At its annual Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm has unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 as its new flagship mobile processor.

Despite being a successor to the 8 Elite from last year, it isn’t called the Elite 2. However, Qualcomm makes various claims and promises about this new chipset, which will power some of the best smartphones and tablets over the next years, including the Xiaomi 17 series.

Here are five big improvements that you need to know about.

Agentic AI

We’ll get to performance improvements soon, but since AI is such an intense focus of the tech industry right now, especially on smartphones and other mobile devices, we’ll start there.

On-device AI processing is key to the 8 Elite Gen 5, as AI features are somewhat pointless if you have to wait forever for them to work.

A Hexagon NPU improvement of no less than 37%, along with an upgraded Qualcomm Sensing Hub, should mean your phone can carry out AI functions much quicker.

Qualcomm is calling it Agentic AI (meaning it’s autonomous) and says “Agentic AI marks a shift from a reactive assistant to an intelligent collaborator that learns, adapts, and initiates decisions on your behalf”. Exciting.

Faster CPU performance

Of course, every new processor should be faster than the last one – otherwise, what’s the point – and Qualcomm has done that.

In fact, the firm goes as far as to say it’s the “world’s fastest mobile system-on-a-chip,” with the “fastest mobile CPU ever,” thanks to its various upgrades and improvements.

The headline figure is a 20% jump in performance from the Oryon CPU, which now hits speeds of 4.6GHz. That’s pretty impressive these days, where hitting the limits of technology makes it difficult to create significant improvements.

This should, in theory, make your phone or other device with the 8 Elite Gen 5 inside smoother to use every day. Qualcomm specifically promises “Lightning-fast multitasking and seamless app switching.”

Check out out benchmarking results for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 vs iPhone 17 Pro

Smoother gaming

Over on the graphics side, there’s a touted 23% jump in graphics performance from the Adreno GPU while simultaneously being 20% more power efficient.

There’s also Adreno High Performance Memory (HPM) with 18Mb of dedicated cache that supposedly enables “revolutionary efficiency and visual rendering.”

Full Unreal Engine 5 support brings console-quality graphics to your phone “for the first time”.

Longer battery life (potentially)

There’s always a balance to strike with a processor like this, as there’s no point in making it insanely fast if it will drain your phone’s battery quicker than a bucket with a hole.

Qualcomm says the CPU is 35% more power efficient than the 8 Elite, and there’s a 16% overall power saving for the SoC (system on a chip).

This could help your device last longer, with Qualcomm insisting that “you can enjoy sustained performance for longer.”

Better photography and video

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 has the ability to record video in the Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec, making it the first mobile platform with this feature.

Qualcomm says this means this unlocks professional-level video production, which is also supported by ‘groundbreaking’ AI camera technology.

“Creatives can realize their artistic vision with studio-grade video recording and extensive post-production control,” according to the company.

There’s also a fully computational video pipeline where every frame can be extracted and utilised, context-aware auto-focus, auto-white balance and auto-exposure. Plus, Snapdragon Audio Sense for ‘industry-leading’ wind noise reduction, audio zoom and HDR audio.

Over on the photography side, the Spectra ISP (image signal processor) has been upgraded with AI features that enable the latest Night Vision 3.0 standard and real-time tone adjustments. The ISP also has a new 20-bit pipeline, resulting in four times the dynamic range.

Devices with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 will be announced in the coming days, with some models and brands confirmed already.

Qualcomm paid for my travel, airfare, and meals to travel to its Snapdragon Technology Summit. The company did not ask for or exert control over Tech Advisor’s content.