We’ve only just seen references to the sequel to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite late last month, and now we are hearing rumours of the chip that would come after said sequel. And it’s not all good either, as while one part of it is that it will be made using TSMC’s 2nm process, the other is that it will come in two variants.
The claim comes via serial leakster Digital Chat Station on Chinese social media Weibo. While no name was specifically mentioned in the post, the leakster mentions the SM8950 chipset, and for context, the current Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite is also known as the SM8750.
But back to the upcoming chip, the SM8950 is said to come in two versions, with the leakster coining the second one the SM8945. This suggests that this second version will be a tad underpowered compared to the primary variant of the chipset in some form or another.
The leakster also made reference to Apple and its A and A Pro chips. To compare with the iPhone models that launched last year, the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus get the A18 chip, where the Pro and Pro Max got the A18 Pro with more cache and one additional GPU core.
Finally, the leakster also mentions “soaring costs”, per machine translation. This may mean that not only will flagship devices cost more, but also that the SM8950 may not come as standard, having to settle for the SM8945 instead. With that in mind, base models will probably get the latter, while Pro and Ultra variants are more likely to get the former. But since all of this is still at least a whole year away, no sense in holding your breath for the rumour to be true.
(Source: Weibo)
