Items tagged with Qualcomm
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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Qualcomm is holding a press event on September 10, and while it is not sharing many details just yet, the invitations it sent out to members of the press hint that it will launch something related to smartwatches. Whether that means Qualcomm is getting back into developing its own smartwatches or plans to release a new smartwatch chipset remains to be seen. You have to go back several years to when Qualcomm made a run at the smartwatch market with the introduction of the Toq, which it released in limited quantities in December 2013. It mainly served as a proof-of-concept for OEMs. It had a 1.55-inch...
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Qualcomm is very much an active player in the mobile space with its Snapdragon chipsets, which are commonly found in Android phones and tablets. At present, the Snapdragon 845 is Qualcomm's flagship mobile processor. It is built on a 10-nanometer manufacturing process, is fast (for a mobile part), and has been around for several months. The chip might also be old news pretty soon—there is a listing on Geekbench that suggests Qualcomm is already mass producing its next flagship SoC, the Snapdragon 855. The database entry points to an unnamed Xiaomi handset with an "SDM855 for ARM64" underneath...
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It has been a week of revelations when it comes to Qualcomm. The chipmaker announced during its earnings call that Apple decided against using any Qualcomm modems in its 2018 iPhone line. That is perhaps unsurprising considered the long-running and bitter legal war the two companies have waged. In other news, an acquisition deal between Qualcomm and NXP was first announced in late 2016 and at the time the price was tipped to be $47 billion. The final offer made early this year was valued at $44 billion. Qualcomm announced early this morning that it is walking away from the entire...
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It appears that the legal brouhaha between Apple and Qualcomm has gone thermonuclear. We knew that Apple was angling to rid itself of Qualcomm chips in its future iPhones, but it appears that the switchover will indeed happen this year. Qualcomm confirmed the breakup during its fiscal Q3 2018 earnings call. "We believe Apple intends to solely use our competitors’ modems, rather than our modems in its next iPhone release," said Qualcomm CFO George Davis. "We will continue to provide modems for Apple legacy devices." Intel has provided modems for select versions of Apple smartphones dating...
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Qualcomm and Apple have been battling it out in court for well over a year with regards to licensing agreements and patent infringement. The pair has waged a war of words in public over the disagreements, and now Qualcomm is letting real world results speak for themselves with regards to the performance of its chips versus the "alternative" that Apple would be stuck with if it decides to completely abandon Qualcomm products. According to the analysis using user-submitted results to Ookla's Speedtest connectivity benchmark collected during Q2 2018, Android smartphones equipped with Qualcomm's...
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Qualcomm has rolled out the world's first fully-integrated 5G NR millimeter (mmWave) and sub-6 GHz RF modules for smartphones and other mobile devices. The new chips include the QTM052 mmWave antenna and the QPM56xx sub-6GHz RF module family. The new chips have a compact footprint, pair with the Snapdragon X50 5G modem, and deliver modem-to-antenna capability across several spectrum bands. "Qualcomm Technologies’ early investment in 5G has allowed us to deliver to the industry a working mobile mmWave solution that was previously thought unattainable, as well as a fully-integrated sub-6...
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With some smartphone vendors deciding for the rest of us that we don't need a headphone jack, the time for fast progression on the wireless audio front is needed now. Wireless audio isn't anything new, of course, but it's a technology that's extremely hard to get right. A good wireless solution needs to have decent battery-life, a stable connection, and of course, good audio quality. Again, wireless audio isn't anything new, but when Apple released its wireless AirPods earbuds (and removed the headphone jack from its iPhone at the same time), it seemed to spur every other vendor to begin taking...
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In this episode of HotHardware's Two And A Half Geeks podcast, Marco, Chris and Dave talk about NVIDIA’s next GeForce GTX called Turing and its potential use of MIcron GDDR6 memory, Alienware’s beastly Area-51 R5 all liquid cooled gaming PC with 18 core Skylake-X, Netgear’s Cable Orbi mesh router and cable modem kit, AMD’s 7nm Vega and Zen 2, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 1000 and new low power Qualcomm Snapdragon 429, 439 and 632 chips for mainstream phones... Show Notes: 03:42 - Micron Ramps Production Of GDDR6 Memory For NVIDIA GeForce GTX 20 Turing GPU Series 08:39 - First...
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