Honor has confirmed that its upcoming Magic 9 series flagship smartphones will use Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chipset. The company says the new processor will bring major improvements in performance, graphics, artificial intelligence and imaging.

Honor shared the confirmation on Weibo on September 23. The announcement comes shortly after Qualcomm introduced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 family of mobile processors.

Honor Confirms Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Chipset for Magic 9 Series

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 is built using a 2nm manufacturing process and uses Qualcomm’s latest Oryon CPU architecture. It also features a new Adreno GPU and Hexagon NPU for graphics and AI workloads.

Qualcomm has introduced two versions of the processor: the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and the more powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. Both chips are designed for high-end smartphones, but the Extreme version offers additional graphics and AI performance.

The standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 uses the Adreno 845 GPU. Qualcomm claims it can deliver a 10% improvement in CPU performance and up to a 35% boost in graphics performance compared with its predecessor. The Extreme model uses the Adreno 850 GPU and reportedly delivers up to a 44% improvement in GPU performance.

The new chipset also features an 18MB GPU with dedicated high-speed video memory. Qualcomm has added Agentic AI capabilities to the platform, allowing smartphones to run personal AI models directly on the device. This could support local AI assistants that can process voice and data without relying entirely on cloud services.

Honor has not yet confirmed which Magic 9 models will use each version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6. However, current reports suggest that the standard Magic 9 or Magic 9 Super Edition could use the regular chipset, while the Magic 9 Pro Max could receive the more powerful Extreme version.

The Magic 9 Pro Max has already appeared on Geekbench with a processor listed as the “8 Elite Gen 6 Pro.” This has led to speculation that the phone could feature the Extreme variant.

Honor has also highlighted improvements in imaging and overall performance with the new chipset. However, the company has not yet revealed the complete specifications of the Magic 9 lineup.

More details could emerge on September 28, when Honor is expected to provide further information about the Magic 9 series and its Snapdragon-powered models.