Qualcomm is expected to debut the successor to its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset sometime next month during its Snapdragon Summit. However, a recent report says that the unreleased chipset was listed for sale in a Chinese secondhand marketplace ahead of its supposed launch. If this chipset is authentic, then the listing has given us an insight into what we could expect in the near future.
According to the report, a seller from Shenzhen listed what they claim to be the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro (SM8975-100-BC) chipset on Xianyu, China’s largest secondhand marketplace. The seller described the two items as a desoldered engineering sample that was taken from a test board.
Furthermore, the SoC was marked for repair and chip rework, with bulk stock supposedly available. The alleged Snapdragon chip had a placeholder price of CNY300 (~RM180), with the real price open to negotiations. The listing was promptly taken down, but not before the details were shared online.
The SM8975 designation, which was laser-etched on the chip, matches what was previously linked to Qualcomm’s higher-end flagship silicon for this generation. The company has previously teased it will be unveiling two “8 Elite” chipsets ahead of its September debut.
What The Listing Revealed
Alongside the listing, the seller posted alleged images of the chipset. The photo revealed that the die was laser-etched with the “SM8975-100-BC” model, which points to the first LPDDR5X engineering-sample (ES) revision of the chip. Furthermore, each of the two chips has its own lot code, those codes which ares FC5528M5 and FX602R8T.
The lot codes on packaged chips usually encode the fab, assembly site, and packaging date. According to Notebookcheck, the “F” identifies TSMC as the fab, likely with its N2P node. The “C” indicates that it was packaged at Amkor’s Korea site. The “5” marks 2025, while the “52” means the workweek 52, which means that it was packaged around late December 2025.
As for the second code, it follows a similar pattern. The chip was made at TSMC, but it was packaged in Amkor’s Japan site (thanks to the “X” identifier). Because of the “6” and “02” marks, we know that the item was packaged in January 2026. Meanwhile, the remaining characters are just lot serial numbers.
Additionally, the images also revealed what appears to be Qualcomm’s response to Samsung’s Heat Pass Block on the Exynos 2600. It is referred to as a “Heat Slug Sheet”, an internal heat spreader that is placed between the die and the package lid. You can see the comparison between the two below.
What is interesting is that the heat spreader appears to be smaller than its Samsung counterparts. Notebookcheck believes this is the case because Qualcomm’s chips have to support both LPDDR6 and LPDDR5X, which “pushes it toward a larger 1,295-ball FBGA package for LPDDR6 and a 496-ball FBGA package for LPDDR5X, both of which leave less physical space on the package for the heat spreader.”
With all that said, do take this information with a bit of scepticism. After all, these details came from unconfirmed and unofficial listings. We will definitely know more about the upcoming Snapdragon chip when Qualcomm debuts it next month.
(Source: Notebookcheck)
