The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5’s veritable inferno might quickly transform the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra’s biggest advantage into a liability.
One of the biggest draws for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is its extremely powerful processor – Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 instead of the Exynos 2600. However, this advantage might quickly turn into an epic liability if Samsung can’t manage to tame down the veritable inferno that is generated by Qualcomm’s latest flagship chip.The problem with equipping the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is that the flagship chip runs too hot
The OnePlus 15 is one of the first smartphones equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and, unfortunately, the device suffers from overheating issues, especially when running tests like 3DMark Wild Life Extreme. For most day-to-day operations, however, the OnePlus 15’s vapor chamber, with claimed 2x heat dissipation capabilities, is able to do its job fairly well.
The problem lies with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, which can consume an insane 22W of power when under stress. For comparison, Ultrabook-class CPUs typically consume this much power.
Also, do note that a gaming laptop with an Intel Core i9-14900HX processor typically consumes 15W of power when idle, while reaching ~62 degrees. Those devices, however, have a dedicated cooling fan running at 6,000RPM.
The problem apparently lies with the CPU architecture of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, which consists of:
Some have been quick to blame the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5’s lack of efficiency CPU cores as the proverbial casus belli.
