Think the Snapdragon 8 Elite is a beast? Could have overclocked.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite processor seems like a huge step up for flagship Android phones, in theory. Qualcomm’s new smartphone chip has a custom CPU with an impressive 4.32GHz clock speed, but the company now says it could have offered even more performance.

Qualcomm previously said Android Authority which designs chips with the best user experience in mind and expects benchmarks to outperform rival processors. But would the company ever launch a flagship chipset with benchmarks that underperform its competitors?

Android Authority’s C Scott Brown asked Snapdragon 8 Elite project lead Shahin Farahani this question:

It’s already happening today. We can optimize for an even higher benchmark and sacrifice real-life use cases. So you can focus on thermal limits (sic) or you can increase benchmarks. Therefore, we chose to ensure that the end user experience is the first focus, rather than just focusing a little more on benchmarks. So on some level this is happening now.

In other words, Farahani suggests that there is still room for maximum performance and even higher clock speeds, but that Qualcomm has chosen to optimize battery life and sustained performance. This isn’t a surprise, as all smartphone chipmakers need to strike a fine balance between peak performance, sustained performance, and battery life.

However, Qualcomm has offered higher-frequency versions of its flagship chips in recent years, namely the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chips. These overclocked chips were initially exclusive to Samsung before later being released to other OEMs. So don’t be surprised to see a faster Snapdragon 8 Elite chip in 2025.

Disclosure: C Scott Brown is Qualcomm’s guest at the Snapdragon Summit. Qualcomm had no influence on Android Authority’s editorial coverage.