Samsung beaten to the punch by surprise competitor ahead of rumoured S25 launch

Tis the season for big new mobile announcements, with Qualcomm using its Snapdragon Summit to reveal the all-new Snapdragon 8 Elite – which sounds like a major upgrade for phones in 2025. Except, hold up, the new chipset will actually be in some handsets far sooner.

Revealed on stage at the Summit by Xiaomi's Group SVP, Adam Zeng, the incoming Xiaomi 15 series will officially be the first global launch to feature Snapdragon 8 Elite – and it will be revealed at an event at the end of this month. Sounds like a great upgrade to the Xiaomi 14 series, as pictured up top.

That's big news, as Xiaomi has effectively beaten Samsung to the punch here. Despite Samsung and Qualcomm's ongoing partnership, the much-rumoured Galaxy S25 series isn't expected to be revealed until the first quarter of 2025. Whether Qualcomm's new chipset will feature is unknown at this stage, but it is assumed.

Where Samsung could have the last word, however, is in leveraging that partnership with even more powerful iterations of Qualcomm's new chip. Take the previous S24 range, including the Galaxy S24 Ultra, for example: those devices featured 'for Galaxy' editions of Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, effectively making them overclocked and even more powerful.

It'll be interesting to see what the Xiaomi 15 range has to offer when it comes to the best Android phones, as the Chinese maker hasn't confirmed more than the October reveal time frame and use of Snapdragon 8 Elite as yet. We loved the earlier Xiaomi 14 Ultra's incredible camera, though, so here's hoping for further advances there.

Sometimes being 'first' isn't always being 'best', though, so Samsung's next-gen – if/as and when that's announced – will be a critical indirect response to Xiaomi's launch. And with the Galaxy S24 models clearly among the best phones to buy today, and readily available worldwide, 2025 is still set to be a big deal in the mobile calendar...