Qualcomm Launches Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 Chipset; OnePlus 15R To Be The First Phone To Get It?

Qualcomm finally debuted its Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 Mobile Platform. It’s premium-tier hardware, yes, but unlike the cost-heavy ‘Elite’ chips, the focus here sounds more about balance—speed that feels real in daily use, without all the trade-off drama. Also Read: Snapdragon Phones Will Soon Get AirDrop-Compatible Quick Share Support

Talking about the availability, Qualcomm confirmed that Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 will appear in flagship devices from brands like iQOO, Honor, Meizu, Motorola, OnePlus and vivo. The early adopter spotlight is obviously on OnePlus, which is tipped to bring this to the global variant of the OnePlus 15R first. Even the event page has confirmed that. Also Read: OnePlus 15R Design Leaked: Check Expected Specs, Price, Features, Release Date, More

Snapdragon 8 Gen 5: Specs And Features

Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 houses Qualcomm’s custom-built Oryon CPU, which claims to hit peak clock speeds up to 3.8GHz. That’s a 36% performance increase and a monster 76% improvement in web browsing responsiveness, Qualcomm suggested. For anyone who’s constantly jumping between 10 apps without exiting any, this could start feeling like the generation that removes mid-scroll stutters. Also Read: 3rd-Gen Qualcomm Oryon CPU Explained: The Key Upgrades You Should Know

The Adreno GPU picks a new route too. This 8-series chip uses the sliced architecture, unlocking 11% improved graphics performance for gaming and image tasks. On-screen performance on games like BGMI is expected to support up to 90fps, while the camera UI rendering is expected to feel more fluid. 

AI finally gets some hardware-side attention, too. The real brain inside the new chip is Qualcomm’s Hexagon NPU, delivering 46% faster AI performance and quicker AI response times up to 36%. This means your voice commands, scene detection and real-time translation could finally start feeling less like a feature tagline, and more like a blink-and-it’s-done interaction.

There’s also the Qualcomm Sensing Hub, which mixes mics and sensors to detect when you’re probably about to talk. That means, your assistant can wake up just by you picking the phone up, instead of needing a ‘Hey’ every time.

Well, which other devices will pack this latest chipset apart from OnePlus 15R, which is launching on December 17th, is still unknown.