Emir Bardakçı
Xiaomi intends to officially announce the Xiaomi 15 series on October 23, 2024, in China, and one of the major selling points of this upcoming series will be the utilization of the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. This chipset, which was earlier leaked to be known as Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, has brought another rebranding by Qualcomm and hence confirmed the leaks first provided by Digital Chat Station.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is built on the 3nm process from TSMC and will sport Qualcomm’s custom Oryon architecture, touting two 4.0 GHz performance cores and six 2.8 GHz efficiency cores. Early performance benchmarks indicate a 35% boost in single-core performance and a 30% rise in multi-core performance over its predecessor, instantly making it one of the most powerful processors for the next generation of flagship smartphones.
This is in line with what Qualcomm has done before, rebranding its chip series, for example, from Snapdragon 888+ to Gen series, and continuing such a movement with the use of Elite branding. If there’s any meaning behind the name change, it’s an attempt to unify the “Elite” lineup under the same branding, joining Snapdragon X Elite processors into a more coherent naming convention across the product line for the company.
Other flagship devices that are rumored to utilize the Snapdragon 8 Elite, aside from Xiaomi, are the realme GT 7 Pro and OnePlus 13. The chipset will be officially unveiled at the Snapdragon Summit 2024 in Maui, Hawaii, and it is scheduled just days before the event of Xiaomi. However, some fears have been expressed as to the naming structure. For example, if Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 is its new naming convention, then it should be marketed as Snapdragon 8 Plus, but that may confuse people since “Plus” has been used in the past as describing higher-tier variants of this chip.
In any case, the Xiaomi 15 series is going to be one hell of a flagship device as it demonstrates Qualcomm’s latest mobile technology.
