We’ll start with the CPU; the third revision of Qualcomm’s custom Oryon CPU cores built on the Arm architecture. Qualcomm cranked the Prime core peak clock speeds up to 4.6GHz, from an already speedy 4.32GHz with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, while the Performance cores can hit 3.62GHz. Combined with some architecture and cache revisions, Qualcomm claims this can result in up to 20% better performance with 16% better power efficiency.

The performance claims hold up reasonably well against last year’s reference unit in Geekbench 6 (yes, I’ve been keeping tabs). Single and multi-core performance registers 19% gains. More impressive, though, is that if you go back two years, the 8 Elite Gen 5 is 65% faster in both tests than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. That’s a massive increase in peak performance in just two years — those custom CPU cores really have paid dividends.

Looking at some real handsets, we can see roughly where upcoming Gen 5 phones will sit. Qualcomm’s new chip flies past the capabilities of Google’s Tensor G5, and its multi-core score even leaves Apple’s new A19 Pro chip in the dust — it’s 25% faster. While far more performance than you need for browsing the web, this super-quick multi-core score will come in handy for video editing, gaming, and perhaps even running AI tasks directly on the CPU, especially now that the Snapdragon’s CPU supports SME.