Qualcomm is just days away from introducing its next generation of flagship mobile chips. Snapdragon Summit 2026 begins on September 22 in Maui, with the main mobile announcement happening on the first day.
The company has already confirmed that two new Snapdragon 8 Elite chips are coming. Their final names have not been announced yet, but they are widely expected to launch as the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and the higher-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro.
Qualcomm has also started revealing what is new inside. Its next Oryon CPU will be the company’s first mobile CPU to reach 5GHz, up from the 4.47GHz peak of the original Snapdragon 8 Elite. Qualcomm is also introducing a new Flex Cache system designed to keep performance high when apps, games and AI workloads move between CPU cores.
Graphics and AI are getting upgrades too. The next Adreno GPU adds dedicated hardware for AI-assisted graphics, while the new Hexagon NPU is designed to handle larger AI models directly on the phone. The full clock speeds, core layout and differences between the Gen 6 and Gen 6 Pro should finally become clear when Qualcomm officially launches the chips on September 22.
Qualcomm will not be the only company bringing a new flagship chip this month. MediaTek launched the Dimensity 9600 Pro on September 15, just one week before Snapdragon Summit. The chip is built on a 2nm process and uses an eight-core 2+3+3 CPU design, with its fastest C2-Ultra cores reaching 4.55GHz.
MediaTek says the Dimensity 9600 Pro brings 17% faster single-core performance, 15% faster multi-core performance and lower power use than the previous generation. It also adds the new G2-Ultra NX GPU, NPU 1090, LPDDR6 memory support and UFS 5.0 storage.
The first phones are expected this quarter, with the Vivo X500 series among the main devices to watch. The X500 Pro and X500 Pro Max are expected to use the Dimensity 9600 Pro, putting MediaTek’s newest flagship chip in the spotlight just as Qualcomm prepares to reveal its next Snapdragon lineup.
