These Are The Best Smartphone Chips For AI 2025

Apple's newest chip, the A18 Pro, is Apple's most powerful AI chip today. (photo: x @TheGalox_)

JAKARTA Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer just a marketing term in the smartphone world. Now, AI is an important part in handling voice commands, photo processing, to AI-generative on devices.

Behind this progress, there is a smartphone or system-on-chip (SoC) processor, which provides computing power to run the AI feature smoothly.

Here are some of the best smartphone chips that encourage AI innovation in 2025.

Apple A18 Pro

Apple may not market AI aggressively like Qualcomm or MediaTek, but the company has been integrating AI in their chips for years.

Apple's newest chip, the A18 Pro, is Apple's most powerful AI chip today. The Neural Engine in the A18 Pro is capable of handling more than 35 trillion operations per second (TOPS) a significant increase from the previous generation, the A17 Pro.

However, Apple limits access to the Neural Engine for third-party developers, so applications outside the Apple ecosystem cannot fully utilize this AI technology.

Snapdragon 8 Elite

Qualcomm leads the AI race in the Android world with Snapdragon 8 Elite.

This chip has an AI Engine, a platform that integrates NPU Hexagon, CPU, GPU, and Qualcomm Sensing Hub to handle various AI tasks efficiently. The NPU Hexagon works to reduce CPU and GPU loads, ensuring AI features such as real-time translation and automatic photo upgrade run without compromising performance.

Another advantage of the Snapdragon 8 Elite is a hardware-based security system that encrypts user data when AI is used for personal tasks.

With the Oryon core CPU architecture, the Snapdragon 8 Elite also brings increased performance and efficiency compared to the previous generation.

Google Tensor G4

Google is more focused on AI's experience than its raw performance with the Tensor G4, which is used in the Pixel 9 series.

The chip was developed with DeepMind to optimize AI model processing on devices, including Gemini Nano's multimodal features, which allow input processing from text, images, and voice simultaneously.

Although it does not have TOPS as high as its competitors, the Tensor G4 is designed to work optimally with Google software, providing a more responsive AI experience.

MediaTek Dimensity 9400

MediaTek presents Dimensity 9400, its most ambitious AI chip, which, theoretically, is superior to competitors.

This chip has more than 50 TOPS, making it one of the most powerful AI chips. With 8th Gen NPU, Dimensity 9400 is the first to support on-device LoRA training and high-quality AI video creation.

MediaTek also introduced the Dimensity AI Engine (DAE), which allows AI applications to interact more dynamically with third-party software and cloud services.

Unfortunately, the use of Dimensity 9400 is still limited to brands such as Vivo, Oppo, and Xiaomi, so it has not gained widespread trust in the global flagship segment.

Currently, AI on smartphones is still more widely used to improve features in the background than a major revolution in user experience.

Snapdragon 8 Elite and Tensor G4 offer a more visible AI experience in everyday use.

Apple A18 Pro and MediaTek Dimensity 9400 are more focused on improving AI performance as a whole.

In the future, the development of software will be the main key in maximizing AI capabilities on smartphones.