Qualcomm has launched two flagship phone chips built to run more AI on the handset, including an agent that can listen and answer locally.
According to TechCrunch the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 were announced at the company’s annual Snapdragon Summit. Qualcomm says their new sensing hubs can run small models with up to 200 million parameters, giving phones enough local processing for a personal scribe and speaker recognition.
The hub can build a memory from how its owner uses the phone, then use it to suggest tasks to automate. Qualcomm says the chips can run a complete voice-in, voice-out agent.
The standard Gen 6 gains an accelerator intended to run AI models more efficiently. The Extreme version can run a 30-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model locally. The full model has 30 billion parameters, although each task activates only part of it. That distinction may struggle to fit on the promotional slide.
Qualcomm has also given the camera hardware attention. It says the chips provide pixel-level control to improve stabilisation and understand motion. The Extreme version supports 8K video at 60 frames per second or 4K at 240 frames per second, along with the Advanced Professional Video codec.
Both chips can use AI to lift vocals and cut background noise. Qualcomm’s new “voice bubble” feature is meant to isolate the person speaking during a call, potentially sparing everyone else the full acoustic history of a passing bus.
Motorola has announced the Signature 27 with the Extreme chip and expects to make the phone generally available this year. That will give buyers a chance to find out how much of Qualcomm’s on-device AI pitch survives contact with a finished handset.
