We’ve reviewed the phone releases expected in the year, so it’s time to look forward to the launch of the flagship processors that will power the next generation of Android flagships. Qualcomm and MediaTek are expected to unveil their flagship processors in the next month, and we’ll soon see the next wave of flagships launch first in China and then globally by the end of the year or early next year. If you were thinking of picking up a Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 flagship, it seems Qualcomm has some other plans on what it could be called.

Leaker Digital Chat Station posted an image on Weibo showcasing a phone featuring the Snapdragon Elite Gaming poster, with the caption “Snapdragon Elite.”

Note that Snapdragon Elite Gaming is the official Qualcomm branding for the gaming experience on Snapdragon processors. So the Weibo post by itself doesn’t say anything, and we wouldn’t deem it as hinting at a rebranding.

Smartprix, however, seemingly spotted a now-deleted leaked poster of the upcoming Xiaomi 15 series that suggests that the phone will come with the “Snapdragon 8 Elite” processor instead of the widely expected Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. Since it is unlikely to be a processor swap, this suggests that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 processor could be renamed to Snapdragon 8 Elite, as per this leaked poster.

Smartprix also mentions that leaker Digital Chat Station had “initially leaked” this naming, but we could not locate such a post. Digital Chat Station’s recent post, which we mentioned above, is too vague to be considered a leak for a rebrand.

We’re not very confident that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will be rebranded to the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The rebranding makes some sense since the 8 Gen 4 was largely expected to adopt Qualcomm’s Oryon cores that we also see in the Snapdragon X Elite laptops. On the other hand, calling it just the Snapdragon 8 Elite without a succeeding number will make it rather difficult and confusing to release future generations in the lineup. Qualcomm is no stranger to confusing SoC names either, so we’re unsure where this could go.