Unusually, Qualcomm is rumored to be releasing two variants for their latest generation flagship SoC with Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro. According to leaks, the Pro version as the highest is said to have a clock speed of at least 5.0 GHz, and can even reach 6.0 GHz.
Tipster Fixed Focus Digital via Weibo revealed that initial testing of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro was capable of reaching 5.0 GHz. However, he said this figure is a minimum with the upper limit possibly reaching 5.5 – 6.0 GHz.
Apart from that, at 5.0 GHz alone this figure represents a very significant increase compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 with a clock speed of up to 4.61 GHz. This is definitely an extraordinary achievement for a mobile platform to reach the desktop level.
There is a role for Samsung
A high clockspeed will of course produce more heat and therefore Qualcomm is reportedly also utilizing the Heat Path Block (HPB) thermal solution from Samsung. This design, which debuted on the Exynos 2600, allows the integration of a heatsink directly into the packaging for more efficient heat distribution.
Not only that, the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Series also uses 2nm process technology (N2P) from TSMC. Smaller than the 3nm on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, this makes the SoC capable of achieving higher clock speeds with more efficient power.
However, even though it sounds very promising, it should be noted that this is still early testing. There is still quite a long gap before Qualcomm launches their Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Series, which is likely at the end of 2026.
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