This morning the folks at LG have been seeing their fair share of next-generation possibilities appearing in the news courtesy of anonymous tipsters from the shadows – and here with “Always On Voice Commands”, LG’s next smartphone continues to seem like no joke. While flexible OLED displays might be more your seemingly super-strange feature of
Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft is planning to give its Surface RT tablet an overhaul using chips from Qualcomm.
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How’s about this for a coincidence? We’ve just benchmarked the Snapdragon 800 reference tablet, with some very nice results, and now Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft will use a Qualcomm chip in its next refresh of the Surface RT. The report, based on insider sources, doesn’t stretch to detailing whether we’ll be looking at the flagship 800 processor specifically, but such a choice would tally with a previous statement from Qualcomm, and it’d also seem like a logical upgrade for the current hybrid which runs on NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 and already feels underpowered. As for NVIDIA, the same unconfirmed report suggests that the company will still have a role to play as a supplier “for some versions” of Microsoft’s product. That’s a curious notion, because it implies we might see multiple iterations of the Surface RT to suit different price points or markets (e.g., those with or without LTE), and at least one version of those could house a Tegra 4. Or it could simply be a diplomatic way of saying that the existing RT products will continue to be sold and supported for a while. Either way, if Microsoft doesn’t implement the full force of Snapdragon, someone else hopefully will.
Filed under: Tablets, Microsoft
Source: Bloomberg
Microsoft is set to reveal new versions of the Surface RT tablet, using Qualcomm Snapdragon processors alongside existing NVIDIA Tegra chips, sources claim, with the goal of adding integrated LTE support. Although NVIDIA will supply processors “for some versions” insiders told Bloomberg, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon would feature in other models, as Microsoft attempts to make its
We spent some time benchmarking the Snapdragon 800 series processors and as a result, we were able to play with the MDP (Mobile Developer Platform) devices. Basically, these are the developer devices that are built to show off what these new processors will be able to do. We will say up front that they are
Qualcomm may have introduced the Snapdragon 800 processor a little while back, and while we suspect some may be wondering why we have yet to see any real announcements since that point in time, it seems there was an actual plan in action. Just to give a bit of background, the plan was to announce
Today we had a chance to play with Qualcomm’s latest MDP devices (tablet and phone) which pack the company’s mighty Snapdragon 800 SoC (MSM8974). The tablet is slightly larger than than last year’s and features an 11.6-inch 1,920 x 1,080-pixel display, 2GB of LPDDR3 RAM, 32GB of built-in flash storage (with microSD expansion), USB 3.0 support and a 12 megapixel AF rear camera with flash (2MP fixed-focus in front). All of this is crammed into a slim (0.46 inches / 11.7mm) chassis that’s powered by a 3,400mAh Li-ion battery and incorporates a bevvy of radios (LTE band 17, WiFi ac, Bluetooth 4 LE, GPS, NFC) and sensors (including pressure and humidity).
The phone shares most of the tablet’s specs but swaps the screen for a 4.3-inch panel (1,280 x 720 pixels) and the battery for a smaller (1,500mAh) pack. We put these Snapdragon 800-equipped MDPs through their paces by running our usual suite of benchmarks (plus a few more). The results? Prepare for ludicrous speed! More after the break.
Gallery: Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 MDP devices
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile
With their successes with the Google Nexus 4 and the Optimus G and G Pro, LG should at this point be more than ready to continue their drive into the future with more large-screened smartphone machines. Here in the spring of 2013, another device has been spotted that’s not yet been made official – not
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