Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 phones: benchmarks, gaming & which to buy

What the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is

Qualcomm's 2021 flagship and the most controversial Android chipset of its decade: fast on paper, throttling-prone in the hand. Samsung's 4 nm process struggled with efficiency, and the chip ranks #31 of 79 in our catalog today — AnTuTu about 1.29 million, Geekbench 6 near 1,660 single-core and 4,190 multi-core. Full details on the 8 Gen 1 benchmark page.

Performance and gaming

Our gaming scale puts 8 Gen 1 phones around 27/100 — fine for everyday apps and casual titles, noticeably behind its successors in sustained 3D. The pattern that earned its reputation: strong first-minute benchmarks, then heat and throttling in longer sessions, especially in compact bodies. The mid-cycle fix, the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 on TSMC 4 nm, solved exactly this and is the smarter buy at similar money.

Phones that ship with it

Buying advice

Buy this chip only at a deep discount, and 2026 pricing mostly provides one: the Galaxy S22 near $180 and the S22 Ultra near $360. Our S22 Ultra review and its head-to-head with the iPhone 13 show where it still wins (screen, zoom camera) and where the A15 pulls ahead. The honest ladder: for roughly $80 more than an S22 Ultra, the 8 Gen 2-based S23 Ultra fixes the thermals — see our 8 Gen 2 guide — and the Edge Plus (2022) at about $70 is the cheapest way into flagship-class hardware anywhere in the catalog.