The next Snapdragon chip may push phone prices past the limit

A fresh leak suggests that the rumored Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro may cost smartphone makers more than $300 per chip, making it Qualcomm’s most expensive mobile processor to date. The figure comes from tipster Abhishek Yadav, who posted a breakdown on X showing how the cost of Qualcomm’s flagship silicon has steadily increased over the past few years.

As a reference, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 was said to cost around $120 to $130. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 allegedly jumped to around $170-$200, while the newer Snapdragon 8 Elite is said to cost over $220. Now, the rumored Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro could blow well past $300.

That’s a huge jump in a relatively short amount of time, and it helps explain why Android brands are reportedly preparing for a split flagship strategy going forward.

Qualcomm is reportedly working on two versions of its next flagship Snapdragon chip, instead of one for all premium phones, including a standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and a more powerful Pro edition aimed at Ultra-tier devices. The Pro model is said to be for phones like the Samsung Galaxy S27 Ultra and other top-end, camera-focused flagships.

The technical differences are not insignificant, either. The Pro variant is rumored to feature TSMC’s latest 2nm process, a faster Adreno 850 GPU, larger cache sizes, wider memory bandwidth, and support for LPDDR6 RAM. The regular Gen 6 chip is expected to dial things back a bit with an Adreno 845 GPU and LPDDR5X memory support instead.

You may also hear the whispers of clock speeds at or above 5GHz, but real-world performance may be more humble than the raw specs would suggest.

If these leaks are true, the flagship Android market in 2027 could be faster than ever, but it could also be way more expensive and fragmented in the process.