Qualcomm today unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform, which features a next-generation custom Qualcomm-designed Oryon CPU instead of the semi-custom Kryo Arm-based chips from prior SoCs. According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Elite features the "world's fastest mobile CPU," outperforming even the A18 Pro chip in the iPhone 16 Pro series.
The Oryon CPU is built on a 3-nanometer process, much like Apple's most recent chips. It has eight cores in total, including two prime cores and six performance cores, and it is able to reach peak CPU speeds of 4.32 GHz. Qualcomm also claims that it has the "industry's largest shared cache" to enable "insanely fast data retrieval." There's also a new "Adreno" GPU, and Qualcomm says it uses a "revolutionary sliced architecture" for faster performance and battery life optimizations.
Qualcomm built the chip with generative AI in mind, and it has an included Qualcomm AI Engine with Multimodal Gen AI that Qualcomm says can better understand voice, text, and images, viewing the world through the camera on a smartphone to help with tasks.
Compared to prior-generation Qualcomm chips, the Snapdragon 8 Elite features 45 percent faster CPU performance and 44 percent better power efficiency.
The chip integrates the Qualcomm Snapdragon X80 5G modem with Wi-Fi 7 and 5G support. It will be used in Android-based devices from companies like Google, Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and more.
Friday September 19, 2025 10:02 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
As reported by Bloomberg today, some of the new iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air models on display at Apple Stores today are already scratched and scuffed.
French blog Consomac also reported on this topic.
The scratches appear to be most prominent on models with darker finishes, including the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max in Deep Blue, and the iPhone Air in Space Black.
Images Credit: Consoma ...
Monday September 22, 2025 2:16 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Next year's rumored foldable iPhone will showcase an ultra-thin design resembling "two titanium iPhone Airs side-by-side," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Writing in the Q&A section of his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman says Apple's first foldable device will be "super thin and a design achievement," combining Apple's thinnest iPhone form factor with cutting-edge folding...
Monday September 22, 2025 12:44 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple released the first beta of iOS 26.1 today, just a week after launching iOS 26. iOS 26.1 mainly adds new languages to Apple Intelligence, but there are a few other features that are worth knowing about.
New Apple Intelligence Languages
Apple Intelligence is now available in Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese (Portugal), Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (Traditional), and Vietnamese.
AirPo...
Thursday September 18, 2025 9:17 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple is preparing to release iOS 26.0.1, according to a private account on X with a proven track record of sharing information about future iOS versions.
The update will have a build number of 23A350, or similar, the account said.
It is likely that iOS 26.0.1 will fix a camera-related bug on the new iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro models. In his iPhone Air review, CNN Underscored's Henry T. ...
Monday September 22, 2025 8:44 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple's latest iPhone models launched on Friday, and some early adopters of the devices are experiencing intermittent Wi-Fi issues.
Affected customers say Wi-Fi connectivity periodically cuts out on the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air, with hundreds of comments about the issue posted across the MacRumors Forums, Reddit, and the Apple Support Community over the...
Friday September 19, 2025 7:39 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
While the iPhone Air is equipped with Apple's custom C1X modem for cellular connectivity, all of the iPhone 17 models are outfitted with Qualcomm modems still.
A teardown video shared on Chinese platform Bilibili today (via Reddit) appears to confirm the iPhone 17 Pro Max is equipped with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X80 modem in particular. The same modem is likely used in the iPhone 17 and iPhone ...
Is the claim 'fastest clock speed' or 'fastest when we put eleventy billion cores against one Apple core'?
Their footnote says compared to a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and a 45% ST improvement would put them at 3,101. A18 Pro is 3350ish. That's wouldn't be the fastest so it sounds like more Qualcomm bullcrap.
Multithread would be about 9,690 compared to 8,080ish, but that's with eight cores to six...so again, not an even comparison, but not a surprise from Qualcomm.
And their launch partners are mostly known benchmark cheaters, so I hope the testers take that into account.
If all of this is true, we knew it was a matter of time that the competition would catch up. Even Intel is making great strides with moving x86 closer to ARM (although they're still quite a ways off). Apple Silicon truly revolutionized the industry, and Apple should get a lot of credit for it. Although I'm quite critical of Apple in a lot of aspects, the M3 15" MacBook Air is the best laptop I've ever owned, and in my opinion the best laptop ever built.
