Recent Samsung flagships, including the Galaxy S24 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6, have all used a slightly overclocked version of Qualcomm's top-of-the-line chipset. While everyone else got the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, Samsung's flagships got the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy. It was the same deal with the previous iteration when last year's Samsung flagships got the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy.
With Qualcomm unveiling at the Snapdragon 8 Elite at the Snapdragon Summit 2024 in Hawaii today, the question is undoubtedly going to be asked: is there going to be a Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy SKU? We asked, but Qualcomm isn't saying anything on the topic for now.
Qualcomm isn't confirming a Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy just yet
The main difference between the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy was that the latter's prime Cortex-X4 CPU core was clocked at 3.39GHz, almost 100MHz higher than the stock Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
It would ostensibly be a similar formula for this year's chipset, but then again, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is a different beast altogether. It's not using Cortex cores as the prime cores. Snapdragon 8 Elite gets Qualcomm's second-generation custom Oryon cores, with these prime cores hitting peak speeds of a whopping 4.32GHz.
Qualcomm did mention that this can be scaled even higher, so there might be a bit more steam in there to extract if there's indeed going to be a special Snapdragon 8 Elite variant for Galaxy devices.
When we asked Qualcomm about the possibility of this SKU, we were met with the boilerplate response of the company not commenting on product roadmaps. That's not unexpected. After unveiling the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in October 2023, Qualcomm didn't officially confirm the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy until the second week of January 2024 when the Galaxy S24 series was launched.
Qualcomm has confirmed, though, that Samsung is among the partners that will launch Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered devices in the coming weeks. Recent rumors have also suggested the possibility that the entire Galaxy S25 series might exclusively use the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
Either way, Qualcomm's bonkers new mobile platform is going to be available on at least one, if not all, of Samsung's Galaxy S25 flagship, regardless of whether or not it gets a special version this time around.
Disclaimer: Qualcomm is hosting a large group of international media for the Snapdragon Summit 2024 from October 21-23 in Hawaii, including SamMobile. All opinions and analyses remain our own with Qualcomm receiving no advance preview or exercising any control over our coverage.
