I’ve tried the best, but might look past flagship silicon for my next phone purchase

We all long for faster processors, but if the leaked Snapdragon 8s Elite specs are accurate, Qualcomm’s upcoming mobile chip might hit the ideal sweet spot of reasonable performance and price, arguably a tougher feat than piling the best of everything into a chip. When it’s finally unveiled, likely around March 2025, it will be destined for sub-flagship phones (think around $500 or so), and I’ll certainly be keeping my eye on the handsets that the 8s Elite ships in, possibly more so than this year’s upcoming ultra-premium models.

I’m not a performance killjoy; I’ve been very impressed by the early Snapdragon 8 Elite smartphones I’ve had the luxury of using so far — they’re super responsive, and Qualcomm’s custom CPU design sips on battery life, ensuring phones easily last all day. The 8 Elite is great, but I’ve still not found a real-world use case that puts the chip to the sword. Even high-end gaming barely causes the chip to break a sweat, its networking capabilities far exceed my carrier’s, and I don’t really have any use for all that on-device AI shenanigans.