Recently, Qualcomm has been actively promoting the practice of releasing stripped-down versions of its flagship Snapdragon 8 processors, which are ideally suited for affordable sub-flagship smartphones.
For example, this year the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset with the internal label SM8735 became such a solution, and in 2024 it was Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 (SM8635), but, as the well-known network informant Digital Chat Station said today, the conditional Snapdragon 8s Gen 5 in 2026 is not worth waiting for.
According to the source, Qualcomm engineers have no plans to release a single-chip system with the catalog number SM8835, and only the top-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, labeled SM8850, is waiting for us.
The insider also added that upcoming smartphone models of the “almost flagship” level will have to “move” to the current Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, which will become cheaper by then, but in any case will be more expensive than the stripped-down versions with the letter s in the name.
It’s not clear what this is about, but it can be assumed that Qualcomm’s marketers are to blame for everything, who like to change and confuse the naming of their chips, without giving ordinary users any chance to figure out their performance levels.