Xiaomi 18 Pro is the first phone in the world with a new, most powerful Snapdragon to date. We know when it will launch in Europe

Updated 23.9. 14:30: Phones have already been officially unveiled in China!

SmartphonesAlso read · SmartphonesOrder your Xiaomi 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max like this right now! Rear display with AI apps, the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and a 8 500 mAh batteryRead article

Only a few hours remain until the official unveiling of the Xiaomi 18 Pro series, but Xiaomi and Qualcomm have already revealed one of the most important updates. The new Xiaomi flagship phones will be among the first smartphones with the freshly introduced Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 processor. In the case of the larger Xiaomi 18 Pro Max, an even more powerful Extreme version is expected.

Xiaomi 18 Pro gets the new Snapdragon first

Qualcomm unveiled its new flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 just shortly before today’s Xiaomi premiere. The presentation also included Adam Zeng, Xiaomi’s vice president and head of the company’s international business. It was also during this presentation that the lead position of the new Xiaomi 18 Pro series was confirmed.

The biggest tech update is, above all, the shift to a 2 nm manufacturing process. The processor uses Qualcomm’s in-house Oryon cores and consists of a pair of top-performance cores clocked up to 5.0 GHz, plus another six performance cores capped at up to 4.0 GHz.

For Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, Qualcomm claims around a 10% boost in CPU performance and up to 37% better energy efficiency compared to the previous generation. The second figure will be especially important in practice, since lower power consumption can help with battery life and reduce phone heating.

Xiaomi 18 Pro Max gets an even more powerful Extreme version

This year, Qualcomm chose a slightly different strategy and launched two flagship processors at once. Besides Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, there’s also the more powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. Xiaomi 18 Pro is expected to get the standard version, while the larger Xiaomi 18 Pro Max will use the Extreme variant.

Extreme doesn’t just bring cosmetically higher clock speeds. Qualcomm says there’s a 13% higher processor performance compared to the previous generation, and the graphics part should be up to 44% faster. It also adds specialized matrix cores in the GPU designed for AI calculations, along with 18 MB of fast memory directly on the chip. The more powerful version can handle large AI models locally with more than 30 billion parameters without all computations having to run in the cloud.

More powerful graphics and brand-new connectivity

Adreno graphics have also been improved significantly. On the base Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, it should deliver up to 35% higher performance while also offering 40% better energy efficiency. Qualcomm added the Adreno Neural Fusion technology, which uses AI to enhance image resolution and generate additional frames. In supported games, the phone can achieve higher smoothness without unnecessarily high power consumption.

The latest leaked photos of Xiaomi 18 Pro

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 supports up to 24 GB of RAM and modern UFS 5.0 storage. Qualcomm also used a new modem Snapdragon X105 5G, which theoretically handles download speeds up to 14.8 Gb/s. There’s also FastConnect 8800 with support for the completely new Wi-Fi 8 standard and a maximum theoretical speed of 11.65 Gb/s. On paper, this looks like a serious generational leap, but what will really matter to us is the real power draw and the heat it generates during long-lasting load.

Good news: Xiaomi 18 Pro will also launch on the global market

The Chinese launch of the Xiaomi 18 Pro series will take place today, September 23 at 19:00 Beijing time. In Slovakia, that will be at 13:00. A much more interesting piece of news for us, however, is the planned global availability. Information about global models has been emerging for a while, and based on the available data, the Xiaomi 18 Pro is also being prepared for the EEA region, meaning Europe.

The global version matters to us mainly because of full system localization, Google services, and official distribution in Europe. The price and exact launch date are still unknown. We already wrote about the expected European prices of the Xiaomi 18 series in a separate article. The new Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 will not be limited to Xiaomi, as Qualcomm has confirmed it will also be used in other flagship smartphones.

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