Qualcomm is launching two flagship phone chips this year instead of one. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 sits at the top as its most powerful mobile platform, and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 brings many of the same features to a wider range of premium phones. Both are headed for flagships from brands Malaysians already buy, including Samsung, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and Honor.
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Two chips, one family
Qualcomm calls the split a multi-flagship strategy. Both chips are built on the same 2nm manufacturing process and use Qualcomm's custom Oryon CPU, a rearchitected Adreno GPU and the Hexagon NPU that handles AI on the phone itself. The Extreme is aimed at the most advanced Android phones, while the Gen 6 carries many of the same AI, gaming, imaging and connectivity features into more models. Qualcomm's own product brief for the 8 Elite Gen 6 lists a custom Oryon CPU with two Prime cores running up to 5.0 GHz and six Performance cores up to 4.0 GHz, built on a 2nm process; it has not published the Extreme's separate clock speeds, so how far apart the two chips run in daily use is still an open question.
"Our multi-flagship strategy allows us to push the boundaries of what's possible for mobile while bringing our latest AI innovations to a broader range of premium devices," said Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of mobile handsets at Qualcomm Technologies.
Pro video and smarter cameras
For anyone who shoots video on their phone, the camera changes are the part to watch. The Extreme supports Advanced Professional Video (APV), a high-quality recording format built to hold up when you edit, similar in purpose to the professional codecs used on dedicated cameras. Qualcomm pairs it with Intelligent Pixel Control, which it says uses AI to understand a scene more deeply for better image quality and more natural-looking photos and videos. Phone makers have leaned hard on AI for camera results lately, as Samsung did with the Galaxy S26 Ultra's concert zoom, and these chips give them more of it to work with.
AI agents and gaming
The Extreme is built to run what Qualcomm calls everyday agents: AI assistants that act on your behalf and adapt to you through the day, which it says will be faster, more personal and more dependable. Gaming gets Adreno Neural Fusion, a new feature that uses AI to render graphics more intelligently, which Qualcomm says brings richer visuals, more immersive play and longer playtime.
Which phones will use them
Qualcomm lists Honor, iQOO, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, REDMI, RedMagic, Samsung, vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE among the brands that will launch phones on the two chips. It has not said which brand gets which chip, or when the first phones arrive.
What it means for Malaysia
Most of the 12 brands on Qualcomm's list sell phones in Malaysia, so these chips are likely to power many of the flagships on local shelves over the coming year. Price is the thing to watch. Flagship chips have been getting more expensive, which we covered in what the Snapdragon price hike means for phones in Malaysia, and memory costs are pushing phone prices up as well, as we reported in why your next phone costs more and has less RAM. A second flagship tier gives phone makers a way to offer the newest features without paying for the top chip, which could matter more to Malaysian buyers than the headline performance figures. Full details are on Qualcomm's announcement page.
