Qualcomm made several interesting announcements at this year’s Snapdragon Summit 2025, including the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC for smartphones and the Snapdragon X2 Elite Compute Platform. The conversations extended beyond raw performance to on-device AI, imaging innovations, gaming enhancements, and Qualcomm’s vision for the next era of smart devices. With “AI Everywhere” as the big theme of the event, we sat down with multiple Qualcomm executives and ecosystem partners to understand how Snapdragon mobile and compute platforms are enabling new experiences.
Below is a summary of all our conversations from the summit, along with the embedded videos for each discussion.
Interview: Qualcomm’s “AI Everywhere” Strategy
Qualcomm celebrated the 10-year anniversary of its Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, and our VP of Research, Neil Shah, sat down with Qualcomm's Group General Manager for Mobile, Compute, and XR, Alex Katouzian, to discuss the decade-long journey of the Snapdragon Summit and focus on AI.
Key Takeaways:
• Katouzian explains that while AI was once a background feature, it is now at the forefront with agentic AI, ushering in the new era of personalized, on-device intelligence.
• He also stresses the importance of a hybrid approach that combines cloud and on-device processing.
• Katouzian further emphasised the efficiency of Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and X2 Elite platforms and how the solutions across multiple devices offer a more seamless user experience.
Interview: Anything LLM – On-device, LLM-agnostic Platform Putting You in Control of Your AI
Counterpoint’s VP of Research, Neil Shah, sat down with Anything LLM’s CEO and co-founder, Timothy Carambat, to explore how his team is building an LLM-agnostic AI assistant that works across every device.
Key Takeaways:
• Anything LLM is an all-in-one AI assistant designed to work across PCs, smartphones, XR and wearables, without locking into any single model or cloud provider.
• It offers a unique, privacy-first approach to the constantly evolving AI landscape.
Interview: AI, Mesh Shading, and UE5 – Qualcomm's Blueprint for Next-gen Mobile Gaming
Marc Einstein, Research Director at Counterpoint, sat down with Amandeep Dhaliwal, Qualcomm’s Product Management lead, to discuss new mobile gaming advancements in the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 mobile platform.
Key Takeaways:
• Dhaliwal highlighted the introduction of Adreno High-performance Memory (HPM), a new feature within the GPU that acts as a fast, private cache. This innovation reduces memory bandwidth by 30%-40%, leading to a 10%-15% improvement in battery life for gamers.
• He also spoke about GPU power savings and on-device AI to game-ready drivers and Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) support to offer console-class experiences on mobile devices.
Interview: Qualcomm's Wearables Chief on the Future of Smart Devices with AI, 5G
Counterpoint Research's General Manager for the Americas, Jeff Fieldhack, sat down with Qualcomm's Dino Bekis to discuss the future of wearables and mixed-signal solutions.
Key Takeaways:
• Bekis explains why ultrasonic fingerprint sensors are seeing dramatic growth and how 5G and on-device AI are shaping the next generation of smartwatches.
• He also touched upon how Qualcomm’s audio platforms are enabling hearables to become standalone platforms that connect directly to the cloud.
• The discussion also covers how Qualcomm is leading the way in creating a seamless, multi-device ecosystem where personal AI can create a more intuitive user experience.
• Bekis also spoke about how flexible OLED display panels are driving the growth of ultrasonic fingerprint panels. They are more accurate and provide greater resolution than previous methods, thus making it easy to enable fast, one-time fingerprint capture and new biometric security functions.
Interview: Snapdragon's AI, APV Codec, 20-bit ISP Powering New Mobile Photography and Videography Experiences
Unlocking Snapdragon’s secret sauce and the tech behind your phone's camera, Neil Shah, Counterpoint VP of Research, sat down with Judd Heap, VP of Product Management, Multimedia at Qualcomm, to discuss the evolution of smartphone cameras and multimedia capabilities.
Key Takeaways:
• Heap highlighted significant advancements from 4K video to 8K, improved electronic image stabilization (EIS), and enhanced low-light performance.
• The integration of AI into the Image Signal Processor (ISP) enables the understanding of user intent and the intelligent control of auto-exposure, auto-white balance, and auto-focus. These innovations are among the key advancements.
• Qualcomm also introduced new features like a 20-bit ISP, Night Vision 3.0 and AI-powered segmentation that recognizes food and vegetation among other things.
