While the iPhone 16 Pro wasn’t a big deal to some, the truth is that there’s something no one can deny: its SoC is a beast. The Apple A18 Pro ate the competition’s chips alive in terms of performance and has been crowned the best in the mobile world.
However, recently Qualcomm presented the Snapdragon 8 Elite, a chip with numerous improvements in multiple sections and the one that will bring the best Android phones of 2025. It is destined to be the one that dethrones the Apple processor, but Will he make it? That’s what we’ll see next, well Let’s compare the Snapdragon 8 Elite vs. Apple A18Pro.
Specs Comparison Table: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite vs. Apple A18Pro
|
Specifications |
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8Elite |
Apple A18Pro |
|---|---|---|
| processor |
|
|
| Production process | 3 nautical miles TSMC 2nd generation. | 3 nautical miles TSMC 2nd generation. |
| GPU | Adreno760supports hardware ray tracing. | Apple GPUs 6 coressupports hardware ray tracing. |
| RAM | LPDDR5X. | LPDDR5. |
| Warehousing | UFS4.0. | NVMe. |
| Artificial intelligence. |
Qualcomm Hexagon NPU with engine Generative AI via hardware. | 16-core Apple Neural Engine with engine Generative AI via hardware. |
| Connectivity |
|
|
The CPU: Qualcomm is the queen of multi-core, but Apple is the queen of single-core
Although both chips are based on the ARM architecture, They have custom cores and are manufactured in 3nmThe truth is that they are very different from each other.
The Apple A18 Pro continues to rely on the classic big.LITTLE distributionin this case in the 2+4 core format: two of its cores are high performance and run at 4.05 GHz, while the other four are efficient and run at 2.42 GHz.
Instead, the Snapdragon 8 Elite has a CXC.big distribution 2+6 cores: The first cluster has two 4.32 GHz Oryon Prime cores, while the second has six 3.53 GHz Oryon Performance cores. That’s right. there are no energy efficient cores.
How do both chips perform in Geekbench 6 with these configurations? AS:
In the single-core test, the Apple A18 Pro wins by 11% over the Snapdragon 8 Elite. However, Results of Qualcomm’s flip chip in the multi-core testobtaining 11% in his favor.
The GPU: The Snapdragon crushes the Apple A18 Pro in terms of graphics performance
As with processor cores, Qualcomm and Apple use custom graphics in their chips. The Snapdragon 8 Elite has the new Adreno 760, while the Apple A18 Pro has a 6-core Apple GPU.
We don’t know much about their frequencies, but after running the major 3DMark tests everything becomes very clear: the Snapdragon 8 Elite tramples the Apple A18 Pro.
- 3DMark Extreme Wild Life: the Snapdragon 8 Elite is 65.9% higher..
- 3DMark steel nomad light: Qualcomm chip exceeds that of Apple by 28.9%.
Energy efficiency: Apple launches a direct hook to Qualcomm’s liver
Although Qualcomm crushed Apple in the GPU, in terms of energy efficiency the Apple A18 Pro prevails. Using Geekbench 6 again, these were the consumption results for each chip:
The Apple A18 Pro consumes 6.6 W in the single-core test and only 9.5 W in the multi-core test. On the other hand, the Snapdragon 8 Elite consumes 6.9W and 16W respectively. Apple’s advantage in this section is very clear.
The NPU: Both chips put all the meat on the AI grill
Unfortunately, we don’t have reliable performance tests for either chip in this section. The data is also missing, but let’s try to reconstruct it:
- Apple A18Pro: Its neural engine has 16 cores and is more efficient than that of the Apple A17 Pro. While there is no official figure, it is estimated Its performance is around 45 TOPS (Tera operations per second).
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 8Elite: It has a revamped Hexagon NPU that is up to 45% more powerful than that of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. There is also no exact official figure, but if last year’s figure was 45 TOPS, the Snapdragon 8 Elite it should be at a maximum of 65 TOPS.
On paper, the Snapdragon 8 Elite has better raw AI performance. However, both SoCs offer brutal AI performancebeing able to run language models locally without any problems. So, don’t worry about which is better, as both are exceptionally good.
Connectivity: Very similar, but the Snapdragon has Bluetooth 6
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite has a Snapdragon X80 modem and the Apple A18 Pro has a Snapdragon X75. The only difference between them is consumption, since both have 5G mmWave + Sub-6 GHz and They reach speeds of up to 10 Gbps downstream and up to 3.5 Gbps uploading.
In the WiFi section, something similar happens with the FastConnect 7900 (Snapdragon) and 7800 (A18 Pro): both are compatible with WiFi 7 with speeds up to 5.8 Gbps, all geopositioning systems, UWB and NFC. However, The Snapdragon 8 Elite chip has Bluetooth 6 and that of the Apple A18 Pro reaches 5.3.
Conclusions: the Snapdragon 8 Elite is the new king among mobile phones, albeit with sacrifices
After following the entire comparison, you will have realized this the Snapdragon 8 Elite is generally superior to the Apple A18 Pro. With this, Qualcomm takes the crown away from those on the market, but does so with an important sacrifice.
The Snapdragon is a chip with much higher consumption than its rivalsomething that will certainly have an impact on the autonomy of mobile phones. However, this is nothing new, which is why most Android phones have a 5000 mAh battery and Apple smartphones need less to achieve similar battery life.
