Qualcomm denies rumors about Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 overheating

Yesterday, a Korean news outlet shared some concerning news about the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S27 Ultra. According to the report, Samsung is thinking about going all Exynos next year, as internal testing has shown that the newly released Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipset is running too hot, resulting in thermal throttling. In contrast, the Exynos 2700 is doing just fine.

But after the rumor did its rounds on the internet, Qualcomm's CMO responded to a thread on X saying that these rumors were inaccurate. Here's what he had to say:

Recent reporting about thermal issues related to Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 is inaccurate. We are proud of the innovation and strong momentum behind our next-generation flagship platform and continue to work closely with global OEMs to deliver premium user experiences.

He further clarifies that there are no systemic thermal issues with the SoC, and the rumors about Samsung's internal testing findings are likely inaccurate because OEM partners fine-tune their platforms to strike a balance between performance and power depending on the different use cases. So the information coming from Samsung's labs could be inaccurate or misleading.

We still haven't tested any device running on Qualcomm's latest and greatest, so we can't contribute to the conversation, but if history is any indication, it's not hard to believe that the SD 8 EE Gen 6 chip is running a little too hot.

Mobile chips have become so powerful lately that they are theoretically capable of running PC-level games. The current Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 series chipsets have two Prime cores clocked at 5.0 GHz while the six Performance cores are running at 4.0 GHz. That's quite a lot for a system with a passive cooling solution.

Ever since the launch of the first Snapdragon 8 Elite, we've noticed a significant dip in sustained performance when performing stress tests on modern flagships. That doesn't mean they overheat during normal use, but it's an indication that mobile chipsets are becoming too powerful for their own good.