Qualcomm’s former flagship chip trickles down to cheaper phones
According to Kuai Technology, from October the big Android players will start rolling out phones with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 at the top end, while the original Snapdragon 8 Elite will slide down into cheaper sub-flagships.
That means last year’s premium silicon will soon power mid-range handsets priced around 2,500 yuan (€315), making for some tasty cost-performance ratios.
Blogger Digital Chat Station reckons the REDMI K90 standard edition will be one of the first in this “hand-me-down flagship” wave. The phone, codenamed Annibale and carrying the model number 2510DRK44C, will ship with the Snapdragon 8 Elite instead of the newer Elite 2.
For comparison, the REDMI K80 launched in the second half of last year with a Snapdragon 8 Gen3 and started at 2,499 yuan (€315). So the K90 is expected to stick to roughly the same price bracket but offer a chunk more power thanks to the beefier Elite chip.
Despite being last year’s top-tier silicon, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is hardly a slouch. It uses Qualcomm’s second-gen custom Oryon CPU architecture, packing two “super cores” clocked at 4.32 GHz alongside six “performance cores” running at 3.53 GHz. That combo delivers about a 45 per cent bump in single-core and multi-core performance over its predecessor.
The Adreno GPU also saw a 44 per cent jump in peak performance, pushing AnTuTu scores beyond 3 million without breaking a sweat. Even if it’s not the latest and greatest, it’s still wildly overpowered for a phone at this price point.
So, while the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 takes over the flagship space, the original Elite is set to give mid-range buyers a serious performance bargain.
