Believe it or not, the Snapdragon 8 Elite might make smartphones exciting again

23 Oct 2024, 17:23 by Will Sattelberg · Android Police

Unlike with smartphones, explaining why a new chipset is (or isn't) exciting can be pretty difficult. Part of this is baked into these announcements — at their core, caring about any processor, desktop or otherwise, is deeply nerdy. In the AI era, this task has become even more difficult. Qualcomm, MediaTek, and practically every other SoC maker are focused on providing improved levels of power to LLM developers, all in an effort to move genAI tasks on-device. But until those tools actually ship, it's all a little too hypothetical for the vast majority of consumers to get excited over.

On its face, the Snapdragon 8 Elite — Qualcomm's new chipset destined to power the vast majority of flagship Android devices over the next 12 months — falls into that boat. Much of the discussion and demos spread out over the grounds of Snapdragon Summit in Maui are focused on showcasing AI pet photography, or video object removal, or, to the amusement of many tech reporters yesterday, the ability to quickly split a check with a voice command.

Flights and accommodations for this launch event were provided by Qualcomm, but the views within this article represent the author's own independent opinion.

But after sitting down with Chris Patrick, SVP and General Manager of Mobile Handsets, for our annual chat, I'm starting to believe the real story of the Snapdragon 8 Elite has little to do with AI. Instead, I think we could be on the verge of some actual excitement in the hardware space, including, potentially, the return of some long-abandoned concepts. It's going to take some real bravery on the part of Qualcomm's hardware partners to get us there, though — let me explain.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite wants to turn your Android phone into a mobile powerhouse

Oryon is coming to Android

Oryon is the story behind the Snapdragon 8 Elite

And you'll want to pay attention

Considering the ever-present focus on AI this year, I was as surprised as anyone when the conversation between myself, Chris Patrick, and a small group of fellow reporters stayed almost entirely focused on the arrival of Oryon. We've known Oryon was coming to mobile Snapdragon chips for quite some time, and after a successful launch on laptops earlier this year, we're finally seeing a similar level of power arrive on Android. If you're not at least a little curious what these next-gen devices could be capable of, I think Patrick's elevator pitch does a pretty good job: "Desktop class performance, mobile class efficiency."

In between the promises for on-device AI to revolutionize mobile, Qualcomm sees the Snapdragon 8 Elite as a breakthrough in performance, combining the raw horsepower we've been waiting to come to smartphones with the efficiency we refuse to give up. And, in fact, the shift to custom cores rather than using off-the-shelf Cortex cores from ARM comes from the desire to meet that reality as soon as possible (and, perhaps, a continuing feud with ARM that heated up after our conversation ended).

"There are still things you don't do with your phone," he tells me. "'I'm gonna wait to do that on my laptop.' Now you're not gonna wait, not anymore. [...] You're going to be confident doing [content creation] on your phone because of the horsepower available."

As someone who uses a lot of phones throughout the year to do practically identical tasks, it's an impressive promise — albeit one that may take some time and work from external developers to prove out. But this is the first time in a long time where I've heard anyone involved this deeply within the smartphone industry explain a potential revolution not based on automating tasks or an ever-increasing amount of tokens. Instead, this feels like a possibility of real, tangential changes.

On a technical level, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is all about flexibility, he tells me, completely eliminating the need to keep those low-power efficiency cores around. "We don't want to have to, for example, as a workload scales, move the workload between processes if you don't have to," he explains. "Because that context switch overhead is part of what slows down the experience for an end user. So if we can have it stay on just that core scale, that's the best for the end user. But the magic trick is, can you have a processor that can scale up and scale down to the bottom?"

Obviously, until we can get our hands on an actual next-gen smartphone, these claims remain just that — claims. There's nothing wrong with retaining some level of skepticism around this sort of redesigned architecture. While TSMC's second-gen 3nm process is capable of delivering the combination of performance and power that Qualcomm is promising, the leap in clock speeds and the total lack of efficiency cores has me, at the very least, raising a single eyebrow.

Get ready for desktop mode to actually matter

And the same thing goes for foldables

Okay, okay — all of that is still, perhaps, a little too technical for broad audiences. But it's those promised leaps in performance that immediately had me dreaming of the return of exciting, experimental gadgets. I'm not just talking about foldables, either, although I think those might play a pretty big role throughout the rest of this decade. Let me take these predictions step-by-step, in terms of what potential dreams might actually become a reality in the coming years.

First, desktop mode is about to get real. Whether you're a die-hard DeX user or biding your time until the Pixel 9 Pro definitely, eventually, maybe gets an upgraded desktop mode, I think we are actually on the brink of your phone being able to power the vast majority of users' workloads. These processors are, on paper, capable of competing with the laptop you're already lugging around in your bag — why not make it so that your smartphone, in turn, powers your entire desktop setup with just a monitor, a mouse and keyboard, and a couple of cables?

As Patrick said, the lines between a "phone task" and a "computer task" are about to become blurrier than ever, and I can't help and get excited about it. And that progress, I think, paves the way for foldables to really attract a broader audience.

My biggest complaint with devices like the OnePlus Open has been struggling to discover exactly what I should use that big display for. But if desktop-class apps start coming to smartphones, and foldable displays continue to increase in size and shape, suddenly a world where full-blown Adobe Lightroom slides right into my pocket when I'm boarding a plane or working out of a hotel seems feasible.

Obviously, that requires companies like Adobe willing to put the work in on porting desktop-class apps to mobile, and considering Snapdragon X Elite-powered laptops are still emulating Creative Cloud tools, we have a way to go. But I think the demand — the hunger — for this sort of powerful, portable experience is real, and I think it expands well beyond the foldable form factors you can buy right now.

Google is working on a new desktop mode for Android — but what for?

Our phones aren't replacing our computers just yet

It's time to rethink how we use our smartphones

And OEMs should start by bringing back retired concepts

Both of those predictions, I think, are reasonable, but neither are my dream scenarios. I'm not a betting man, and I don't expect companies like Samsung to break tradition in rolling out slow, iterative updates to existing product lines. However, I can't help and feel like we could be on the brink of a new push for rethinking how your smartphone can transform into different shapes and sizes. Beyond foldables, I'm thinking back to Asus's PadFone line, which died a quiet death around a decade ago after releasing just a few distinct models.

PadFone was pretty ingenuous on paper. Why deal with multiple devices when your Android phone can plug into a tablet-sized display, retaining all of your apps, files, and accounts while allowing for a much larger workspace. But we're talking about tech from a decade-plus ago, and the raw horsepower needed for that to be a usable concept for most people simply did not exist. With the Snapdragon 8 Elite, we might finally be there.

This might be ancient history now, but it could be ready for a comeback.

If it's a combination of technical limitations and fear of change that have kept us from entering into a single-device world, I think the former wall has finally crumbled. I'm hoping that some OEM is willing to make my dreams a reality. Whether it be Samsung taking another brave step forward after bringing foldables to market, or a smaller OEM like OnePlus gambling on a creative path forward for its performance-driven lineup. Who knows — maybe it'll be Asus returning to the PadFone concept after letting it rest for an entire decade.

Either way, I think we're primed for the return of one device, multiple form factors. If the performance is real and app developers can begin treating Android like any other desktop-class operating system, why not turn your smartphone into a tablet or laptop?

The future of mobile could look different, but only time will tell

Obviously, my predictions here remain fiction until someone takes a brave step forward. I think manufacturers need to be convinced of the utility that this level of power can deliver, and that might require an all-new class of desktop-level apps making their way to the Play Store. But if you've long held out hope that your smartphone would, someday, be the key to revolutionizing how and where you work, that path forward seems to finally exist with the Snapdragon 8 Elite. And the best part? No AI hype cycle required.