Qualcomm
Qualcomm this morning is taking the wraps off of a new smartphone SoC for the mid-range market, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3. The second of Qualcomm’s down-market ‘S’ tier Snapdragon 7 parts, the 7s series is functionally the entry-level tier for the Snapdragon 7 family – and really, most Qualcomm-powered handsets in North America. With three tiers of Snapdragon 7 chips, the 7s can easily be lost in the noise that comes with more powerful chips. But the latest iteration of the 7s is a bit more interesting than usual, as rather than reusing an existing die, Qualcomm has seemingly minted a whole new die for this part. As a result, the company has upgraded the 7s family to use Arm’s current Armv9 CPU cores...
Qualcomm Expands its Gobi Brand to include entire MDM portfolio
For a considerable time now, almost everyone has referred to Qualcomm's Gobi solution incorrectly. Put simply, the Gobi brand was something of a victim of both the confusing reality...
5 by Brian Klug on 2/23/2012The Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 (Krait) Preview Part II
Yesterday we presented the first results of Qualcomm's Krait based MSM8960 SoC. While we still await the first Krait based phones (widely expected to begin shipping sometime in Q2)...
49 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/22/2012Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 (Krait) Performance Preview - 1.5 GHz MSM8960 MDP and Adreno 225 Benchmarks
If you've been following our SoC and smartphone related coverage over the past couple of years, you'll probably remember how Qualcomm let us take home an MDP8660 from MWC...
86 by Brian Klug & Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/21/2012LG's Optimus Vu Takes On Samsung's Galaxy Note: Are You Ready For A 5.x" Phone?
When Samsung introduced the Galaxy Note at IFA, we were excited, but a bit perplexed. The Galaxy Note's 1280x800 HD Super AMOLED display could be a big winner, but...
32 by Jason Inofuentes on 2/20/2012Qualcomm and Ericsson Demonstrate SR-VCC Voice Handover from LTE to WCDMA on MSM8960
Until now, the way voice has worked on handsets with a 4G LTE air interface has been, well, interesting. That is to say, thus far all voice calls haven't...
9 by Brian Klug on 2/2/2012Snapdragon S4 “Krait” – MSM8960 GPU Benchmark Surfaces
A NenaMark 2 benchmark score for an unknown device based on Qualcomm’s upcoming 28nm Snapdragon S4 “Krait” MSM8960 SoC has just surfaced. The device seems to have 1.5Ghz CPU...
33 by Saumitra Bhagwat on 1/28/2012More Lenovo Krait Tablet Details: $399 Price Target
We had another opportunity to handle the Lenovo S2110, the first commercial Krait tablet we've seen and had a chance to talk with the product team in a bit...
3 by Jason Inofuentes on 1/11/2012Hands-on with the Galaxy Tab 7.7 LTE and Galaxy Note
I had a minute to chat with Philip Berne of Samsung and get my some time with the Galaxy Tab 7.7 LTE and AT&T's recently announced LTE variant of...
4 by Jason Inofuentes on 1/10/2012Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon S4 Member MPQ8064, new Atheros WiFi and Powerline Chipsets
We're live at the CES 2012 Qualcomm keynote, and although CEO Paul Jacobs hasn't quite taken the stage yet, Qualcomm has already released a number of the announcements it...
1 by Brian Klug on 1/10/2012Lenovo At CES: Android TV and First Krait Tablet
In 2011, Lenovo made a cursory effort to grab some of the consumer Android tablet space with the 7" K1, and a slightly more concerted effort to grab the...
3 by Jason Inofuentes on 1/9/2012T-Mobile Introduces Nokia's Lumia 710 Stateside for $50
Mango was a great update to Windows Phone 7, and brings Microsoft closer and closer to feature parity with its competition. But sales don't come close to matching that...
3 by Jason Inofuentes on 12/14/2011Snapdragon S4 Developer Tablet Updated to Android 4.0.1
We've seen Qualcomm's development platforms before, first with their dual-core MSM8660 platform, and most recently with the MSM8960 platform. Last month, on The Engadget Show, Qualcomm revealed that, in...
4 by Jason Inofuentes on 12/14/2011Qualcomm Announces a Bunch of Krait Based Snapdragon S4 SoCs
In February at MWC, Qualcomm unveiled three SoCs based on its brand new Krait microarchitecture: the single/dual-core MSM8930, dual-core MSM8960 and the quad-core APQ8064. More recently, we dove into...
5 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/16/2011HTC Rezound Announced:LTE, Beats by Dre and HD SuperLCD on Verizon
We knew this was coming, but HTC still had some surprises in store. The HTC Rezound will hit retail channels for $299 on November 14th. This latest halo phone...
23 by Jason Inofuentes on 11/3/2011Samsung Focus S & Flash: Official Images, 1.4GHz Mango Devices Shipping This Fall
The one area Microsoft hasn't touched while upgrading Windows Phone has been the SoC requirements. The platform launched with 65nm Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs featuring the quite-slow Adreno 200 GPU...
13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/19/2011Qualcomm's New Snapdragon S4: MSM8960 & Krait Architecture Explored
Let's recap the current smartphone/tablet SoC landscape. Everything shipping today is built on a 4x-nm process, built either at Global Foundries, Samsung, TSMC or UMC. Next year we'll see...
108 by Brian Klug & Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/7/2011A look at Windows 8 Tablets running on TI, Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD and Intel silicon
This afternoon (and yesterday) we had a chance to meet with a number of SoC vendors who have partnered with Microsoft for Windows 8. Each of them has their...
94 by Brian Klug on 9/14/2011Qualcomm Atheros Acquires Bigfoot Networking
It feels like just yesterday that I was finishing up the review of Bigfoot Networks' Killer Wireless-N 1102, but in fact it has been a whole three weeks. My...
5 by Jarred Walton on 9/1/2011Why I Believe T-Mobile's Galaxy S II Uses a Qualcomm SoC
Earlier tonight Samsung announced all three US variants of the Galaxy S II: the Galaxy S II on AT&T, the Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch on Sprint and...
8 by Brian Klug on 8/31/2011It's Not Qualcomm's Fault: Dispelling TouchPad Myths
There's a whole lot of misinformation on the web right now about reasons why HP had troubles with the TouchPad and eventually had to abandon the entire webOS hardware...
79 by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on 8/19/2011