Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 powered phones tipped to launch in early October

Unlike MediaTek, who just showed off the Dimensity 9400+ recently, Qualcomm has dropped out of the mid-cycle refresh race. It isn't a bad thing because that allows the company to focus more on its next-gen offering. Renowned leaker Digital Chat Station says the Snapdragon 8 Elite successor, widely believed to be the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2, will arrive earlier than initially anticipated.

Qualcomm is expected to show off the SoC sometime in late September, with smartphone launches to commence in October. Last year, the Snapdragon 8 Elite was shown off in late-October, with smartphone launches following shortly after. Chinese OEMs like Xiaomi will likely beat others to the punch, with devices like the Xiaomi 16 and maybe even the OnePlus 14 getting out of the door first.

As far as the actual Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 is concerned, it is rumoured to arrive with up to a 30% GPU performance uplift. Digital Chat Station says we could see a 28% increase in AnTuTu scores compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite. This is, in part, due to the upgrade to TSMC's N3P node. Other notable upgrades include support for SVE and SME instruction sets for enhanced machine learning capabilities.