Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 this morning, teasing that it will be powering premium smartphones that are soon to the hit the market from the likes of OnePlus and others.
Mind you, Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 is the chipset ranked below the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which powers the latest OnePlus 15 (review here). That being said, Qualcomm is bringing quite a few performance increases, plus new features for gaming, cameras, and artificial intelligence. Here’s what you need to know.
A new custom-built Oryon CPU brings 36% improved performance and 76% better web browsing responsiveness, an updated Adreno GPU brings increased clocking speeds (up to 3.8GHz) and graphics performance boosts of 11%, plus a Hexagon NPU delivers a 46% boost in performance. Much numbers, such speed.
In what could be described by some as spooky, a new Sensing Hub is inside this chipset. Utilizing a combination of the microphone and various sensor inputs, a phone powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 is always ready for your interactions with AI. Here’s Qualcomm via its press release to explain.
The Qualcomm Sensing Hub in Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 features a dedicated AI processor that enables more contextually aware use cases, including user activity recognition and acoustic scene detection. By continuously capturing personal context, the Qualcomm Sensing Hub supports agentic AI experiences that are proactive and adaptive—ready to elevate everyday interactions with intelligent responsiveness.
Sounds neat, right? The spooky part is that “continuously capturing personal context.” When enabled, our phones are already listening continuously for “Hey Google” and phrases like that, but this Sensing Hub seems to be an upgrade to that. We’ll have to wait and see how OEMs implement this functionality before we start prepping our tinfoil hats.
For gaming, Qualcomm lists support for 165 fps (whenever a title offers it), multi-threaded performance, and support for Mesh Shading. In the camera department, Qualcomm highlights the Spectra Triple AI ISP paired with the Hexagon NPU to enable advanced computational photography. Users will benefit from 4x greater dynamic range (richer detail and contrast across lighting conditions) as well as AI-driven capabilities such as Night Vision 3.0 and real-time tone adjustments. This will, “intelligently optimize skin tones, skies, and now vegetation for more lifelike images and video.”
Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 will be found first in phones from iQOO, Motorola, OnePlus, and Vivo. Be on the lookout for it soon.