Hasta La Gadget!

There’s nothing like jumping the gun to announce your involvement with a phone that technically doesn’t exist, but we’ve gotta say, we love Qualcomm for doing it. The company has just revealed to us its role in the production of a smartphone from LG that’ll feature quad-core Snapdragon S4 internals, and if it performs anything like recent benchmarks suggest, you’d best hold onto your hats. For a little backstory, rumors are currently circulating that LG is producing a smartphone of epic proportions that’s known as the Optimus G, which is said to wield a quad-core processor, a 4.7-inch IPS True HD display, 2GB of RAM and a 13-megapixel camera. Whether it’s related to this announcement is anyone’s guess, but you’ll be forgiven for salivating at the prospect. Fortunately, you won’t have long to find out the true home of the quad-core Snapdragon S4, as Qualcomm has also revealed that LG plans to release its next superphone for commercial availability this September in South Korea, with other territories to follow.

Update: AnandTech has gotten word from Qualcomm that the LG device in question will pack an MDM9615 LTE baseband chip as well.

Filed under: Cellphones

Qualcomm confirms its role in LG superphone with quad-core Snapdragon S4 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Aug 2012 20:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At last, no more secrets. Announced in Beijing just now is the Xiaomi Phone 2, and with the exception of the appearance, most of the specs match the many leaks we’ve come across: 4.3-inch 720p IPS display by Sharp, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 quad-core chip, 2GB RAM and 16GB memory. To power this beast, Xiaomi’s throwing in a 2,000mAh cell, but you can also purchase a 3,000mAh version if you don’t mind the extra 2mm thickness on the phone. As for photography, you get a 28mm two-megapixel imager at the front along with a 27mm F2.0 eight-megapixel BSI camera on the back — we saw some stunning untouched shots from the latter at the launch event.

The good news doesn’t stop there. On the software front Xiaomi’s decided to jump straight to Android Jelly Bean for the phone’s MIUI ROM, which itself packs several new features as well. Just to name a few: enhanced security, phone finder, Chinese voice assistant (apparently with 85 percent comprehension accuracy), more interactive themes and 5GB of cloud storage service with online client.

As you can already see, all of this will cost just ¥1,999 (about $310) — the same as the original Xiaomi Phone announced this time last year — when it launches in October, and local carriers China Unicom plus China Telecom will also be offering the DC-HSPA+ handset at subsidized prices. Interestingly, Xiaomi co-founder Lei Jun even admitted on the stage that the phone’s raw cost is ¥2,350 ($370) per unit, so hopefully it’ll go down sooner than later for his sake. But if ¥1,999 is still too much, there’s also the ¥1,499 ($235) Xiaomi Phone 1S which, as we’ve already seen, is very much just the original Xiaomi but bumped up from 1.5GHz to 1.7GHz, along with a front-facing camera.

Until we get hold of the phones to play with, here are some photos from the event.

Update: Now we have some photos from our very brief hands-on — each person was only given 90 seconds with the beta units! That said, the Xiaomi Phone 2s already felt pretty solid and the UI animation was slick, so we look forward to the more refined engineering samples next month.

Update 2: Forgot to mention that both devices support WCDMA 850、1900 and 2100MHz. So yes, it’ll work just fine on AT&T!

Filed under: Cellphones

Xiaomi Phone 2 now official: 4.3-inch 720p IPS, quad core and Jelly Bean for just $310 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 05:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Having seen the next-gen Xiaomi Phone’s more colorful yet rejected designs, we’re rather baffled by these dull-looking certification images of the real deal. According to a filing from the good old TENAA, this new device from Xiaomi goes by the codename “2012051” and packs WCDMA radio, but that’s pretty much it in terms of specs. Eagle-eyed readers may have already spotted the striking resemblance to the original Xiaomi Phone (aka MI-One Plus), but it appears to be getting an extra front-facing camera and, for some reason, a smaller speaker grill on the back. But wait, there’s more! We dug up two additional models in the China Compulsory Certificate database: there’s the “2012052” also with WCDMA radio, plus the “2012053” with CDMA2000/WCDMA dual radio.

Bearing in mind that the current Xiaomi Phone has three variants, our guess is that its successor will follow a similar pattern: the WCDMA flavor may again have a 1.5GHz version followed by a slower and cheaper version (much like what the Youth Edition aka MI-One is to the MI-One Plus); and depending on Xiaomi’s arrangements with China Unicom and China Telecom, the CDMA flavor for the latter may or may not be launched alongside its WCDMA cousin. Let’s hope for the best when this alleged quad-core phone gets announced next Thursday.

Update: Another possibility is that the design pictured above only applies to the lower-end model, which may just pack a dual-core chip (hopefully a Snapdragon S4). We shall see.

Filed under: Cellphones

Next-gen Xiaomi Phone outed by certifications ahead of launch, will again come in three variants (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 06:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For those keen beans out there who want to get an early taste of Qualcomm’s first quad-core chipset, news just came in that starting today BSQUARE, the usual distributor of Qualcomm dev kits, is offering the Snapdragon S4 Pro mobile development platform for a hefty $1,299 (and just for reference, the MSM8960 “Fluid” smartphone MDP is currently sold for $999). Similar to the dual-core “Liquid” slate we tinkered with last year, this new APQ8064-based MDP sports the same 10.1 WXGA display as well as 2GB LPDDR2 RAM, 32GB of storage space and Android Ice Cream Sandwich. But obviously, developers will be able to take advantage of the two extra asynchronous CPU cores plus the new Adreno 320 graphics engine, which is said to pack three to four times the processing capacity of the Adreno 225 in the current top S4 lineup. If you’re in no hurry then stay tuned for our hands-on later today.

Update: We’ve got a spec sheet after the break, and wow, there’s a 13-megapixel camera and seven mics on this slate!

Continue reading Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro quad core dev tablet now available for $1,299 (update: spec sheet)

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Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro quad core dev tablet now available for $1,299 (update: spec sheet) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 15:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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