Qualcomm has unveiled its new flagship Android smartphone chips under the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 brand, positioning them as processors designed for on-device artificial intelligence and as rivals to Apple’s A20 Pro used in iPhones.
According to the company, the new chips will be manufactured using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s 2-nanometer process and will be used in premium smartphones from Motorola, Xiaomi and ZTE. Qualcomm is launching two versions, including one with added capabilities and “extreme” branding.
The rollout comes as the global smartphone industry faces pressure from soaring memory prices, which have pushed up the cost of finished devices. Counterpoint Research expects smartphone shipments to fall 14% in 2026 and potentially another 1% in 2027.
Against that backdrop, handset makers are putting more emphasis on the premium segment, targeting consumers with greater disposable income. Qualcomm is marketing phones powered by its top-end chips as an “AI hub” capable of processing AI models and generating tokens without depending on the cloud.
Chief Executive Officer Cristiano Amon said the industry is moving from a phone-centric model toward what he described as an agentic-centric model for new experiences. In his view, devices will increasingly do more than execute commands and will instead complete tasks on behalf of users.
Beyond the central processing unit, the new Snapdragon chipsets also include a graphics processing unit and a neural processing unit for AI workloads, including agents running in the background. Qualcomm said it has also added security features to control agentic access to sensitive data.
During Tuesday’s livestreamed launch event, Amon brought on Google’s Rick Osterloh, the company’s head of platforms and devices. He said Google’s Gemini would be able to understand a user’s context — for example, when a person is in a car — thanks to the chip’s processing power and sensors. Qualcomm also said the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 can run models with 30 billion parameters.
