Snapdragon

Qualcomm, along with Ericsson, has successfully completed a major hurdle that will enable Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE).

The technology, called Single Radio Voice Call Continuity, or SRVCC, enables continuity of service by seamlessly switching to a WCDMA network when a consumer on a VoLTE call leaves the LTE network's coverage area, Qualcomm said.

Qualcomm and Ericsson have completed the first voice call handover from an LTE mobile network to a WCDMA network using SRVCC.

A Snapdragon-powered Ericsson device, using Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 3G/LTE multimode processor, will be on demonstration at Qualcomm's Mobile World Congress booth, Qualcomm said. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor will be tucked inside hundreds of new devices, including a smart TV, a new color e-reader in China, a tablet for kids that can offer augmented reality, and mobile medical devices, the company said during its CES keynote address here Tueday.

Paul Jacobs, Qualcomm's CEO, used much of his CES keynote to tout the continually growing mobile industry and ushered a half-dozen guests onstage to show off various devices that use its Snapdragon chip.

The first smart TV powered by a Snapdragon processor is set to arrive this year, a Lenovo executive said during … Read more

Qualcomm's Snapdragon silicon made a sweep of all of the Windows Phone 7 smartphones announced today, rendering the hardware from various manufacturers relatively homogeneous inside.

Against a backdrop of phone announcements from companies such as Samsung, HTC, and Dell, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer posted a video today discussing the relationship between the two companies.

"Qualcomm and Microsoft have a long history of working together to optimize the mobile operating system for Qualcomm chips and platforms...We're excited to bring a new generation of Windows phones exclusively featuring Snapdragon mobile processors," Ballmer said.

"This really shows...what can happen when people bring together great software and great hardware," said Jacobs in the video.

But this collaboration also brings Windows PC-like hardware uniformity. Just as the PC world has the Windows operating system and Intel processors, this first crop of Windows Phone 7 smartphones feature a Microsoft OS and Qualcomm silicon.

"If all of them feature the same hardware (internal) and same operating system, what happens to the differentiation?" asked Ashok Kumar, managing director and analyst at Rodman & Renshaw. Other smartphone processor suppliers include Texas Instruments, Marvell Technology, and Samsung, who provide chips for Android and BlackBerry phones, among others.

And it remains to be seen if Windows Phone 7 devices can find a place in a very crowded market. "I think one of the biggest questions is what are the prospects of Windows Phone 7," said Kumar. "Most of the resources are targeted toward Apple and Android and then you have RIM and the QNX (operating system). There are many questions here, not least of which is what will the receptivity of the consumer be?" Kumar said.

Windows Phone 7 smartphones include the Dell Venue, HTC 7 Mozart, HTC 7 Trophy, HTC HD7, HTC Surround, HTC 7 Pro, LG Quantum, LG Optimus 7, Samsung Focus, and Samsung Omnia 7. Inside these products is Qualcomm's 1GHz application processor, a 3D graphics function, support for high-megapixel cameras, and the requisite 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity, among other functions..… Read more

Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha set big expectations this week when he promised that his company would have an Android phone with a 2Ghz processor by the end of the year. But is such a goal really possible? We're not so sure.

Conceivably Tech first reported that Jha made the pledge while speaking Thursday at the Executives Club of Chicago. As the publication didn't quote Jha directly, we wondered if his comments were open to interpretation.

Today, however, Moto spokeswoman Juli Bruda confirmed with CNET that Jha promised such a device to his Chicago audience. We would have loved … Read more

Both Intel and Qualcomm are announcing new dual-core processors for small devices, upping the performance potential for ultra-mobile computing.

Intel said Tuesday at the Computex conference in Taiwan that it has begun producing dual-core Atom processors for Netbooks, a product first for Intel. New Intel technology will enable "very, very thin form factors with dual-core Atom," Matthew Parker, general manager of Intel's Atom client division, said in a phone interview Friday. Parker said future Netbooks will get as thin as a half an inch (see photo).

Netbooks are small laptops that weigh less than 3 pounds and have screens that typically top out at about 10-inches diagonally. Parker said Intel specification guidelines will remain the same and have not been modified to accommodate larger designs, such as 12-inch Netbooks, as some have speculated.

Dual-core is all about better performance. "What dual core will bring is the ability to have a more responsive experience. You can video conference with our single-core product, but with the dual-core product you'll have better multiparty video conferencing," he said, citing one example. Intel is not yet revealing the product name for the chip but expects Netbooks using these procossors to be available by winter holiday season.

At Computex, Intel is also unveiling its "Oak Trail" technology, which is a system-on-a-chip Atom design optimized for thin tablets… Read more

The newest 4G marvel from Sprint and HTC joins a growing list of high-end smartphones that tap into the speed of Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor.

The dual-branded Sprint HTC phone announced Tuesday at CTIA 2010 in Las Vegas joins other Snapdragon-based phones, including the Google Nexus One (also made by HTC), the HTC HD2, Acer Liquid, and Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. All, except the HD2, are upscale phones that run the Android operating system.

The Sprint Evo 4G is representative of a category of high-end Android-based phones that pack extra processing punch to power large screens (in the case of … Read more

As the Apple iPad and its A4 chip get ready to ship on April 3, the competition is not standing still--and, by all appearances, there's plenty of it.

As reported back in January, the A4's central processing unit, or CPU, design, as it stands now, is thought to be based primarily on technology from U.K.-based ARM. Linley Gwennap, who is the president and principal analyst of The Linley Group, believes the A4 uses a fairly common ARM CPU designed by Intrinsity and manufactured by Samsung.

Where Apple, instead, may have chosen to enhance the A4's … Read more

Normally, when we hear about a Compaq product, we associate it with entry-level computers. HP apparently remembers the days when Compaq first released iPAQ smart devices, because it chose to announce the AirLife smartbook device under its Compaq brand instead.

Though tablet PCs are getting the lion's share of attention lately, "smartbooks"--laptop-like devices with advanced smartphone processors and pared-down operating systems--are attempting to build some momentum, too. The Compaq AirLife 100 looks like many Netbooks, but it differs in several ways: it has a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor instead of an Intel Atom, comes with 3G … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Before CES, one of our predictions as to what would be a big story on the show floor was the emergence of smartbooks, or mini-notebooks as they're sometimes called. The term was coined by Qualcomm in referring to tiny laptop-like devices using processors that are derived from smartphone-level CPUs, but are in many cases even more powerful. The two most common CPUs seem to be the Snapdragon from Qualcomm and the Tegra/Tegra 2 from Nvidia, both using ARM-based processors.

Consider the concept, ideally, as a device somewhere between a smartphone and a Netbook--hence "smartbook." Unfortunately, … Read more