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Every year smartphone chips become faster and faster, yielding impressive benchmark scores and stealing the spotlight at every launch. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the latest silicon to strut down the tech runway, and the initial numbers are impressive.
But there is a twist. While everyone's busy talking about Apple losing its dominance in the chipset race, few are mentioning the concern — the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 runs seriously hot.
The hottest chipset in recent days
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the hottest modern silicon, both literally and metaphorically | Image by Qualcomm
We first tested the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in the RedMagic 11 Pro. And the results were impressive in every sense, beating Apple's A19 Pro in the iPhone 17 Pro Max in every test except the Geekbench 6 single-core run.
A big reason for that strong showing lies in the RedMagic 11 Pro’s elaborate cooling setup: a massive vapor chamber, a liquid cooling solution with a nano ceramic pump, and even an active fan spinning at 24,000 RPM.
Thanks to all that engineering, the phone managed to maintain an impressive 80% stability during 3DMark's Wildlife Extreme Stress Test — an excellent result for such a powerful chip.
But not every phone has the luxury of miniature jet-engine cooling. When the Nubia Z80 Ultra arrived in our lab, it gave us a more realistic look at how the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 behaves in a conventionally cooled device.
And the results were far less flattering. The phone became uncomfortably hot to the touch, climbing past 50°C internally and struggling to sustain its peak performance.
How bad is the thermal throttling?
48% stability is not what you expect to see on a flagship chipset | Image by PhoneArena
The Nubia Z80 Ultra doesn't have the fancy cooling of the RedМagic. There is no active fan, no massive vapor chamber, or liquid cooling. So when we ran the stress test, the results were, frankly, worrying.
During the first couple of passes, the phone managed to hold good peak performance, but as temperatures climbed, things quickly went downhill. By the end of the test, performance dropped by more than 50%. Under sustained load, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 actually performed slower than last year’s chip.
The numbers tell the full story. The Nubia lowest loop score was only 3064 points, which is lower than what the Honor Magic V5 achieved (4443 points) despite being an ultra-thin foldable with the previous generation Snapdragon 8 Elite chip. Even the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, powered by the older Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, fared better with a 4018 point low score.
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Cooling is becoming a much more important feature
Are we going to see fancy cooling solutions on more flagships? | Image by RedMagic
What's the point of bragging about peak performance figures when a smartphone can't hold them for more than a couple of minutes? As smartphone silicon gets faster every year, the TDP (thermal design power) of these chips also increases. And in a smartphone’s tightly packed frame where every millimeter counts that extra heat has nowhere to go. The result is simple: throttling.
We're now at a point where gaming phones from two years ago can outperform the most current flagships, just because they have better cooling.
It's not like the big three don't acknowledge the issue. Apple slapped a vapor chamber in the new iPhone 17 Pro models for the first time in history and even mentioned sustained performance during its keynote, something it has never done previously.
Expect future flagship phones to increase their focus on cooling, right up there with cameras and battery life. And speaking of future flagships…
Is the Galaxy S26 series in trouble?
The Galaxy S25 Ultra already struggles with thermal throttling, as we showed in our deep dive on smartphone cooling. That phone only managed 46% stability in 3DMark, which is actually worse than the Nubia.
Now, with the Galaxy S26 series right around the corner (and the US variants expected to run the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset) things could get even hotter. Quite literally.
For the past couple of years, the Snapdragon chips inside Galaxy phones have been tuned "For Galaxy." In simple terms, that means a higher clock speeds chip, resulting in better peak performance, but also… more heat to deal with!
We don't know the specifics about the Galaxy S26 series cooling setup, but we're fairly sure there won't be any spinning fans or server-grade liquid coolants involved. Let's hope Samsung has done enough of its homework, so that this “For Galaxy” chip tuning does not turn into a “Too Hot for Galaxy” situation.
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Mariyan, a tech enthusiast with a background in Nuclear Physics and Journalism, brings a unique perspective to PhoneArena. His childhood curiosity for gadgets evolved into a professional passion for technology, leading him to the role of Editor-in-Chief at PCWorld Bulgaria before joining PhoneArena. Mariyan's interests range from mainstream Android and iPhone debates to fringe technologies like graphene batteries and nanotechnology. Off-duty, he enjoys playing his electric guitar, practicing Japanese, and revisiting his love for video games and Haruki Murakami's works.
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