Hasta La Gadget!

Fans of Samsung’s Duos phones wanting 2012 updates have had to make do with last year’s looks so far. From what’s surfacing through multiple Indian sites, though, Samsung must want to spread some of the Galaxy S III’s modern, nature-influenced style to the Duos’ twin-SIM audience. The Galaxy S Duos S7562 won’t make its bigger sibling jealous with a 4-inch WVGA display, a 1GHz Snapdragon MSM7227A chip or 512MB of RAM, but they’re not the point. As always, the highlight is that pair of SIM slots for carrying both home and work phone lines — or simply mixing and matching prepaid plans. The rest of the hardware falls in line with what’s likely to be a much less expensive smartphone, including a 5-megapixel back camera, a VGA front camera and 4GB of storage. Buyers will be glad to know that Android 4.0 should still be coming along for the ride in addition to that stone-inspired look. We’ve asked Samsung for more official details; there’s talk of an Indian launch before the end of the summer, which (if true) could give the crowds in Bangalore and Mumbai more to look forward to in the fall than just cooler temperatures.

Filed under: Cellphones

Samsung Galaxy S Duos details make the rounds, bring Galaxy S III vibe to the dual-SIM world originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 00:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’ve heard that the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro Mobile Development Platform tablet is the most powerful Android slate ever made, that is looks pretty neat, and that it’s up for sale now – but let me tell you this: you don’t want it. If you take a peek at this tablet and notice the variety of hardware features that are visible from the front of the device (not to mention the bacK), you should instantly be suspicious: a consumer-aimed tablet doesn’t look like that in our modern mobile world. Instead this device was created for a very specific set of users, users who have $1,299 in their budget to grab devices that’ll help them forward their career or business.

This device is made for developers and for vendors – developers looking to make their apps work optimally with the architecture Qualcomm’s designed for processing and graphics, first of all. As for vendors, this means the people looking to implement the processor inside the device, the Snapdragon APQ8064 S4 Pro SoC, into devices galore. The name MDP has appeared on several devices made by Qualcomm before, the other most recent of these being the MDP8660 we saw at Mobile World Congress 2012. The MDP8660 was a phone-sized device and used the Snapdragon S4 processor that appeared before the S4 Pro we’re seeing this week.

The tablet we’ve seen this week works with a Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor. This processor’s generation is also known as Krait and works at 1.5Ghz per core. This tablet has 2GB of RAM and an Adreno 320 graphics processor as well. On the back you’ve got a 13 megapixel camera with 1080p video capability, while the front-facing camera is only meant for relatively low-res video chat.

You can purchase the tablet right now from online retailer(s) for just under $1300 and have a closer look in our Qualcomm portal as well. Have a peek in the timeline below at a collection of on-site news bits and hands-on experiences we had at this past week’s Qualcomm event as well!

Qualcomm S4 MDP tablet is not for you is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

As mentioned earlier, we’ve just gotten our hands on Qualcomm’s latest development platform to see how its first quad core chipset fares. And boy, that APQ8064 really doesn’t disappoint, but it should be no surprise — we’ve already seen how the top dual core S4 chipsets already beat their quad core competitors in certain aspects, so it’s only natural for the quad core S4 Pro to annihilate them. As you can see in our chart after the break, the APQ8064-based MDP easily beat the Tegra 3-based One X and Nexus 7, as well as the Exynos 4412-based Galaxy S III. And partly thanks to the Adreno 320 graphics core, the MDP even scored an astonishing 132fps in our GLBenchmark test, while the quad core Galaxy S III with Mali-400 graphics came second with 99fps, with the remaining devices lingering around 60fps only.

Obviously, the question remains how big of a trade-off there is on battery life in exchange for those two extra cores and the more powerful graphics chip. That said, we have a feeling that Snapdragon’s Krait architecture and asynchronously clocked cores will again prove that Tegra 3’s 4-PLUS-1 design isn’t the best solution for battery efficiency — as many of you might already know. We shall see when APQ8064-based products become available later this year. For now, take a gander at our numbers and photos.

Update: Hit the break for our hands-on video with the MDP. Also, we had a chance play with the 13-megapixel autofocus camera in the worst possible lighting conditions, and it acquitted itself rather well considering the circumstances. Check out the sample gallery below.

Myriam Joire contributed to this mind-blowing hands-on.

Continue reading Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro (APQ8064) MDP benchmarks blow away the competition (update: video)

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs

Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro (APQ8064) MDP benchmarks blow away the competition (update: video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 18:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today Qualcomm has been showing off some of their technology including their new quad-core chipset, the APQ8064. And for those folks looking to get into the mobile powerhouse action right away they are now available. Qualcomm’s usual developer kit distributor BSQUARE have just posted them up for sale — starting at $1299.

Qualcomm’s new MDP (Mobile Development Platform) APQ8064 kit contains the same 10.1-inch display as we’ve seen on previous developer devices, as well as multiple ports, fingerprint scanners, 13 megapixel cameras and more. It even has 7 microphones on this thing. Running on Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich, their new quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM — once again those four processing cores.

Obviously this device is a developer product — especially for $1,299 — but it includes the tablet, a charging dock with two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, and even Ethernet. One of the added benefits of the new APQ8064 platform is the Adreno 320 GPU (graphics processing unit) which should pack about 4 times the graphical punch than the previous version. We’ve quickly ran a few benchmarks and are seeing amazing results but that will be coming shortly. Developers can jump in starting right now for the low price of $1,299 at the link below.

[via BSQUARE]

Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 quad-core tablets available now for $1299 is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Getting started here with Qualcomm we’ve jumped right into benchmarks. Something that has increasingly been playing a large role in smartphones as a whole, and consumers purchase decisions. Overall when it comes down to it benchmarks should not only test graphics or CPU, but the overall user experience on mobile computing devices.

There’s many different options when it comes to smartphones, tablets, processors, and of course benchmarks. The Android market space for example has multiple options available. We’re not going into specifics here, nor are we naming names — but what do these really test? Mobile benchmarks need to fully test the device from all angles, not just any one scenario.

Obviously we have multiple options from SunSpider, Linpack tests for CPU, Quadrant which seems to focus on graphics, and more. Qaulcomm not only wants to make the mobile benchmark space better for consumers, but for everyone. Being able to test every aspect including user experience with things like browsing, and video playback should all be included. Along those same lines these tests need to also take advantage of the increasing power being built into devices. Apps that will truly test all 4 cores of our smartphones and tablets. Qualcomm offers an option with Vellamo, which we’ve covered in the past and will surely be hearing about more throughout the day.

Many enthusiasts and consumers alike might be hesitant to trust a benchmark built in house by any one party or SoC manufacturer, but we’ll be focusing more on Vellamo as the day continues. Another option could very well be Augmented Reality. As AR still hasn’t made a huge dent in the mobile space it surely is the future. Jon Peddie from JPR (research) briefly mentioned AR while speaking and stated it “will be the killer app,” and even went as far as to call it the mother of all benchmarks — as it stresses every aspect of a processor.

What do you guys think? Do benchmarks need to be improved for mobile devices, do they need to focus more on battery life and daily usage? Would an AR test be the ultimate benchmark? Stay tuned for more details on mobile benchmarks and Qualcomm’s new quad-core S4 processor.

Qualcomm talks mobile benchmarks, user experience, and AR is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.