Items tagged with Qualcomm
The chip wars are heating up and there is evidence to suggest that Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 8150 processor is allegedly quite the fire breathing part. Leaked benchmarks purportedly showing how the Snapdragon 8150 performs in AnTuTu, a benchmark we use ourselves in our smartphone reviews, indicate it will give Apple and its mighty Bionic A12 chip a run for its money. If the benchmarks are real, of course. No small feat, Apple bills the Bionic A12 found in the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max as "the smartest, most powerful chip in a smartphone," and with good reason—it's a capable slice of...
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Apple and Qualcomm aren’t exactly friends, but in some ways, the two firms need each other. iPhones are among the top-selling smartphones in the world, and Qualcomm certainly wants to get in on that sales action. Apple needs Qualcomm modems because they typically outperform rival hardware from Intel and MediaTek, and its customers want the best hardware for their money. Apple has sought out hardware from other sources with company implementing Intel modems in their latest crop of iPhones recently and has threatened to use MediaTek in the past. And now it seems Qualcomm is accusing Apple...
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Qualcomm is once again expanding its mid-range SoC portfolio with the introduction of the Snapdragon 675 Mobile Platform. The Snapdragon 675 is the follow-up to the Snapdragon 670, and offers improvements when it comes to gaming, artificial intelligence and camera performance. The Snapdragon 675 is an octa-core design featuring two high-performance, fourth-generation Kryo cores operating at 2GHz along with six Kryo efficiency cores clocked at 1.7GHz. Compared to the Snapdragon 670, Qualcomm says that the Snapdragon 675 improves game launches by 30 percent, boosts web browsing by 35 percent and...
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Samsung on Thursday announced the Galaxy Book 2, a new always on and "Always Connected" PC (ACPC) built for all-day productivity. It's powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 850 mobile platform, which Qualcomm purpose-built for these kinds of devices with a claimed 30 percent performance uplift compared to previous generation ACPCs powered by the Snapdragon 835 SoC. The Galaxy Book 2 is one of a relatively new breed of 2-in-1 devices wielding ARM hardware underneath hood and running Windows 10 S. There's an obvious raw performance trade off versus building a 2-in-1 around a burlier x86 chip, but these...
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Qualcomm on Tuesday announced a new family of 60GHz 802.11ay Wi-Fi chipsets that promise to significantly improve wireless performance. Raw speed is part of the deal, with 802.11ay delivering 10+ gigabit-per-second (Gbps) network speeds, but Qualcomm is also claiming latency on the level of a wired connection. It's a somewhat confusing addition to the wireless space with the Wi-Fi Alliance recently announcing new nomenclature designed to simplify things. Wi-Fi Alliance is phasing out all of the different 802.11 designations and replacing them with terms like 'Wi-Fi 6' (next-generation 802.11ax)...
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If you were to gut just about any flagship Android phone, you would find Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 system-on-chip (SoC) sitting inside. It's still the top mobile part in Qualcomm's stable. That will change with the introduction of the Snapdragon 8150, which apparently has not been certified by SIG Labs for Bluetooth connectivity. There are a few things to unpack here, starting with the name. Qualcomm's past naming convention suggests its next flagship mobile will be called Snapdragon 855. That might be still be true, though more recently it was reported it will instead be called Snapdragon 8150...
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Qualcomm is one of the biggest names in the mobile industry and makes chips and modems for smartphones, tablets, and other devices. Qualcomm also holds some of the most important patents in the industry and as such is has spent huge sums of money and time in litigation all around the world defending its IP against other manufacturers it claims are infringing on its patent portfolio. Most recently, Qualcomm sued Apple for allegedly sharing trade secrets with Intel. Apple and Qualcomm have been fighting in court for a long time, and Apple is known to be working to eliminate Qualcomm modems in...
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The legal war between Qualcomm and Apple is getting nastier by the minute. The latest salvo is being lobbed by Qualcomm, which filed a lawsuit again Apple on Monday alleging that the company was sharing "vast swaths" of confidential information with Intel. If you recall, Qualcomm filed a lawsuit in early November 2017 which made similar claims against Apple. These new charges accuse of Apple of ignoring the master software agreement that it signed with Qualcomm, and that it shared trade secrets -- in the form of Qualcomm source code and internal software tools -- with Intel to help its...
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The smartwatch sector is starting to heat up, and according to IDC, the Apple Watch is leading the way. However, devices based on Google's Wear OS are also putting up a good fight, and they will now have some much-needed ammunition in the form the new Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 Platform. Snapdragon Wear 3100 is the successor to the long-in-the-tooth Snapdragon Wear 2100 Platform that debuted way back in the first quarter of 2016. With its new platform, Qualcomm is promising big gains not only in performance, but also in power efficiency. Snapdragon Wear 3100 is powered by a quad-core Cortex-A7...
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5G is coming, and OEMs are already preparing next-generation smartphone designs that will take advantage of the follow-up to 4G LTE technology. The latest is Oppo, which has completed its initial 5G testing with a modified version of the R15 smartphone. The smartphone was fitted with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X50 5G modem, and testing was complaint with the 3GPP Release 15 NSA standard. Using this standard, the Oppo R15 with the Snapdragon X50 can access 10MHz bandwidth of LTE (Band 5) and 20Hz bandwidth 5G NR (n78 Band). With the data and knowledge that is has learned from these initial trials,...
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Qualcomm is being light on details, but it today announced that its next-generation Snapdragon Mobile Platform is now shipping to customers. We had heard earlier this year that the chip was in production, so it makes sense that the first samples would be heading out so partners could qualify the chip for use in their upcoming products. The next-generation SoC is built on a 7nm process after staying at 10nm for two generations (Snapdragon 835 and Snapdragon 845). It was initially reported that the chip would carry the designation Snapdragon 855, but a recent report suggests that it will instead...
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While Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 may be the "new hotness" for 2018 smartphones, many are already turning their attention to the next chip in the pipeline. Up until this point, it's been rumored that the next entry into the flagship SoC line would be the Snapdragon 855. However, we're now learning this might not be the case after all and that Qualcomm is adopting a new naming scheme. While the chip still carries the codename "Hana", WinFuture is reporting that it will actually be called Snapdragon 8150 when it first hits smartphones in early 2019. So why the name change? Well, it's...
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Arm is prepared to take the fight to Intel with respect to PC compute performance, and to prove its point, the company has released its first forward-looking roadmap for CPU IP. While ARM is well known for its dominance of processors used in mobile devices, it hopes that consistent year-over-year performance improvements will have Intel shaking in its boots. Qualcomm attempted to encroach into Intel territory with the Snapdragon 835-powered "Always Connected" PCs in 2017, and it will further that push with the Snapdragon 850 Mobile Platform in 2018, which promises a 30 percent overall...
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Back in February, we first received word that Qualcomm was set to unveil a new mid-range SoC for smartphones dubbed the Snapdragon 670. As its naming implies, this is the successor to the Snapdragon 660 and slot in just below the already announced Snapdragon 710 (which we previously covered), and is being aimed at mid-range smartphones. When it comes to the SoC layout, the Snapdragon 670 actually looks a lot more like the Snapdragon 710 than it does its Snapdragon 660 predecessor. In fact, both the Snapdragon 670 and Snapdragon 710 features two "big" Kryo 360 cores along with six "LITTLE' Kryo...
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