Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Explained: Why Qualcomm Skipped to “Gen 5”
Qualcomm locks in new flagship name: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Ahead of the 2025 Snapdragon Summit, the company explained why it’s jumping straight to “Gen 5” after debuting the “Elite” branding last year. The short version: Qualcomm is realigning its top-tier naming to mark clear product milestones rather than counting strictly by generation numbers.
In practice, the lineage looks like this: Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, 8 Gen 2, 8 Gen 3, then Snapdragon 8 Elite—which effectively serves as “Gen 4”—followed now by Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Qualcomm says this scheme will carry forward to future Snapdragon platforms, consolidating the “Elite” tier as its halo line.
OEMs aren’t waiting around. Xiaomi has confirmed the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for its Xiaomi 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max, skipping the “16” badge entirely to line up against Apple’s iPhone 17 series. Samsung is also expected to use the chip in the Galaxy S26 lineup, potentially with a familiar “for Galaxy” tuning and branding.
Performance details and feature deep dives will arrive at the Snapdragon Summit later this year. For now, industry chatter points to a TSMC 3nm process and custom Oryon CPU cores—signals that Qualcomm intends to push harder on efficiency and peak performance in 2025’s Android flagships. If those rumors hold, the Gen 5 silicon should bring a meaningful step up in sustained speeds, AI throughput, and thermal behavior.
