Items tagged with Qualcomm
All things considered, Qualcomm is coming off a successful quarter, even though its third quarter revenue remained flat year-over-year. No change can be considered a good thing, given that the Coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the global economy and made things challenging in the technology sector (and beyond). Oh, and Qualcomm entered into a licensing deal with Huawei. That latter bit of news is the likely reason by Qualcomm's stock is on a sharp rise in early morning trading today. Shares of Qualcomm jumped 13 percent in after hours last night, and at the time of this writing, the company's stock price is up more than 11 percent, to $103.58. The company's market cap is now around $115.77 billion....
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A pair of new rumors going around suggest Apple may delay the launch of its new 5G iPhone models and new iPads. Apple typically launches its new devices in September, but it's quite possible that the iPhone and iPad models will be delayed until October. The first indication of a delayed launch comes from Qualcomm's Q3 earnings report noting the company will see a "partial impact from the delay of a global 5G flagship phone launch" impacting its Q4 projections (covering July, August, and September). While Qualcomm certainly doesn't say the delayed launch is the 5G iPhone family, it's pretty well implied. The new iPhone models are the only devices expected to launch in that time frame that could...
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We all have better things to do than wait for our smartphones and other mobile devices to recharge. This is what makes fast charging technology so delightful, and in that vein, Qualcomm on Monday announced its Quick Charge 5 tech for Android devices, which is capable of taking a depleted device with a 4,500 mAh battery and juicing it to 50 percent in only five minutes. In the process, Qualcomm has earned itself some bragging rights here. For one, going from 0 to 50 percent battery power in just five minutes qualifies as the fastest commercial charging technology available for Android devices. This is also the first commercially viable fast charging platform to support more than 100W charging...
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The first half of 2020 has been dominated by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 in the Android flagship phone arena. Packing excellent performance from its mature 7nm process node and a complementary Snapdragon X55 5G modem, the Snapdragon 865 has been a popular choice for OEMs. However, as has been the case for the past few years with Qualcomm's flagship SoCs, the latter half of each year has seen the arrival of a higher clocked Plus variant. We've seen it with the Snapdragon 845+ and Snapdragon 855+; now we have the Snapdragon 865+ Mobile Platform that will be seen in the next round of flagship Android smartphones. Like its predecessors, the Snapdragon 865+ features higher performing CPU and GPU cores....
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With flagship Android smartphones powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865 SoC easily hitting the $1,000 price point, many people are looking to cheaper alternatives that won't break the bank. Luckily, OnePlus has just a phone in the works that's called the Nord. OnePlus got official with the name of the smartphone earlier this week, and now exec Carl Pei is giving a few additional details on the mid-range smartphone. The OnePlus X was the company's first foray into the mid-range market, and launched at a $299 price point. But the company soon got away from that market as its set its sight squarely on flagship territory. In an interview with TechRadar, Pei stated that his company...
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Qualcomm has been on a crusade to iterate at lightning fast speeds with its smartphone SoCs, but the same can’t be said for its efforts with the rapidly growing wearables market – specifically with smartwatches. The company announced its lightly refreshed Snapdragon Wear 3100 platform way back in September 2018, which itself came more than two years after the introduction of the Snapdragon Wear 2100. Today, Qualcomm is taking another step forward with the new Snapdragon Wear 4100 platform, which is built on a smaller 12nm process node versus the relatively ancient 28nm on its predecessor. The chip company is promising significant gains not only in performance with new...
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2020 is the year of 5G wireless connectivity for smartphones, and Qualcomm is looking to blanket all sectors with its Snapdragon chipsets. At the high-end, we have the Snapdragon 865 with its separate Snapdragon X55 5G modem. In the "premium" mid-range sector, we have the Snapdragon 765/765G/768G with their integrated Snapdragon X52 modems. Now, Qualcomm is looking to go further down-market to bring 5G connectivity to the masses with the Snapdragon 690 SoC. This isn't just a case of Qualcomm slapping a 5G modem onboard and calling it a day; the company has made some significant changes compared to other 600-Series chips that makes it stand out. For starters, it still features a big.LITTLE...
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Lenovo has announced that you will soon be able to purchase its Flex 5G convertible, which was first announced back at CES 2020 (as the Yoga 5G). The Flex 5G isn’t just your run of the mill Windows 10 device, however; this one is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx 5G SoC. There aren’t many devices on the market that use the Arm-based Snapdragon 8cx 5G – the Samsung Galaxy Book S remains perhaps the most well-known of the offerings – but the chip offers respectable performance as long as you don’t require extreme heavy lifting. In other words, don’t think that you’re going to be doing 4K video editing with this machine. In...
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OnePlus Z information has been leaking at a rapid clip in recent weeks, and today's latest reveal brings a few of the missing pieces surrounding the launch of the mid-range smartphone. India has emerged as a hotbed of activity in the low-cost smartphone realm, with major smartphone OEMs pouring resources into the country. OnePlus is no exception, and will reportedly launch the OnePlus Z in India on July 10th. According to Android Central's sources, this is a "tentative" date, but barring any major hiccups between now and then, that's likely when we should expect to see what smartphone. One other previously unknown surrounding the OnePlus Z is its price, which will be critical to...
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Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are hot topics in virtually all tech sectors at this moment in time. The technology is gaining traction in many industries, from massive social networks that are analyzing mountains of data, to the tiniest of IoT smart home and mobile devices. Even during our everyday workflow here at HotHardware, we currently utilize a few key AI-enabled applications to enhance our content. Further, if you’ve ever talked to a smartphone for speech-to-text messaging or for Google Assistant recommendations, AI has impacted your connected experiences as well. For those that may be unfamiliar with how machine learning and AI technologies work, we should probably...
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Always-on, always-connected PCs like the Samsung Galaxy Book S -- the kind of machines that are ready to go first thing in the morning and last all day and night, while never losing an internet connection thanks to cellular connectivity -- are a potential game changer for some users. Manufacturers have tried to make this happen with tablets, but haven't entirely been successful. Half-computers like the iPad Pro may have been "blessed" with $300 keyboards, but iPadOS can be pretty limiting for real work. This seems like a job for full-blown Windows and a proper clamshell, but x86 notebooks don't offer that same level of battery life. So, what are your options? These days, Microsoft would...
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Just when you thought it was safe to upgrade to a Wi-Fi 6 router and complementing wireless devices, here we are with a new wave of Wi-Fi 6E chips that will be launching in new products later this year. For those not in the know, Wi-Fi 6E is a new version of Wi-Fi that leverages 6GHz spectrum that was the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opened up for unlicensed use earlier this year. This is perhaps the biggest upgrade that Wi-Fi has seen since it first burst onto the scene in commercial products roughly two decade ago. Devices running on 6GHz Wi-Fi 6E will of course be backwards compatible with existing 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi solutions. Qualcomm is jumping into the Wi-Fi 6E fray with...
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For better or worse, COVID-19 has changed our way of life and how we do business – perhaps permanently. For school-age children and the American workforce, that has meant “telecommuting” or working from home instead of alongside peers in the office. Online collaborative platforms like Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams have helped to facilitate the physical divide between people, but Qualcomm is pushing for even more advanced collaborative tools through augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) experiences, aka extended reality (XR). Qualcomm is touting its XR Optimized Certification Program, which allows its OEM partners to develop XR viewer glasses that can give...
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Flagship SoCs like Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865 might get all the attention due to their extreme performance and high-end features, but the mid-range is often were most of the action (and sales) take place. It's for this reason that Qualcomm is delivering a performance boost for its OEM customers with the arrival of the new Snapdragon 768G. This is yet another variant of the Snapdragon 765, which was first announced back in early December. The Snapdragon 765 features an octa-core Kryo 475 CPU and an Adreno 620 GPU. The Snapdragon 765G ratcheted up the performance with a higher clocked version of the Adreno 620, delivering a 20 percent uplift in graphics performance. The Snapdragon...
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The biggest and baddest smartphone SoC on the market in Android land is no doubt the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865. Based on 7nm tech, the 8-core SoC comes mandatorily paired with the discrete Snapdragon X55 5G modem and powers current flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S20 family and the OnePlus 8 Series. With recent rumors that the previously expected Snapdragon 865+ won’t be released during the second half of 2020 with boosted CPU/GPU clocks, all attention is focusing on the next-generation Snapdragon 875 (SM8350). While Qualcomm is likely to give us official details on the chip during the closing months of 2020, some alleged specs have made their way to the internet. For starters,...
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Qualcomm made waves with its Snapdragon 865 SoC, but not just because of the performance it delivers. The Snapdragon 865 platform features support for GPU driver upgrades. This is something that is common in PCs, but not so much with smartphones. That changes today with Xiaomi rolling out the first GPU driver update for the Snapdragon 865. The driver itself pertains to the Adreno 650 GPU. It aims to bolster performance in select games, including PUBG Mobile, Fortnite, and Honkai Impact 3rd. The driver upgrade also updates OpenGL ES and Vulkan, according to XDA Developers. In a sense, this is sort of the start of a new era in smartphone gaming, or potentially, at least. "Late last year, Qualcomm...
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Around 8 months passed between the time Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon 855 and Snapdragon 855 Plus chipsets. The expectation was that Qualcomm would stick to a similar time frame for its Snapdragon 865 and Snapdragon 865 Plus, which could mean the latter would be unveiled in July. It doesn't look like that will happen, though. The Snapdragon 865 launched in mid-December 2019, just as the Snapdragon 855 debuted a year prior, in December 2018, followed by the Snapdragon 855 Plus in July 2019. Qualcomm's first Plus variant brought with it faster clocks and a decent bump in performance, making it the go-to slice of mobile silicon for high-end smartphones, until the Snapdragon 865 arrived. We are...
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Nearly half a year has passed since Google launched its Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL phones, and the Pixel 4a and Pixel 4a XL are right around the corner. Is it too early to start talking about the Pixel 5? Of course not! And as it pertains to Google's next flagship smartphone series, there is chatter that the next round of flagships might adopt Samsung's Exynos SoC hardware. It is a bit of an interesting situation all around—Samsung itself uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors in its Galaxy handsets sold in the US and various other regions, but also sources its own Exynos chips for models in some places. This is the case with the Galaxy S20 as well, which sports either a Snapdragon 865 or Exynos...
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Qualcomm may be well-known for its powerful Snapdragon SoCs and 4G LTE/5G modems that power modern Android smartphones, but the company has a vast portfolio of other communications/audio/computing products as well. Qualcomm is a relatively big name in the audio market where it produces Bluetooth SoCs that power your wireless headsets. The company this week announced new entry- and premium tier QCC304x and QCC514x chips that promise to boost runtimes for wireless earbuds while bringing Active Noise Cancelling to lower price points. The primary difference between the two is that the QCC514x supports “always-on” voice recognition. In other words, you would be able to yell out...
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LG it is ready to jump back into the limelight with the release of its latest flagship mobile device, the V60 ThinQ 5G. As you'd expect from a flagship Android smartphone release in 2020, the V60 ThinQ 5G is powered by Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 865 SoC which is mandatorily paired with the Snapdragon X55 5G modem. The V60 ThinQ 5G follows the trend of larger displays for flagship smartphones, and enters the fray with a 6.8-inch FHD+ (2460x1080) P-OLED FullVision panel. The display features a 20.5:1 aspect ratio and incorporates an in-display fingerprint reader. There's also a punch-hole cutout for the 10MP selfie camera at the top of the display. But LG doesn't stop there; it also offers...
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Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon XR2 5G platform for next-generation extended reality (XR) headsets back in late 2019. At the time, Qualcomm touted the platform's 11x uplift in AI performance and 2x improvement in CPU/GPU performance along with support for up to seven concurrent cameras on flagship headsets. Today, Qualcomm is showing off its reference design for headsets that use the Snapdragon XR2 5G platform. The current reference design maxes out the hardware capabilities of the chipset with seven cameras -- two internal for eye tracking, four exterior cameras (two of which are used for head tracking), and an additional camera for tracking facial/lip movements, or controller tracking....
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Part of the migration into 5G territory involves upgraded hardware on the consumer side, and to date, there is a spattering of devices equipped with first generation and second generation 5G modems. That is not where the road ends, however. Taking the next step in the ongoing 5G revolution, Qualcomm announced a 5G modem-to-antenna solution called Snapdragon X60. This is not something consumers will buy directly, but a high-tech solution that will find its way into upcoming smartphones. The Snapdragon X60 is the first 5-nanometer based 5G modem-RF system, and also the first to aggregate mmWave and sub-6 spectrum using frequency division duplex (FDD) and time division duplex (TDD). The general...
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