Qualcomm’s new flagship phone chips, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and its Extreme version, are built to run large AI models on the device, and the company has also extended its licensing agreement with Apple.
Qualcomm launched two flagship smartphone processors on 22 September 2026, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and a higher-end Extreme version, with an emphasis on artificial intelligence, according to TechCrunch and CNBC. The standard model has a new accelerator for running AI models efficiently, according to TechCrunch.
The Extreme version can run a 30-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model locally, TechCrunch reports. In a mixture-of-experts model only part of the total parameters is active for a given task, which is why such a model can run on a phone. TechCrunch compares this with an Apple model of 20 billion parameters announced recently, though it does not say which Apple product that refers to.
Both chips have an improved sensing hub that can run models of up to 200 million parameters, according to the report. The company says this allows personal AI assistants that work entirely on the device, including voice agents and the identification of different speakers when taking notes.
The Extreme version also adds camera and video features: 8K video at 60 frames per second, 4K slow motion at 240 frames per second and support for a new Advanced Professional Video codec, according to TechCrunch.
Motorola announced the Signature 27 smartphone with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme, which is expected to be on general sale at some point in 2026, according to the report. A search summary of other coverage says the chips will be built on TSMC’s 2-nanometre process and will be in premium phones from Motorola, Xiaomi and ZTE, but TechCrunch’s article does not name the manufacturing process, so Delima News treats that detail as unconfirmed.
CNBC’s headline says the chip was released as a memory shortage weighs on the smartphone market. The article could not be read, so the effect of the shortage on phone prices is not described here. Delima News has reported separately that Samsung forecast a record profit on high memory prices.
On 2 October The Star carried a headline saying that Qualcomm had inked a surprise Apple deal. A search summary says that Qualcomm extended its licensing agreement with Apple from 1 April 2027, the same day the current agreement was due to expire. The terms and length of the extension are not given in the sources reviewed.
A mixture-of-experts model of 30 billion parameters is not the same as a dense model of that size: the 30-billion figure refers to the total number of parameters, while only part is used at any time, as TechCrunch’s description makes clear. The comparison with Apple’s 20-billion-parameter model is therefore between different kinds of model, and the reports do not show how the two perform.
The main change is the claim that a phone can run a model of this size without a connection to the cloud. How well it performs in actual use, and how much memory it needs, is not covered in the sources reviewed, and Delima News will report on independent tests when they are published.
Image: Qualcomm’s headquarters in San Diego (file photo). Photo: Coolcaesar / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
