Forget Samsung — we just got our first Snapdragon 8 Elite smartphone from an unlikely source

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile chipset was officially unveiled last month, and every time the company unveils a new chipset, it’s always a race to see which Android manufacturer is the first to install it in a commercially available handset.

This year, Americans keen to get their hands on the first handset running the new chipset will have to turn to a less familiar brand, as the Chinese manufacturer Nubia is first out of the gates with a handset that’s available to order right now.

As spotted by Android Authority, the distinction goes to the Nibia Z70 Ultra which is now available to order directly from the company’s website. As well as the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, it packs a 6.85-inch, 2,688 x 1,216 full-screen display with a 144Hz refresh rate, and a 6,150mAh battery with 80w fast charging.

The triple camera array features a 64MP telephoto camera, alongside two 50MP lenses for regular and ultrawide shots. Appealingly for photography buffs, Nubia notes that the 35mm main camera has an “adjustable physical aperture for real-life shots”.

The phone can have 12GB, 16GB or 24GB RAM installed, and each upgrade coincides with a storage increase, with capacities of 256GB, 512GB and 1TB available (there’s no mention of expandable storage, so that’s something to think about if you decide to order the phone). Notably, it runs Android 15 out of the box, making it the first phone to do so. Though recent builds of the Pixel 9 may be boxed this way now, they came with Android 14 at launch.

While all of these are impressive specs, it’s undoubtedly the processor that’s the star of the show. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is a 3nm chip with two prime cores running at 4.3GHz and six performance cores. Notably, there are no efficiency cores this time around.

This all adds up to a processor that offers a serious performance boost over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, with Qualcomm suggesting you can expect a 45% improvement in both single and multi-core tasks. Despite the lack of efficiency cores, the company says that power efficiency should improve by 44% too.

We can’t vouch for the last one yet, as we haven’t had any extended time with a Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered handset. But we did run our other benchmarks on Qualcomm’s reference devices, and the results were indeed impressive.

Here’s how our test run compared to other leading smartphones:

We’re fully expecting the Samsung Galaxy S25 to launch with the chipset early next year, but if you can’t wait that long, the Nubia is an option to order today. Prices start at $829 (with $50 off using the code SAVE50) with shipping expected from December 5.

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