Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite (Gen 4) phones: benchmarks, gaming & which to buy

What the Snapdragon 8 Elite is

Qualcomm's 2024 flagship — the chip that dropped the "Gen" numbering and rebuilt the CPU around laptop-derived Oryon cores. It ranks #4 of 79 phone chipsets in our catalog by AnTuTu (about 3.13 million), with Geekbench 6 results around 3,000 single-core and 9,300 multi-core — roughly a 35% single-core jump over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Samsung used it worldwide across the Galaxy S25 family, ending the regional Exynos split of the S24 generation. Full benchmark details live on the Snapdragon 8 Elite benchmark page.

Performance and gaming

Phones on the 8 Elite score about 79/100 on our gaming scale — the top tier of 2024 silicon, behind only the 2025 flagships. In practice: every current Android title at high settings, with sustained Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves sessions comfortable in larger-bodied phones. The Adreno 830 GPU carries hardware ray tracing, and the NPU class is strong enough for the on-device AI features Samsung and Honor shipped through 2024–2025. Everyday responsiveness is effortless and will stay that way for years.

Phones that ship with it

Buying advice

Used 8 Elite phones start near $370 for the Galaxy S25 and sit around $670 for the Galaxy S25 Ultra — our S25 Ultra review and its head-to-head with the iPhone 16 Pro Max cover the flagship angle. On the folding side, the Razr 60 Ultra trades near $665 used and the Z Fold 7 around $930. Coming from an 8 Gen 3 phone the upgrade is real but rarely essential — the previous generation's story is in our Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 guide — and the next step up, the #1-ranked Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, mostly buys early-adopter pride.