The Galaxy S26 Ultra is supposed to launch in early 2026, which is still a few months away. However, the leaks have been pretty insightful so far. We found some new evidence today that confirms the presence of a Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 chip on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. Here are the details.
SamMobile has somehow unearthed the phone’s firmware details, which were instantly published on their website. The data they found had a reference to a chip called “qcom, pmk8850.” As it turns out, this is a model number that belongs to a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 chip.
The lettering “pmk” before the chipset’s actual model code has everyone scratching their heads. All the former Snapdragon 8 series chips had the prefix “SM” in their model numbers, so what has changed this year? The reasons behind it are still unknown. But one thing is certain: the S26 Ultra phone will be released as a Snapdragon Exclusive device.
Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 hasn’t been announced yet, but this chip has appeared in leaks several times. From what we’ve gathered, it’s to reuse the Oryon CPU cores. There’s a possibility that its clock speeds will be pushed to 4.6 GHz on the standard variant and 4.74 GHz on the overclocked for Samsung's latest flagship model.
The label “pmk8850” seems to be associated with the “For Galaxy” version of the 8 Elite 2 chip, but it’s merely a guess. Performance-wise, leaks report around 25% gains over the previous SoC, and it seems to have the most powerful mobile GPU in the industry.
We also hear gossip that the phone might finally upgrade its telephoto 5X optical sensor to a 50MP resolution. This is a major change over the previous 10MP cell, which was certainly not competitive enough to keep up with the Chinese brands. Take Vivo X200 Ultra, for example, which has a whopping 200MP telephoto sensor on the back.
There aren’t too many changes on the horizon, at least not the ones that are noticeable. The phone will be more nimble with a slightly thinner build as compared to the previous Galaxy S25 Ultra, but it’s supposed to use the same 5000mAh battery as last year. We have our ears to the ground in case something new appears on the web. Stick around if you want to stay in the loop.
