Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite is going to seriously boost Android photography

Qualcomm has announced a new mobile chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, and new high-end phones featuring some impressive image capabilities will ship at the end of the month.

The pace of chipset development is possibly as rapid now as it has ever been, with new AI-centric capabilities being crammed into the latest 3nm models.

For instance, everyone thought the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor was a high performance chipset when it launched this time last year. One year on and it looks almost quaint. Its successor, the slightly rebadged Snapdragon 8 Elite, is 44% more efficient, has a 45% faster NPU, and features 40% improved GPU performance alongside 50% CPU performance uplift. In fact, it’s a bit of a beast and is the fastest mobile CPU in the world with 4.32 GHz peak CPU speeds.

Android phones featuring it are going to have some serious performance. Its Adreno GPU component uses a new sliced architecture with dedicated memory for each slice and can support Unreal Engine 5.3 with Nanite for the first time on mobile, as well as optimized performance and support of the Unreal Chaos Physics Engine. Gaming is going to rock on the QHD+ @ 240 Hz display, small screen or no.

But it’s the new Image Signal Processor that interests us here, as this is really going to give the iPhone 16s a run for their money. The new AI ISP can capture video at 4K60, “even in near darkness,” according to Qualcomm, and features support for triple video capture from HDR image sensors, with seamless switching between any HDR mode. All in all that gives you:

• Up to 48 MP triple camera @ 30 FPS with Zero Shutter Lag
• Up to 108 MP single camera @ 30 FPS with Zero Shutter Lag
• Up to 320-megapixel photo capture
• 8K HDR video playback @ 60 FPS
• 4K video capture @ 120 FPS
• Slow-mo video capture at 1080p @ 480 FPS

Which is all a bit impressive. The AI processing has also been significantly ramped up and allows you on-device to extend the borders of a photo beyond the frame, bump up resolution and clarity, and can segment an image into 250 fully optimised layers. Doing this enables it to recognize and enhance virtually anything in the frame, including faces, hair, clothing, objects, backgrounds, and more. 

You get autofocus, auto white balance, and auto exposure, while the real-time Insight AI feature captures and enhances natural skin and sky tones even in challenging conditions. Truepic with C2PA adds cryptographic seals so you can authenticate your photos as real and not AI-generated—now including videos and audio recordings.

As an indication of how powerful this all is, a new Video Object Eraser tool will let you erase objects from moving images and, and it’s worth emphasising this again, let you do that on-device with no need to upload for processing in the cloud.

The first phones built around the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset will be released by Honor and Xiaomi by the end of the month. European and North American availability is likely early next year, with Samsung extremely likely to base its next high-end mobile offering around it. MWC 2025 in Barcelona in March looks like it might be fun…

tl;dr

• Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset with impressive AI-centric capabilities and significant performance improvements over its predecessor.
• The new chipset will enable high-end Android phones with enhanced image and video capabilities, including support for up to 48 MP triple camera, 8K HDR video playback, and advanced AI image processing features.
• The Snapdragon 8 Elite's Adreno GPU component features a new sliced architecture with dedicated memory for each slice and supports Unreal Engine 5.3, promising optimized gaming performance on high-refresh-rate displays.
• The first phones featuring the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset will be released by Honor and Xiaomi at the end of the month, with Samsung likely to incorporate it into its next high-end mobile offering.