Your Odin 3 Might Not Actually Use the Snapdragon 8 Elite, but There’s More to the Story

A few days ago, we were contacted by an AYN representative asking to make corrections to some of our articles covering the AYN Odin 3. Specifically, the request was to change the name of the chipset from “Snapdragon 8 Elite” to “Dragonwing Q8.” This was apparently made on the behest of Qualcomm, as it could be seen as a point of confusion.

However, even as someone who used to write about Android phones and tablets for my day job, I had never heard of the “Dragonwing” before. With AYN reaching out, it sure seemed like we might have some more bad news on our hands, further compounding the daily price changes and “gachas” due to RAMageddon.

While it does appear that the Qualcomm Dragonwing Q8 indeed powers the AYN Odin 3, this might actually be a good thing. A comment from developer Jdewitz shed a bit more light as to why this could be the case:

The dragonwing chip is different. It removes the camera processing and 5g mobile module, increases the chips performance slightly, lowers temps, and has more stable wifi/BT. It’s better overall for gaming handhelds. It’s a tuned snap 8 elite essentially. You remove the unnecessary parts. Not sure why the front page doesn’t explain that on their site, but the documentation does.

When diving a bit deeper, I decided to take a look at Qualcomm’s product pages for both the Snapdragon 8 Series of chips and the Dragonwing Q8 Series. The first difference is obvious, as the former falls under the “Smartphones” category, while the latter is categorized as an “Internet of Things” chip.

Admittedly, when looking through the Qualcomm pages for the different SoCs, I couldn’t actually find any instance of the Dragonwing Q8 that matched the same specs as the 8 Elite. After plugging in my own Odin 3 and running an adb command, it gave me an SoC model number of “CQ8725S.” Obviously, it isn’t the same as the SM8735 from the 8 Elite, nor does it match up with anything else I could find on Qualcomm’s site.

It wasn’t until I dug a bit deeper and found others that had the same concerns, some as far back as two months, with others as recently as this past week. From there, I learned that the CQ8725S is a variant of another IoT chip with a part number of CQ8750S. It seems that the “25S” is a variant of the 50S. More than likely it’s just a binned or modified version of the chip that AYN snapped up in order to power its latest flagship handhelds.

If this seems like something that’s out of the blue, the reality is that it’s not. Everyone remembers the beloved AYN Odin 2 and its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC? The thing is, that’s not actually the specific chip found in the Odin 2.

Instead, it’s the Qualcomm Dragonwing QCS8550, another “Internet of Things (IoT)” chip that features many of the same specs as the 8 Gen 2. Like the 8 Gen 2 and the QCS8550, the 8 Elite and CQ8725S are practically identical, with the biggest difference being the removal of the “Cellular Modem-RF System”.

The most disappointing aspect of this entire situation is the obvious one: How would you have felt if you heard about the AYN Odin 3 powered by the Qualcomm Dragonwing Q8? Needless to say, it would’ve likely garnered quite a few more questions, leading people down the proverbial rabbit hole only to potentially be left even more confused.

So AYN pulled the marketing string and ran with “Snapdragon 8 Elite”, only to be told by Qualcomm to change the name some six months after the fact. While the reason for doing so is definitely understandable, it doesn’t exactly feel great knowing this is how things played out.

Oh, and by the way, AYN has already removed any mentions of the 8 Elite from the Odin 3 landing page. It’s all been replaced by the Qualcomm Dragonwing Q8.