Qualcomm has announced two flagship smartphone processors, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, at its annual Snapdragon Summit, positioning both around more personalized, on-device AI.
The chips feature new sensing hubs capable of running small models of up to 200 million parameters, allowing phones to operate a local personal scribe, distinguish between speakers and build memory from usage to suggest task automation. Qualcomm said the hardware can run a complete voice-in, voice-out agent. A new accelerator is designed to run models more efficiently, and the Extreme version can run a 30-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model locally, compared with the 20-billion-parameter model Apple released at WWDC in June.
Both chips also use AI to boost vocals, reduce noise and isolate a user’s voice during calls. Camera upgrades include pixel-level control, improved stabilization and motion understanding, with the Extreme supporting 8K 60fps recording, 4K240 slow motion and the new APV codec.
Motorola announced its Signature 27 smartphone, powered by the Extreme chip and due this year. While Qualcomm is working on more than 40 AI devices, many expect phones to remain the main AI platform, a view Nothing co-founder Carl Pei has hinted at and new Apple CEO John Ternus recently reinforced.
