Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, Digi Mart USA News: Qualcomm has released its new flagship system-on-chip for smartphones and tablets, and Notebookcheck has published a review of the first device tested with it, the OnePlus 16. According to the publisher, the chip’s CPU can reach clock speeds above 5 GHz for the first time while consuming less energy than its predecessors, thanks to a switch to a 2 nm manufacturing process.
The OnePlus 16 is unlikely to be officially sold in Western countries, but the review notes it can be imported from China, starting at US$ 877 from the provider of the review sample. The reviewer reports real-world battery runtimes of over 29 hours alongside a very fast display.
In performance testing, the publisher says the new chip in some scenarios significantly outperforms Apple’s A19 Pro from last year and should be sufficient for most applications. It notes that in extremely demanding tasks such as video editing or drone control, there may still be minor differences compared with other high-end chips.
The review also reports that the OnePlus 16 does not always reach its full potential. In some cases its benchmark scores fall well below those of its predecessors.
The publisher says this is unusual for OnePlus, whose earlier devices ran at full power but overheated quickly. Notebookcheck found temperature rises after sustained load to be only slightly noticeable and throttling less pronounced than on many other high-end phones.
Enabling a “high performance mode” raises benchmark results somewhat, but according to the review the OnePlus 16 still cannot match the fastest devices of the previous generation. The publisher concludes that the manufacturer appears to have shifted from maximum power at any cost to slightly lower but more consistent performance, a change it welcomes as more honest toward customers.
