caught my eye as being particularly exciting. Here’s what to expect.
Watch this: Everything Announced at the Snapdragon Summit 2025 Keynote in 21 Minutes
AI, but personalized
AI agents have become another part of our AI vernacular, and Qualcomm’s new chip has more support for agentic AI, like Personal Scribe.
Qualcomm has been at the forefront of making our phones powerful enough to run AI applications, but the latest chip specifically enables a much more personal AI experience.
Qualcomm’s Personal Scribe is an agentic AI assistant that can make recommendations and act on your behalf based on your routine and preferences. For example, the Scribe knows you could use more free time in your day, so it might suggest some non-essential meetings or tasks that you could push to make space.
Personal Scribe is a product of Qualcomm’s new Sensing Hub, which can learn about you and your behavior as you use your phone to enable agentic AI. The premise of agentic AI is that it will sit across your apps and services, deploying the knowledge and understanding it has about you to make recommendations and take action in ways that will benefit you.
One big benefit of Personal Scribe is that, as a Qualcomm chip feature, it can carry that knowledge to the very core of your device, allowing for a super personal experience of using AI.
Pro-level camera tools
These are the cameras on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip.
If everything is content, everyone with a phone is, to some extent, a content creator these days. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is a creator’s dream, as it’s the first mobile platform to record in the Advanced Professional Video Codec. Not only does this mean your HDR video content will look astonishingly crisp, clear and smooth, but it also makes it easier to edit without compromising on any of that quality.
Every phone-maker has its own unique camera setup — a combination of hardware and software that it believes will make your photos and videos look their very best. But some improvements to photo quality have to come from the chip-level tech, and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will open up new recording capabilities on any phone that includes it.
Better sound all around
Here is a Galaxy S25 Ultra and its AI-powered audio eraser tool. Qualcomm’s new processor adds even more audio fixes for future Samsung and Android phones.
It’s not just camera improvements that will improve your content. The 8 Elite Gen 5 also features Snapdragon Audio Sense, a new microphone technology with built-in wind noise rejection, audio zoom and HDR audio. It allows for the recording of 24-bit audio in any environment, which should, in theory, eliminate the need to use supplementary external mics.
On the listening side of things, Qualcomm’s XPAN technology will allow your phone to connect to your headphones via Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth for superior connection and audio quality. This untethers you from your phone, allowing you to listen to 24-bit, 96kHz lossless music while also being able to receive calls and messages and interact with AI assistant from anywhere you’re wearing your headphones.