Trying the Snapdragon 8 Elite got me excited for next year's Galaxy S25

It's rare I find myself getting excited about a new chipset, but that's exactly the space I found myself in during Snapdragon Summit last month. Qualcomm's annual event always has something interesting — a never-before-seen demo or a technical presentation that leads to an interesting conversation, at the very least — but this year, it really was the sheer power of the company's new chip that left me feeling excited. The Snapdragon 8 Elite, on paper, seems like the sort of leap in processing power that could lead to a reinvigorated mobile sector, right as even foldables are starting to feel a little stale.

I'm not sure the iQOO 13 is the device I pictured when my mind started racing about the possibilities surrounding the Snapdragon 8 Elite. With a 6.82-inch display, a flat metal frame, and a triple-lens array of 50MP sensors, this is about as stereotypical a smartphone as you can find on the market right now. And yet, it provides an early glimpse at the next 12 months. Although you can't buy one for yourself in North America, I've taken the iQOO 13 for a spin as my first Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered phone, a preview of what devices like the OnePlus 13 and Galaxy S25 Ultra will deliver on in just a couple of short months. And I have to say, I'm pretty excited.

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The iQOO 13 is a fascinating response to Realme's GT 7 Pro

And a promising look at the future of smartphones

In the lead up to my time with the iQOO 13, I've watched as those at other publications went hands-on with a similar device, Realme's GT 7 Pro. Honestly, the word of mouth on that particular phone hasn't been great. Android Authority found it impossible to finish GPU stress tests out of the box, with 3DMark closing halfway through its process. While a compatibility update fixed this crashing issue, the folks at Android Authority confirmed that the device stayed pretty hot throughout the entire test, peaking at 47 degrees Celsius (or around 117 degrees Fahrenheit, for my fellow Americans).

They weren't alone. Earlier this month, Twitter user Ben Gaskin tweeted a series of photos showing red marks on his hands, all thanks to an overheating GT 7 Pro. Several of the games he tested experienced some serious thermal throttling after 10 minutes or less, with the device growing too hot to hold along the upper back and top of the frame. I saw this thread right before my iQOO 13 unit was scheduled to arrive at my doorstep, and to say I was concerned would be an understatement. Had I just overhyped a chipset that could potentially burn the hands of those trying to play Genshin Impact on the go?

Well, no. I say all this not to throw Realme under the bus, but to describe the very different situation I'm seeing on the iQOO 13. I played about 15 minutes of MadOut 2 on my review unit, a GTA-like and one of the games called out by Gaskin for overheating his Realme model. With settings cranked up across the board, my device held on at a near-steady 60FPS nearly the entire time, only dipping down to 45FPS a few times near the end of my session.

The phone was certainly warm — around 100 degrees Fahrenheit, according to my Pixel 9 Pro's temperature sensor — but not warm enough to leave a mark behind on my hand. Likewise, it wasn't too warm to hold, although the wintery conditions in Buffalo certainly helped there. Reducing the game's resolution back to around 60 percent brought that temperature down as well.

On games from more established developers, like Disney's Speedstorm and Zenless Zone Zero, I saw even better thermal performance across the board. Working through the early stages of Speedstorm and playing about 30 minutes of Zenless Zone Zero back-to-back left the device feeling toasty, but once again, not uncomfortable to hold. And again, relying on my Pixel 9 Pro as a measuring tool, the iQOO 13's back was around 97 degrees Fahrenheit at its hottest points.

Outside of these environments — and the usual benchmarking tools, like 3DMark and Geekbench — I didn't feel the iQOO 13 get warm once during my week with the phone. Frankly, that's to be expected from Chinese OEMs these days, as background management tends to be pretty aggressive at killing anything that could risk drawing power. Still, it's a good sign as we move towards a whole slate of 2025 flagships, with most of them likely to be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite.

Oh, and as for those benchmarks, 3DMark's Wild Life Stress Test did make things feel pretty hot by its 20th loop, but managed a pretty stable score of 15,000 up until the final three minutes, when it dipped down into the 12,000 range. In terms of temperatures, the phone peaked at 42 degrees Celsius, or around 108 degrees Fahrenheit.

The iQOO 13 might not be your next phone, but it's not all too different

We're weeks away from new devices from Samsung and OnePlus

This isn't a full review of the iQOO 13, of course. You can't (and probably shouldn't) buy this phone in the US. I've run into a handful of compatibility issues with my device (it can't run Balatro, so scratch it off my list of potential dedicated Balatro handhelds), and FunTouch OS is, frankly, not particularly Fun to Touch. I'm also not a big fan of the overall design, which has seen very little change compared to last year's iQOO 12. It's a big, white brick of a phone that feels a little cheap in the hands, especially compared to my daily driver Pixel 9 Pro.

However, if you're looking to upgrade your phone in 2025, the iQOO 13 paints a pretty picture of what to expect from the Snapdragon 8 Elite. If companies like Samsung and OnePlus can nail their respective cooling systems — and both companies have done a pretty good job in the past — this could be the leap in mobile performance power users have been looking for. And while we're still at the behest of game developers to bring the sorts of titles that would keep the Play Store in a healthier state, the fact that this headroom exists at all is the perfect place to start.