In a report out of China (via Phone Radar), they are claiming that the upcoming Note 8 would not be powered by the Snapdragon 835, but rather the Snapdragon 836. Qualcomm has yet to announce the Snapdragon 836, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that the company could be working on it.
If you might recall, last year the Snapdragon 820 was Qualcomm’s flagship chipset, but later the company introduced a slightly upgraded version in the form of the Snapdragon 821 that was used in handsets like the OnePlus 3T. This means that for Qualcomm to introduce a Snapdragon 836 would not be completely unprecedented.
As to what kind of gains the 836 would have over the 835 is really anyone’s guess, but we can imagine that Samsung would want to equip its flagship with the latest technology, but until they officially confirm it, we should probably take it with a grain of salt for now.