Qualcomm's New Snapdragons are Backwards-Compatible

[exfileme]

Dual-core is about to become the low-end smartphone standard thanks to Qualcomm's two new Snapdragon SoCs.

Qualcomm's New Snapdragons are Backwards-Compatible : Read more

 

[joytech22]

Pretty amazing how dual-core CPU's will soon be in low-range devices..
Here I was last year thinking my Galaxy S was high-end, I mean it's still pretty powerful but in comparison to today's devices and with the upcoming Tegra 3..

The phone space is REALLY moving along fast.
I like that a lot.

 

[illfindu]

So Old phones with new fancy names and II added to the end's of them and new chips thrown in? This would be nice if the prices would reflect this but we are gonna see old model phones with these new chips that where 100-200$ going for 400$. Would be interesting to see some kinda upgrade plan where you could buy a old model plan and pay a little extra to have it shipped with the upgraded chips.

 

[thesnappyfingers]

wonder if there will be a day where the consumer will be able to simply upgrade their phone like they do a pc.

Perhaps it is already here, I wouldn't know. Break to many phones to warrant purchasing nice ones.

 

[whitey_rolls]

For a mobile device noob, how does the Snapdragon compare to the Tegra chip? All things being even say dual core 1 ghz chip?

 

[beetlejuicegr]

I wonder if i can detach my nexus one snapdragon and reflow the new one buahahah

 

[razor512]

[citation][nom]whitey_rolls[/nom]For a mobile device noob, how does the Snapdragon compare to the Tegra chip? All things being even say dual core 1 ghz chip?[/citation]
for the current gen snapdragon chips vs a tegra 2, It takes a dual core snapdragon running at around 1.2-1.3GHz to match the CPU performance of a tegra 2 CPU (at least it seems that way from my benchmarking on my HP touchpad running android and the various benchmarking apps (though android is in beta and performance is not completely taken care of yet.

For GPU performance the the snapdragon crushes the tegra 2 easily though not the tegra 3

PS the snapdragon CPU's are pretty good at overclocking. currently they top out at about 1.9GHz for their dual core chips easily making it the fastest dual core arm chip on the market. (in my testing, the overclocked HP touchpad (android limited me to 1.7GHz) was able to beat every other non overclocked mobile CPU in the benchmarking apps except the new tegra 3 tablets (which use quad core, but even then it was only like around 40% faster)

(not sure about the performance per clock of the MSM8625 though)

With tablets and ARM devices in general becoming more popular, I think it will be great if tomshardware can benchmark these mobile CPU's

 

[razor512]

PS it would be great if these companies can come out with new chips eg quad core or dual core running at a significantly higher clock speed and maintain compatibility and pinout so users who are more skilled with surface mount soldering can take their old phones or tablets then simply grab a heat gun then desolder the old chip and solder in a new one and enjoy a good CPU upgrade.

 

[freggo]

Hmmm, replacing a surface mount CPU in a smart phone as a home project. Yeah, I can see how that can have mass appeal

 

[kyuuketsuki]

Are the S1 Snapdragons the ones in Windows Phones? Does this mean we might finally see some dual-core Windows Phones on the market?

Also, I can't seem to find any benchmarks of the Adreno 203 GPU. I assume it's slower than the 205, but I'm wondering how it compares to other GPUs on the market.

 

[joytech22]

[citation][nom]Zingam[/nom]Tegra 3 isn't so great actually. It's overhyped. See the iPad 2 chip is more powerful. It appears that at least for an year we won't have anything extraordinary on the Android side.[/citation]

The iPad 2 chip is from Samsung.
Go samsung! lol

 

[razor512]

In terms of raw CPU power, the ipad 2 CPU is at a similar speed to the tegra 2 CPU

The only area where the ipad 2 excels in is the GPU

The GPU in the ipad 2 is faster than that of any tablet (not 100% sure of the tegra 3 though)

With the graphics on games for ipad 2 that are also available for other tablets, I am pretty sure that no tablet game is using the full power of the ipad GPU horsepower

 

[Vladislaus]

[citation][nom]Zingam[/nom]Tegra 3 isn't so great actually. It's overhyped. See the iPad 2 chip is more powerful. It appears that at least for an year we won't have anything extraordinary on the Android side.[/citation]
Benchmarks disagree with you.

 

[blackened144]

[citation][nom]Zingam[/nom]Tegra 3 isn't so great actually. It's overhyped. See the iPad 2 chip is more powerful. It appears that at least for an year we won't have anything extraordinary on the Android side.[/citation]
Your comment is only correct on the GPU side of the performance equation.. The 5 CPU cores in Tegra3 make it the best available on the CPU side of the equation..

 

[blackened144]

[citation][nom]Razor512[/nom]In terms of raw CPU power, the ipad 2 CPU is at a similar speed to the tegra 2 CPUThe only area where the ipad 2 excels in is the GPUThe GPU in the ipad 2 is faster than that of any tablet (not 100% sure of the tegra 3 though)With the graphics on games for ipad 2 that are also available for other tablets, I am pretty sure that no tablet game is using the full power of the ipad GPU horsepower[/citation]
You are correct, the iPad2 does have the fastest GPU in any tablet.. Some older versions of the OpenGL benchmark(Pre 2.1) show Tegra3 as being 20% faster and only on the Egypt benchmark, but in the newest version of the benchmark (2.1) the iPad2 is 20% faster than the Tegra3 on that same Egypt benchmark.. I believe Anand has a few reviews with the benchmarks showing this..