Qualcomm Snapdragon brings fresh blood

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A few new high level S4 quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processors have been released for the mass market. The company already has their processors in some of the most popular smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC One X, HTC Windows Phone 8X, Nokia Lumia 820 and 920, Samsung ATIV S and Motorola Droid RAZR. Now they will push an upgraded version of their shining stars MSM8225 and MSM8625. They will bear the same names with just adding Q on the end. The next generation of Snapdragons will come in the first quarter of 2013.

The new processors will also have four CPU cores, support for LPDDR2 memory and dual SIM. The MSM8625Q will have an integrated multimode UMTS/CDMA modem while the MSM8225Q will have only a UMTS one. Both will support FM radio, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi connectivity, Atheros AR6005 and WCN2243 chips. The main concern was increasing bus bandwidth for both encoding and decoding of 720p video and the new architecture should do that job. These two are not the only new Snapdragons; there will also be a Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8930 for the Chinese market, that will support UMTS, CDMA and TD-SCDMA. It will be released by the end of the year and implemented into devices that will be available in the first quarter of 2013. This one is a dual-core processor that supports 4G LTE with integrated LTE modem.

These new processors are made to improve multitasking performance and to be able to run more graphically intensive games on low to mid end devices also. Cristiano Amon, senior VP of Qualcomm stated “Our broad portfolio of Snapdragon S4 mobile processors delivers the optimal balance of features and performance for the high-volume smartphone segment. By offering both dual-core and quad-core CPU versions of the Snapdragon S4 Play processor, we are providing our OEM and operating partners a competitive and differentiated platform.” Samsung stated that they want to implement their own Exynos processors into their devices, so it will be interesting to see how it will affect Snapdragon, as they were in Samsung devices until now.

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