Chip maker Qualcomm has just unveiled its latest smartphone processors, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 and Snapdragon 4 Gen 5. It means that faster performance will soon come to lower-tier phones.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Gen 5, released in September 2025, was last year’s top-flight chip, aimed at flagship phones.
Now, more affordable phones will be able to take advantage of performance improvements and longer battery life, it’s claimed.
Major mobile brands like Honor, Oppo, realme and Redmi have already committed to releasing phones with the new chips in them, in the second half of this year.
Snapdragon 6 Gen 5: AI Cameras And Wi-Fi 7
Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 is designed to enhance smartphone cameras with AI-powered photo capture and image quality, for instance. It is also pegged to create more immersive gaming experiences, not least through the Qualcomm Adaptive Performance Engine 4.0.
The company says that GPU performance will be improved by up to 21%, and that apps will launch 20% faster compared to the previous version of processor, Snapdragon 6 Gen 4. The new chip will introduce Wi-Fi 7 connectivity. Honor and Redmi are among the first brands which have been announced to use this chip.
Snapdragon 4 Gen 5: 90FPS Gaming For Budget Phones
The Snapdragon 4 Gen 5 is aimed at entry-level devices with 43% faster app launches compared to the chip it succeeds. Here, the GPU improvement is claimed to be 77% compared to Snapdragon 4 Gen 4, which is the sort of figure that would make a tangible difference. It also includes support for 90 frames-per-second gameplay, which will make for a more seamless, stutter-free experience, though it does, of course, require the display hardware to be up to the job.
Snapdragon 4 Gen 5 also supports Dual SIM Dual Active (DSDA) 5G+5G/4G connectivity, which offers more versatility to stay connected across multiple networks.
Oppo, realme and Redmi will have the first devices using this processor.
With these announcements made, the next big release from the company is likely to be in September, when the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 is expected. This may see the first 2nm hardware from the company.
