Update | Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 engineering samples spotted online

June 25, 2025 04:40 AM GMT update

A previous version of this article incorrectly implied the Snapdragon 8 Elite variants had peak clock speeds of 5.3 and 4.8 GHz. This, however, refers to the memory speed of the LPDDR5X RAM. The article has been edited to reflect the correction. 

Edited article continues as follows:

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 is slated to bring forth some lofty generation-over-generation performance gains, with one leak stating it could offer a 30% single-core gains over the Snapdragon 8 Elite. A shipping manifest now gives us new insights into the upcoming flagship SoC.

X leaker @Olrak29_ spotted two instances on a Qualcomm Reference Device (QRD) online. Both were tagged SM8850, widely believed to be the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2's codename. One is shown to have a peak memory speed of 5.3 GHz and the other at 4.8 GHz, which translates to 9,600 MT/s and 10,660 MT/s respectively. 

This hints at faster memory support for the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2. Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered phones like the Xiaomi 15 Ultra came with LPDDR5X-8533 memory support, and the above listing implies some next-gen flagships could launch with LPDDR5X-10660. Strictly speaking, these modules (LPDDR5x 10.7 Gbps) aren't new and have been around since last year. 

Memory aside, most of its improvements will come from Qualcomm's second-gen Nuvia cores. Even its Adreno GPU is slated to get a 30% performance boost.  Overall, the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 finally might have what it takes to trade blows with Apple's A19 Pro, but it also has MediaTek's Dimensity 9500 to worry about.