Qualcomm recently announced its newest flagship mobile chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
If you were expecting the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, you wouldn’t be alone. Qualcomm has decided to rebrand its flagship mobile line to match the ultra-powerful Snapdragon X Elite laptop processor.
Keep reading to learn how the new Snapdragon 8 Elite compares to Apple’s iPhone 16 chipset, the Apple A18. You can also visit our other guide to discover how the 8 Elite compares to the iPhone 16 Pro’s high-end chipset, the Apple A18 Pro.
The Apple A18 is exclusive to iPhone
Perhaps the most obvious difference between the Apple A18 and the Snapdragon 8 Elite is where you’ll find them.
The Apple A18 is an Apple Silicon chip designed and manufactured specifically for Apple products. You’re unlikely to find this chipset outside of the iPhone – or possibly the iPad – line now or anytime in the near future.
Qualcomm, on the other hand, designs its chips for other OEMs, including Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Nothing and Motorola to name just a few major names. This means you’ll have a wider variety of devices to choose from.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite features Qualcomm’s Oryon CPU
Both the Snapdragon 8 Elite and the Apple A18 deliver a performance boost this year, with the Snapdragon chip making progress thanks to its new Oryon CPU architecture.
The Oryon CPU – which also features in the Snapdragon X Elite – consists of two 4.32GHz prime cores, six 3.53Ghz performance cores and none of the usual efficiency cores, with the additional Performance having replaced these.
The ARM-based Apple A18 includes a six-core CPU with two performance cores and four energy-efficient cores. It’s also 30% faster than the A16 Bionic.
In the past, Snapdragon and Apple chipsets have come very close in our CPU benchmarking tests. For example, the Apple A17-powered iPhone 15 beat the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered Galaxy S24 Ultra in our single-core benchmark test, while the S24 Ultra maintained an edge in our multi-core test.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite focuses heavily on gaming performance
Gaming sees a huge boost on the Snapdragon 8 Elite, with the Adreno GPU featuring sliced architecture for the first time. Qualcomm says this will enable higher clock speeds, 40% higher framerates, 40% improved efficiency and better ray tracing compared to its predecessor. All of this culmulates in longer and smoother gameplay sessions.
The Apple A18 also marks a major shift in GPU performance for the entry-level iPhone, with the A18 delivering 40% faster performance than its predecessor, while also consuming 35% less power. The A18 also brought hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading to the cheaper iPhone for the first time.
The Apple A18 brings AI to the entry-level iPhone
It seems we can’t talk about a launch this year without touching on AI, and these two chipsets are no exception.
The Apple A18 is the first chipset that will enable Apple Intelligence on the non-Pro iPhone. The upgraded 16-core Neural Engine is optimised for large generate models and can run machine learning models 2x faster than the Apple A16 Bionic.
These specs power Apple Intelligence features like Writing Tools, Image Playground, Genmoji and ChatGPT-backed Siri.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite has also seen some major AI improvements, with new NPU cores delivering a 45% uptick in AI performance. The Oryon CPU also lends a hand, initiating workloads and taking some of the heavy lifting off the AI Engine so it can focus on AI tasks
The 8 Elite now accepts more tokens, meaning you can upload larger photos, files and documents. Another interesting development is that your AI assistant will be able to see through your camera and answer questions about objects. This all takes place on-device to protect your privacy.
Early Verdict
The Snapdragon 8 Elite and the Apple A18 are two immensely powerful chipsets that have seen improvements in CPU performance, GPU performance and AI in the last year.
If you want the most powerful Apple chip, the A18 Pro is the way to go. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait for our reviews to roll in to learn more about how the Snapdragon 8 Elite and Apple A18 compare in our real-world experience and benchmarking tests.
