Qualcomm’s big entrance into the laptop market last year got a lot of attention and now, leaks about its next-gen Snapdragon laptop chips are slowly starting to emerge. Known Weibo leaker Fixed Focus Digital claims that boost clock speeds will start at 4.4 GHz and estimates performance gains between 18 and 22%.
Since official information doesn’t exist yet and leaks are few, we don’t know a lot about the next Snapdragon chip right now — including what it’ll be called. At the moment, some people are calling it the Snapdragon X Elite 2 and others are going with Snapdragon X2 Elite. The leaked information we do have includes a core count of 18 and a launch date of around October 2025 — but it’s all just rumors for now.
The prospect of a 4.4 GHz boost clock speed is very interesting, however, since it suggests that the base clock speed could be higher too. Because higher clock speeds always equal more heat, Qualcomm likely had to find a way to improve thermals to make this happen. Dealing with heat in a laptop is pretty difficult since there’s limited space for fans, but Qualcomm may have found a better way to keep things cool or they may have figured out how to make components even smaller — because the smaller something is, the less heat it generates. Current Snapdragon chips use 4 nm tech but we’re not sure yet if next-gen will use 3 nm or even 2 nm (though the latter isn’t expected until 2026).
The performance gains mentioned in the leak are probably considering additional factors other than the clock speeds, however, since the clock speeds themselves are not 18 to 22% faster than the last generation. There are many different areas Qualcomm could have adjusted and improved on to make these performance gains, so it’s hard to guess without any additional information.
The success of Qualcomm’s new chips doesn’t rest solely on power, however. While its team-up with Microsoft brought plenty of media attention, the software problems Windows-on-Arm brought with it were also substantial. At the moment, Snapdragon X Elite laptops are known for being frequently returned, but that’s almost entirely due to compatibility and software issues with Windows, rather than problems with the hardware.
Either way, Qualcomm has high aspirations for its laptop chips, so it will be interesting to see how they approach things this time around.
