I tested the latest Snapdragon chip and Qualcomm is keeping pace with the iPhone 18 Pro

Qualcomm has revealed its latest and greatest processors – the chips that will power many flagship Android phones for the next year. The new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, and more interestingly, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, appear to be Qualcomm’s most significant updates in some time. Both are built on TSMC’s 2nm process, which is a first for Snapdragon chips.

Qualcomm flew me to Hawaii for its annual Snapdragon Summit event so I could see for myself how the new chips performed. I spent some time with a benchmark device running Elite Extreme, and the early benchmark numbers are impressive. I was only able to test the high-end Elite Extreme myself, not the standard Elite, so everything here reflects the high-end chip. The base Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 should perform almost as well; However, it probably won’t reach the heights of the top-of-the-line model.

Both Gen 6 chips use Qualcomm’s custom Oryon processor architecture with a 2+6-core layout: two Prime cores clocked at up to 5.0 GHz and six Performance cores at up to 4.0 GHz. This 5 GHz figure makes it the first mobile processor to break this barrier, at least on paper. Qualcomm claims that the Elite Extreme delivers 13% higher CPU performance and 37% higher CPU power efficiency compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. The Elite Extreme supports LPDDR5X and LPDDR6 memory (up to LPDDR6-5300 and 24GB) as well as UFS 5.0 storage.

On the GPU side, the Elite Extreme variant packs what Qualcomm calls Adreno Neural Fusion – essentially AI-powered super-resolution and image generation built into the GPU pipeline – as well as hardware ray tracing with support for Unreal Engine 5’s Lumen, MegaLights and Nanite global lighting. Qualcomm says the Extreme variant specifically offers 44% higher GPU performance and 40% improved GPU efficiency compared to the generation 5, thanks in part to 18MB of dedicated high-performance Adreno memory and full Adreno array cores for GPU-side AI processing.

The neural processor has also been overhauled. Qualcomm’s redesigned Hexagon NPU features a new element accelerator and, according to the company, 35% higher NPU performance with 33% improved AI performance per watt on the Extreme. According to Qualcomm, the Elite Extreme can run over 30 billion on-device expert mixture (MoE) models with up to 32,000 contexts.

At the event, we were able to put reference devices through benchmark testing, but we weren’t able to use them in everyday situations. Simply put, the new chips perform better, although the tangible difference between a production-ready phone with a new chip and the best Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chips remains to be seen.

On Geekbench 6, the Elite Extreme scored an average of 4,287 in single-core and 12,791 in multi-core. For context, the RedMagic 11S Pro – the fastest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 device I tested – achieved 3,815 single-core and 12,148 multi-core. That’s about a 12-13% improvement for single core and about a 5% gain for multi-core. Compared to the wider scope of Generation 5, the gap obviously widens further: the RedMagic device is specially designed for performance and has a real fan on the back. The Galaxy S26 Ultra, for example, managed 3,685 single and 11,198 multi, giving Gen 6 about a 16% lead in single-core and 14% in multi.

The GPU results were more impressive than the CPU results. In 3DMark Wild Life Extreme testing, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 posted scores between 9,830 and 9,984 on its best loops. The RedMagic 11S Pro leads the Gen 5 pack with 8,116, which is about a 21-23% increase. Compared to the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s 7,802, that’s a jump of 26% to 28%.

Compared to the A19 Pro chip in the iPhone 17 Pro (5,865 in the same test), Gen 6 is in a completely different league in terms of raw GPU throughput. Compared to the iPhone 17 Pro’s A19 Pro (3,918 single and 10,158 multi-core on Geekbench 6), Gen 6 leads by about 9-10% in single-core and by about 26% in multi-core. Compared to Apple’s recently announced A20 Pro in the iPhone 18 Pro – whose initial results stand at 4,735 single-core and 12,800 multi-core – the results reverse in single-core. The Gen 6 lags behind the A20 Pro by about 9-10%, but the two are essentially neck and neck in multi-core.

However, all of these numbers come with a big asterisk. I tested on a Qualcomm reference device – it’s not a phone anyone will actually buy. The reference hardware is designed to allow the chip to stretch its legs, with thermal performance and power optimized to exhibit peak performance. What happens when Samsung, OnePlus or Xiaomi integrate this silicon into a real phone with real thermal constraints is another question entirely.

We clearly saw this happening with Gen 5. Wild Life Extreme’s stability on Gen 5 devices ranged from 45.8% on the Galaxy S26 to 81.0% on the actively cooling RedMagic 11S Pro in my testing. Consumer flagships without active cooling have a much harder time staying within their thermal envelopes. Gen 6’s higher peak numbers could easily compress under similar stresses.

You also have to take into account the gap between the Elite Extreme and the standard Elite. I haven’t been able to test the standard variant, but Qualcomm says it lacks the Extreme’s high-performance 18MB Adreno memory, full Adreno array cores, expanded NPU shared memory, and industry-leading video capabilities like 8K/60 capture and 4K/240 slow motion. Both share the same 2nm process, Oryon CPU architecture, and 5GHz max clock speed, so CPU performance should be in the same ballpark. But GPU and AI workloads could be very different. Most flagship phones will likely come with the standard Elite; expect Extreme to appear in gaming-focused devices and ultra-high-end flagships willing to pay the silicon premium.