Qualcomm’s New, Affordable Snapdragon 8 Elite has One Less Core

It’s safe to say that Qualcomm’s formula for the Snapdragon 8 Elite has received great praise worldwide. It’s THE most powerful SoC for smartphones right now, and while that means more smartphone manufacturers will use it, it also means some will miss out due to the high pricing of the SoC. Hence, there’s a new slower Snapdragon 8 Elite variant in town.

As per this official product brief, Qualcomm has a new Snapdragon 8 Elite variant, codenamed SM850-3-AB. It’s a Snapdragon 8 Elite (benchmarks) but with one less performance core in a nutshell. The original variant had the codename SM850-AB and came with 2 x 4.32 GHz Prime cores and 6 x 3.53 GHz performance cores. The new SKU, on the other hand, only has 5 x 3.53 GHz cores besides the 2 x 4.32 GHz Prime cores.

Qualcomm says the altered 8 Elite still achieves significant performance gains over the 8 Gen 3. This hepta-core SoC could be for manufacturers who want to save on hefty costs of the original 8 Elite. It could essentially be a skinned-down version of the 8 Elite with one core disabled.

While smartphone buyers would still expect OEMs to include the original SKU, we believe the SM850-3-AB could do well in price-sensitive markets. The second-generation Oryon cores are great, and yanking off one core from the equation shouldn’t bring the performance down dramatically.

That said, it should be interesting to see which manufacturers take the new 8 Elite up at all. That’s because we still don’t know the price difference between the regular 8 Elite and the nerfed SKU. If it enables manufacturers to come up with sub-$500 smartphones, it might be worth it after all.

What are your thoughts on the slower Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC? Let us know in the comments below.