snapdragon

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

Do you believe in smartbooks yet? Smaller than Netbooks, running custom OSes and miniature smartphone processors, these newly-coined devices are supposed to offer the best of smartphone convenience with the form factor of a Netbook. They're ready to start appearing on the scene, and Lenovo has one of the first with their Skylight.

With a 10.1-inch screen, it's not exactly a supersmall device compared to an iPhone--but it is much thinner than nearly any Netbook. With built-in 3G and Wi-Fi, Lenovo promises a seamless browsing experience. The OS, however, is not Windows, or even Ubuntu: it's … Read more

UPDATE: Hands-on impressions added below. The IdeaPad U1 Hybrid is our Best of CES 2010 Award Winner in the category of Computers and Hardware. Also be sure to check out our hands-on impressions of Lenovo's other Netbooks and smartbooks from CES.

Tablets are rapidly becoming the hot chatter-buzzword of 2010. Netbooks were very 2009. Combine them both and perhaps you end up with a great idea--at least, so hopes Lenovo. In one of the boldest moves in laptop technology at CES, the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid doesn't just flip its screen to become a tablet--the screen detaches completely as … Read more

The Google phone may use what is probably the fastest smartphone chip on the planet and could become the first non-Windows smartphone to tap into this kind of processing power.

Conspicious among the Google phone's leaked specifications is the Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm. Snapdragon is the first gigahertz-class ARM-based processor to be used in smartphones. (In current implementations, Snapdragon runs at 1GHz.)

And the Google phone (aka, Nexus One) would--if it becomes an actual product--have some interesting company, though both of the rival phones that use the chip are in the Windows Mobile camp: the Toshiba TG01 and … Read more

Remember how we said new Netbooks were coming for CES? We might as well expand that statement to include smartbooks. The new terminology, coined to describe laptop-style devices running sub-Atom processors (Snapdragon from Qualcomm being one of them), is rapidly gaining in fashion lately, especially in relation to cell phone carriers. Packaging these types of extremely small and cheap smart devices in with cellular data plans seems like a match made in gadget heaven.

We've seen prototype smartbooks from Nvidia featuring the Tegra processor (the same that's in the Zune HD), but the Lenovo smartbook unveiled ever-so-briefly at … Read more

Consumers won't see a "Qualcomm Inside" sticker on new Windows Mobile phones, but the chip supplier is playing a big role in powering the first crop of phones based on Microsoft's new operating system.

Microsoft announced on Tuesday the first phones to carry the Windows Phone brand and run the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system--which offers Adobe Flash support, an upgraded browser, and menus that can be navigated with a finger. AT&T has already announced smartphones, with dozens more expected to be rolled out by the end of the year.

The Tilt 2 … Read more