Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 AP set to deliver substantial performance gains for flagship Android phones
With top Android flagships running Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite application processor (AP) this year, Qualcomm already has been working on the sequel, the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 AP. The chipset is expected to be introduced this coming October. This is the AP, with a slight "for Galaxy" clock speed enhancement, that should end up powering the Galaxy S26 line in the U.S., China, and Canada, and drive the Galaxy S26 Ultra in all markets next year.
A Weibo post out of China written by leaker Digital Chat Station says that the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 will use Qualcomm's own second-generation Oryon CPU cores which should lead to a 25% improvement in performance compared to the OG Snapdragon 8 Elite. GPU performance is expected to rise 30% partly thanks to a significant hike in the GPU's independent cache to 16MB from 12MB. The SoC will reportedly support both LPDDR5X and LPDDR6 RAM.
The LPDDR6 is the next-generation RAM standard replacing LPDDR5 and LPDDR5X. It features an increase in data transfer rates from the top 8.533 Gbps rate with LPDDR5X RAM to a range between 10.667 Gbps to 14.4 Gbps, potentially even higher, for the LPDDR6 standard.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 chipset will be built by TSMC using its third-generation 3nm process node (N3P). Qualcomm could have opted to have the chip produced using the new 2nm process node that TSMC will start shipping later this year. However, going with the 2nm node would have resulted in a huge price hike that Qualcomm didn't want to try to pass along to its customers.
Besides being used to power the Galaxy S26 series, the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 AP should be found running the OnePlus 14, Motorola's 2026 flagship models, and some other high-end Android phones.
Last month, a Geekbench benchmark test showed some decent improvements for the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite. For example, the single-core score was 4,000 which was a solid 25% performance gain from the 3,200 single-core score tallied by the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The multi-core score for the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 was 13,000 compared to 10,300 for the first-gen processor. That works out to a 26.2% hike.
The configuration of the Elite 2 includes two Prime CPU cores for the most processor-intensive tasks and six Performance CPU cores that handle less intensive tasks with good performance. This compares to the configuration of the Snapdragon 8 Elite which features one Prime CPU core, two performance CPU cores, two efficiency CPU cores, and three low-power efficiency CPU cores.
While things can change, currently it appears that a 25%-30% performance hike is in the cards for the Qualcomm's upcoming new flagship AP, the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2.
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