Qualcomm launches two new smartphone chips with emphasis on AI
TechCrunch Ivan Mehta ● Covered by 3 sources
Qualcomm just unveiled two new phone chips built around AI features. One can run some models locally, including a 30B one on the pricier version.
Based on reporting by TechCrunch, Ivan Mehta — read the original for the full story.
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Qualcomm used its annual Snapdragon Summit to push phones deeper into on-device AI. The company announced two flagship processors, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, both built to make AI features feel more personal and less cloud-dependent.
The biggest change is a new sensing hub that can run smaller models of up to 200 million parameters. Qualcomm says that should let a phone act like a local personal scribe, tell different speakers apart, and build memory from how someone uses the device so it can suggest automation. It can also handle a full voice-in, voice-out agent on the chip itself.
The standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 also gets a new accelerator element meant to run models more efficiently. The Extreme version goes further and can run a 30-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model locally. Qualcomm is leaning on the MoE angle here: the whole model is large, but only the relevant parts light up for a given task.
That pitch lands in a field where Apple is already talking up its own 20-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model, shown at WWDC in June. Qualcomm is also using the new chips to sell a more pro camera setup, with pixel-level control, better stabilization, motion understanding, 8K 60fps recording, 4K240 slow motion, and support for the Advanced Professional Video codec. Both chips can boost vocals and cut noise, while Qualcomm’s new voice bubble tech is meant to isolate users’ noise during calls. Motorola has already announced a phone powered by the Extreme chip, with availability due sometime this year.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is Qualcomm making the obvious bet: if AI is going to live anywhere, it’ll live on the phone, not in a lonely gadget on a keychain. The chips sound less like a moonshot than a very practical arms race, which is probably why it feels more credible than half the AI hardware parade. And yes, the real killer feature may still be better call noise reduction, because that’s the sort of AI people actually notice.
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