Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile chipset was officially unveiled last month, but every time the company announces a new chipset, it becomes a race to see which Android maker will be the first to put it in a commercial phone.

This year, Americans eager to get their hands on the first phones with the new chipsets will have to turn to less familiar brands.

As spotted by Android Authority, the Nibia Z70 Ultra can now be ordered directly from the company's website; in addition to the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, the 6.85-inch, 2,688 x 1,216 full-screen display (144Hz refresh rate) and a 6,150mAh battery (with 80W fast-charge support).

The triple camera includes a 64MP telephoto camera and two 50MP lenses for normal and ultra-wide angle photography. Attractively for photography enthusiasts, Nubia notes that the 35mm main camera has an “adjustable physical aperture for real-world shooting.”

The phone can be equipped with 12GB, 16GB, or 24GB of RAM, with each upgrade coinciding with an increase in storage, with 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities available (no mention of expandable storage, so ordering this phone (you'll need to think about that if you decide to order this phone). Notably, it runs Android 15 right out of the box, making this the first phone to run Android 15; recent builds of the Pixel 9 may have been boxed this way, but at launch it ran Android 14.

These are all impressive specs, but the star is definitely the processor: the Snapdragon 8 Elite is a 3nm chip with two prime cores and six performance cores running at 4.3GHz. Notably, there is no efficiency core this time around.

This results in a processor with significantly better performance than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which Qualcomm says can be expected to improve by 45% for both single-core and multi-core tasks. Power efficiency should also improve by 44% despite the lack of an efficiency core, the company said.

We cannot yet vouch for the last one, as we have not used a device with the Snapdragon 8 Elite for an extended period of time. However, we have run other benchmarks on Qualcomm's reference device and the results are truly impressive.

Here are the test results compared to other leading smartphones:

We fully expect Samsung's Galaxy S25 to launch with this chipset early next year, but if you can't wait that long, Nubia is an option you can order today. Prices start at $829 (save $50 with code “SAVE50”), and shipping is scheduled to begin on December 5.