Reports have recently surfaced suggesting that Qualcomm’s flagship mobile chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, is causing “random black screen and restart issues” in Chinese phones. The chip is utilized in models such as the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max, Honor Magic9 Pro Max, and iQOO 16, while the cheaper Xiaomi 18 Pro is also reportedly affected in some cases.

None of these brands has officially confirmed issues, and they may be anomalies rather than a widespread problem. On top of that, there have been no reports for the Dimensity 9600 Pro (found in the new Oppo Find X10 Series), which uses the same 2nm process from TSMC. Either way, reports suggest these sudden reboots occur during performance-intensive tasks such as gaming.

Black screen and reboot issues on Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6

Taiwan-based publication KOCPC has put out a ‘rumor check’ on the reports. It shares multiple cases of issues with these high-end phones, pointing to reports from Chinese users on domestic social media platforms. Although there have been “quite a few cases,” says KOCPC, it believes there is still not enough evidence to confirm that 8EE6 has “failed”.

8EE6 refers to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, in short. Qualcomm unveiled two high-end chips at the end of September to power these new phones – along with the 8EE6, there’s the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 (non-extreme) variant. The processors will also be using the upcoming Motorola Signature 27.

Reports in online Chinese tech circles claimed that “8EE6 has flopped,” with screenshots and “secondhand accounts” of the chip being susceptible to crashes, black screens, and random reboots. However, as KOCPC says, no large-scale crashes have been recorded in real-world gaming and benchmark tests so far.

It’s still too early to decide whether this will become a widespread problem, as these phones have only been available for a couple of weeks at the time of writing. Users may currently point towards an issue with TSMC’s 2nm process for the flagship mobile chips, but there’s also the possibility of a software issue. There is no current concrete evidence of 2nm defects.

Outside of the supposed Snapdragon problems. There have also been reports of the iPhone 18 Pro suffering its own “random” issues, causing the phone to restart. This was officially acknowledged by Apple and attributed to a software and Face ID driver problem, rather than the device’s A20 Pro chip, and was addressed in iOS 27.0.1.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.