For a few years, Samsung has been in a partnership with Qualcomm to provide exclusive chips to Samsung phones. Traditionally, there’s a boost to the clock speed. We expect the same with the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
This may or may not remain exclusive to Samsung’s flagship phones. We didn’t have a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 2 or Snapdragon 8+ Gen 3. The higher-clocked versions were exclusive to Samsung.
Quick Answer: Yes, the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy is expected to be featured in the upcoming Galaxy S25 Ultra. This version may offer higher clock speeds, potentially reaching up to 4.47 GHz, an increase from the 4.32 GHz for its primary core.
There’s debate on whether this is actually useful, but the bumps to the CPU and GPU clock speeds should theoretically allow a higher performance ceiling for games, high-resolution video exports, AI features, etc.
If Qualcomm plans to do a higher-clocked version of the 8 Elite, it could release it for other companies to use. TM Roh was present at the Snapdragon Summit, so a collaboration between the two companies is very possible. These are still unreleased products, so don’t take the rumors too seriously.
The overclocked 8 Elite chip will mostly only make it to the Ultra model. The base and plus model will use either MediaTek or Exynos chips. There are no reports on the progress of the Exynos Dream SOC, so we might just get the Exynos 2500 SOC instead.
Considering Samsung’s yield rates, the S25 and S25 Plus could get the Dimensity 9400 in some regions, the Exynos in some regions, and perhaps Snapdragon only in the USA and maybe South Korea.
The 8 Elite is already at a whopping 4.32 GHz. This clock speed rivals laptop chips at some price points. However, the 8 Elite for Galaxy could run at a massive 4.47GHz, which is even higher. A leak for the clock speeds is already out via Geekbench listing.
The Geekbench listing shows a score of 3000 for the single-core run, and the multi-core test breaks over 9000 points. The A18 Pro only scores around 8000 multicore, so theoretically, the Snapdragon 8 Elite has a better CPU.
