Realme GT 7 Pro, not Galaxy S25, is the first flagship phone with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite
Qualcomm's new Android chipset is coming to Realme GT 7 Pro before any other flagship smartphone, though Xiaomi 15 will beat it by days and Samsung Galaxy S25 won't be far behind
📱 Realme GT 7 Pro will be the first flagship phone with Snapdragon 8 Elite
📆 GT 7 Pro will release in November in 10 countries, but not the US
🟦 Samsung may still be the first in the US with the Galaxy S25 series
🔜 Xiaomi 15 will launch globally sooner (October), but it isn’t their flagship
⚙️ Qualcomm’s new chipset boasts an AI-focused 8-core Oryon CPU
🎮 The GPU sees a 40% gaming boost; 35% uptick in ray tracing
The newly revealed Realme GT 7 Pro is launching next month, and it’ll be the first flagship-level Snapdragon 8 Elite phone globally, according to the Chinese manufacturer.
That means that the November-bound Realme GT 7 Pro with Qualcomm’s AI-focused Snapdragon 8 Elite chip (what everyone thought would be called the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4) will arrive to consumers in 10 countries before the Samsung Galaxy S25. Chinese rival Xiaomi, at the Snapdragon Summit, announced that it’ll launch the Xiaomi 15 a bit sooner in October, though it won’t be the company’s flagship device.
It might be two months (three months from today) before we get the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and get our first crack at the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the US. While Samsung teased the S25 series at its developer conference last month while showing its next One UI 7 software, the rumored phones are unlikely to be ready until the end of January.
Realme GT 7 Pro gets a headstart
This means Realme GT 7 Pro will have a head start, running the latest AI chipset to rival Apple’s A18 Pro chipset and Apple Intelligence in the iPhone 16 Pro. This isn’t the first time a new Qualcomm chipset escaped Samsung’s fairly consistent timeline. Almost twelve months ago, the Xiamoi 14 was the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 phone. Chinese phone manufacturers’ aggressive timelines have put pressure on Qualcomm to move up its Snapdragon Summit in the past few years.
We’ll be testing out the new Realme phone to better understand what this next-generation 3nm Android chipset is capable of. We’ll be benchmarking the 8-core Oryon CPU that Qualcomm says will allow for more on-device benchmarking and an Adreno 830 GPU for up to a 40% boost in gaming performance.
Samsung may still be the first in the US
Samsung isn’t at a complete loss. Realme says that its GT 7 Pro phone is coming to 10 counties, including India, Italy, Spain, Malaysia, and Thailand.
So far, the US is not part of the November release date list for the Realme GT 7 Pro. Last year’s Xiaomi 14 had the same shortfall when it never came to North America.
That means the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra may be the first major smartphone with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite – in the United States.