Qualcomm denies overheating claims for its newest Snapdragon

Qualcomm is pushing back on claims that its top phone chip runs too hot. The company told 9to5Google that recent reports of thermal issues with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 are "inaccurate".

Where the claims came from

The denial follows reports out of South Korea that Samsung is in talks with Qualcomm about overheating on the new flagship platform. According to those reports, Samsung is weighing its options, including skipping the chip in favour of its in-house Exynos 2700. Neither company has announced which processor Samsung's next flagships will use, so for now this remains an unconfirmed report.

What Qualcomm says

In a statement, a Qualcomm spokesperson said the reporting about thermal issues "is inaccurate". The company added that it is proud of the "strong momentum" behind its next-generation flagship platform and continues to work closely with phone makers around the world.

Qualcomm's chief marketing officer Don McGuire went further in a post on X. He wrote that there are "no systemic thermal issues" with the chip, and that manufacturers keep tuning their platforms as they launch products, balancing performance and power for different use cases.

That last point matters for buyers. The same chip can behave quite differently in two phones, depending on each brand's cooling hardware and how aggressively it lets the processor boost. Sustained performance, surface temperature and throttling are things only independent testing of finished phones can show.

The chip and the phones

Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 alongside the regular Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 at its Snapdragon Summit in September. The Extreme version has two CPU cores running at 5GHz and, per 9to5Google, large CPU and GPU gains over the Gen 5 generation.

Phones already confirmed to use it include the Motorola Signature 27, Xiaomi 18, Redmagic 12 Pro Plus, Honor Magic 9 Pro Max and OnePlus 16. We covered the OnePlus 16 launch in China last week.

The flagship chip story comes at a tough time for the phone market: IDC says shipments fell 22% in Q3. Qualcomm's long legal fight with Arm also reached a jury verdict recently.