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Galaxy S25 leaves other flagships in dust thanks to Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy
Published onJanuary 22, 2025
- Samsung has revealed that the Galaxy S25 phones are powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset.
- The company said that all aspects of this chipset have been overclocked compared to the standard processor, including a 4.47GHz peak clock speed.
- Qualcomm and Samsung also integrated several display and imaging improvements into the upgraded chip.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is a huge leap forward for flagship Android phones, delivering notable performance and efficiency improvements compared to previous Snapdragon chips. However, the newly announced Samsung Galaxy S25 series ups the ante with the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy processor.
Samsung confirmed in a media briefing that it’s using the so-called Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy processor in the Galaxy S25 series instead of the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite chip.
The company explained that all aspects of this processor have been overclocked over the vanilla Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. Qualcomm subsequently confirmed to Android Authority that the upgraded processor has a 4.47GHz peak CPU speed, making for a ~150MHz boost over the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite. You’re not likely to notice this upgrade in real-world use cases, but it does suggest a small advantage in single-core CPU benchmarks.
How does the 8 Elite for Galaxy SoC compare to last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy? Well, Samsung said the new chip offers a 37% faster CPU, 30% faster GPU, and 40% faster NPU than the previous generation chipset. By contrast, Samsung said the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy had a 20% faster CPU, 26% faster GPU, and 42% faster NPU than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy. So we’re seeing a huge CPU speed boost compared to previous years, while the GPU and NPU upgrades are broadly in line with previous generational upgrades.
More than just a clock speed boost?
The two companies also teamed up to customize the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy’s display capabilities. Qualcomm told Android Authority that the two companies worked on the S25 line’s ProScaler image scaling solution and on mDNIe tech for improved display efficiency.
The chipmaker also said that it worked with Samsung to integrate Spatio-Temporal Filter (STF) support into the image signal processor. This support enables sharper low-light video capture up to 8K/30fps. However, Qualcomm later clarified that this support wasn’t exclusive to the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy.
Our own testing shows that the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite delivers a huge boost to battery life in addition to the impressive generational CPU gains. However, we’ve also noticed a trend of some Elite-powered phones overheating during demanding GPU stress tests. So we’re not sure about the wisdom of overclocking the Snapdragon 8 Elite, although the Galaxy S25 series does offer larger vapor chamber cooling systems compared to previous years. Our fingers are crossed that these cooling system upgrades and Samsung’s own software optimizations are enough to avoid significant heating problems.