Qualcomm's next flagship chip is being sold online before it's even announced

A Shenzhen-based seller listed a chip identified as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro (SM8975-100-BC) on Xianyu, China's largest secondhand marketplace, before the listing was taken down. The seller described it as a desoldered engineering sample pulled from a test board and listed it at a placeholder price of CNY 300 (roughly $42), with the actual price being negotiable. It was marketed for repair and chip rework, with claims of bulk stock.

The SM8975 designation matches the model whose die size we previously disclosed and profiled in detail ahead of official confirmation. Qualcomm has since offered its clearest hint yet that this generation spans more than one flagship die, briefly showing two Snapdragon 8 Elite branded chips side by side in a Snapdragon Summit teaser ahead of the event's September 22 start.

The die is laser-marked with "SM8975-100-BC," which points to the first LPDDR5X engineering-sample (ES) revision of the chip. Each of the two chips carries its own lot code: FC5528M5 on one and FX602R8T on the other.

Lot codes on packaged chips typically encode the fab, assembly site, and packaging date. Reading the first code, F identifies TSMC as the fab, likely using the N2P node; C indicates Amkor's Korea site; 5 marks 2025; and 52 marks workweek 52, placing the packaging date around late December 2025. The second code follows the same structure: F stands for TSMC; X identifies Amkor's Japan site; 6 marks 2026; and 02 marks workweek 2, placing that unit's packaging date in early January 2026. The remaining characters in each code are lot serial numbers.

Taken together, the two dates suggest that Qualcomm had working test silicon by late December 2025, with units packaged at two Amkor sites roughly two weeks apart. According to information we obtained, sample units became available to OEMs starting February 3, 2026.

The photos also offer the first real-world look at what appears to be Qualcomm's answer to Samsung's "Heat Pass Block" on the Exynos 2600: an internal heat spreader sitting between the die and the package lid. Qualcomm's version, sometimes referred to as a "Heat Slug Sheet," appears noticeably smaller in these images than the Exynos 2600 version shown in a package image from Kurnal.

The size difference likely comes down to memory packaging. Samsung's Exynos 2600 uses a smaller 563-ball FBGA package for LPDDR5X. Qualcomm's chip has to support both LPDDR6 and LPDDR5X, which pushes it toward a larger 1,295-ball FBGA package for LPDDR6 and a 496-ball FBGA package for LPDDR5X, both of which leave less physical space on the package for the heat spreader.

None of this is confirmed by Qualcomm. The chip's origin, functionality, and even the accuracy of the die markings rest entirely on an anonymous secondhand listing that no longer exists. The lot-code decoding is based on information we obtained but could not independently verify through public documentation.