The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 — the chipset expected to power the Samsung Galaxy S26, OnePlus 14 and more phones next year — looks to be way more powerful than today’s best smartphone chips, says leaker Digital Chat Station on Weibo.
DCS explains this by talking about the chip’s clock speeds, with the CPU running at 4.6GHz and the GPU at 12.GHz.
Those numbers perhaps don’t mean much to you by themselves, but generally the higher the frequency, the faster a chip runs and the more powerful it is.
While Qualcomm, maker of the Snapdragon chips, has apparently decreased the CPU frequency from 5GHz in earlier tests, it’s still running quicker than the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which is set to 4.47GHz.
Plus, this latest iteration of the 8 Elite Gen 2 still apparently hits the 4-million mark on the AnTuTu benchmark, way ahead of the 2.6 million score that currently tops the leaderboard.
This could be 2026’s best smartphone chip
This info builds on previous DCS leaks, where they detailed that the 8 Elite Gen 2 will be a third-generation 3-nanometer chip, built by TSMC, using a 2+6 prime/performance core arrangement with 2nd-gen Oryon CPU cores and an Adreno 840 GPU.
Simply put, this chip will use the latest construction methods, the same internal set-up as the 8 Elite chip it’ll replace, and the newest processing tech.
Despite that, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 may not cost any more than the 8 Elite does. Good news for consumers and manufacturers alike.
We can fairly safely assume that Qualcomm will also be working on an even faster version for later in 2026. That includes Samsung, who has been using “For Galaxy” variants of the latest Snapdragon flagship silicon for the past few years in Galaxy S and Galaxy Z models.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2’s main opponent will be, as always, Apple’s latest iPhones and the new chips within.
A generic “Leading Version” will likely launch midway through 2026, and be used in certain performance-focused phones launching in the latter half of the year.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2’s main opponent will be, as always, Apple’s latest iPhones and the new chips within. In September, we should see the iPhone 17 series debut along with the A19 and A19 Pro chips, and we’ll be paying close attention to their performance.
Apple’s A-series chips have not had a leap forward in chip power in the past few years like Snapdragon 8 chips have, so we could be in for a close competition.
Qualcomm normally introduces its new Snapdragon 8 series chips to the world in fall each year, during an annual event in Hawaii. This year’s Snapdragon Summit is already in the calendar for September 23 – 25, so we should hopefully get the full details of this new smartphone powerhouse then.
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