Amid ongoing speculation about the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s Snapdragon processor, rumors about the S26 Ultra are already surfacing. Its chipset, whether it’s called the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 or Snapdragon 8 Elite 2, will allegedly bring a massive speed boost over its predecessor. With this year’s chip already promising major performance gains, the next-gen processor could push smartphone capabilities to an entirely new level.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 could be insanely powerful
Samsung is currently testing the Galaxy S25 Ultra with two different variants of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, potentially rebranded to Snapdragon 8 Elite. One has its prime CPU cores clocked at 4.19GHz and the rest at 2.90GHz. The other offers speeds of 4.47GHz and 3.53GHz, respectively. It’s unclear whether the company plans to use both variants in commercial units — only the US models have been spotted with the slower chip so far.
Meanwhile, a wild rumor originating from China says the next Snapdragon processor will offer a base speed of over 4GHz. Its peak speed could top 5GHz, making it an insanely powerful smartphone chip. Spotted by Phonearena, a user with an unknown track record shared the information via Weibo. So, we cannot vouch for the authenticity of the information. However, Qualcomm may be able to pull this off with its custom Oryon cores.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is its first mobile processor to feature the new custom CPU cores. If the chip delivers speeds up to 4.47GHz, we are already staring at a 30% boost over the Gen 3. A 15% speed gain over that would be enough for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 to achieve the reported speeds. This certainly doesn’t look out of reach and bodes well for the Galaxy S26 series. More so when you consider these figures might be for the standard version.
According to the new report, Qualcomm plans to dual-source the Gen 5/ Elite 2 from TSMC and Samsung Foundry. The former will manufacture that standard version on its third-gen 3nm process node (N3P). Samsung will likely produce the overclocked version on its SF2 2nm node. It should be exclusive to the Galaxy S26 series and offer even faster speeds. It’s still very early, but the 2026 Galaxy flagships are shaping up to be performance powerhouses.
