Snapdragon 8 Elite and slim Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition official, Week 43 in review

Samsung finally unveiled the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition. It alleviates several pain points from the Z Fold6 with larger displays, a slimmer profile, and a 200MP main cam. It also has larger displays - a 6.5-inch LTPO AMOLED 2X cover screen and an 8-inch LTPO AMOLED 2X folding one. Unfortunately, the device is currently exclusive to South Korea and rumors suggest it will only make its way to China (possibly as the Galaxy W25) without ever stepping foot outside those two markets.

Qualcomm's new super-chip for mobile is here, and it's not called the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. It's the Snapdragon 8 Elite, following Qualcomm's computer chip nomenclature. The new chip is fabbed on TSMC’s 3nm process and promises a 45% boost in CPU performance and 44% improved power efficiency over the SD 8 Gen 3. On the graphics side, Qualcomm is debuting its revamped Adreno GPU which brings a 40% uplift in performance and power savings alongside improved ray-tracing performance. Moving on to the AI side, the new Hexagon neural processing unit (NPU) ensures AI tasks run 45% faster with improved performance per watt.

The first phones with the chip are coming shortly. Xiaomi said its 15 series will be the first to have the chip, and we saw a Geekbench test of the Xiaomi 15.

The OnePlus 13 will also feature the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The phone is coming on October 31 (Halloween, gasp!) in three colors - Blue, Black, and White. We also saw an unboxing of the OnePlus 13 in the wild.

Huawei announced HarmonyOS Next - its lastest operating system built independently of Android as it aims to transition its devices to an entirely in-house OS. HarmonyOS Next is set to power the current and future generations of Huawei devices in China for now, though a global release was confirmed previously. It will work across a broad range of devices ranging from smartphones to wearables, smart home devices, and car cockpits. Huawei is seeding a public beta version of HarmonyOS Next to users in China. The supported device list includes the Pura 70 series, Huawei Pocket 2, and MatePad Pro 11 (2024).