Snapdragon

As the mobile platform on which almost all of this year’s high-end smartphones will stand, it’s only natural to hope that the Snapdragon 855 will be everything that Qualcomm is hyping it up to be. The chipmaker’s near silence since unveiling the system-on-chip in early December is almost worrying, as if it wasn’t yet ready to release the chips to manufacturers, much less users’ eyes. Now that CES 2019 is done, however, Qualcomm has finally lifted its own embargo on benchmarks and the numbers look promising.

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The latest in the Apple Qualcomm squabble is a testimony from the iPhone maker, suggesting that Qualcomm's not been keen on supplying chips since their FTC trial began. Apple COO Jeff Williams testified during the US Federal Trade Commission trial against Qualcomm, suggesting that it seems as though once Apple filed (several) lawsuits against Qualcomm, Qualcomm's been unwilling to "support [Apple] with new design wins past that time."

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The Lenovo Z5s was revealed today alongside the slightly more impressive Z5 Pro GT. The Lenovo Z5s might look familiar to you - and it should, if you're a keen watcher of the worldwide smartphone release market. This device looks a whole lot like the Huawei P20 Pro - but it's just a LITTLE bit different - on the inside, at least.

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Chrome OS should have been Google’s ticket back into the tablet and productivity world. Indeed, its Pixel Slate announcement was filled with rhetoric about how real computers have real desktop browsers. But while the Pixel Slate fared mostly fine in early reviews when it came to the hardware, there was were some lingering doubts about its overall utility. The uncertainty and doubt might not be over for the platform if its first Snapdragon-powered Chromebook, the one codenamed “cheza”, is as terrible as these first benchmark scores seem to imply.

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Microsoft has ditched Intel and will use a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset for the upcoming next-generation HoloLens, but it's not the one you might have expected. The hotly-anticipated augmented reality headset is shaping up to dramatically improve the blending of virtual objects with the real-world, but of course all of that demands power - and power efficiency.

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Qualcomm may be ramping up for its Snapdragon 855 to show up pretty much across the board in Android flagship phones next year, but the new Snapdragon 8cx for Windows on Arm notebooks is arguably more exciting. The new flagship chipset aims to deliver laptops and 2-in-1s that last for multiple days, are always-connected, and are significantly more portable than rivals using Intel and AMD silicon. Read on for five things you need to know.

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Qualcomm has just announced its horse for the 2019 mobile platform race and much of its rhetoric revolved around technologies like 5G, AI, CV-ISP, XR, and the like. Of course, the Snapdragon 855 is expected to be faster, especially with its new three-tier octa-core layout, multi-core Neural Processing Units, and Adreno 640 GPU. But just how fast is it on a presumed upcoming device? Based on AnTuTu’s preliminary benchmarks, faster than almost everyone except Apple.

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What can you expect from "the most extreme Snapdragon" ever to be found in a notebook? Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx reference designs may not stand out at first glance - think sober Lenovo Yoga-esque convertibles, fanless and unobtrusive with their metallic grey casings - but make no mistake, this is a big deal in connected, ultra mobile computing.

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If there are two things missing from Qualcomm's big Snapdragon 8cx announcement today, it's 5G and actual hardware. The chip-maker has been talking up fifth-generation networks all week at its Snapdragon Summit 2018, making it a key pillar of the Snapdragon 855 mobile processor which will start showing up in smartphones early in the new year. It's also had hardware partners on-stage to talk launch plans.

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Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 8cx Compute Platform, a new flagship "Extreme" chipset for Windows on Arm notebooks, tablets, and 2-in-1s that promises more connectivity, more power, and battery life in excess of 25 hours. The new platform also debuts Qualcomm's new nomenclature for that ecosystem of devices, borrowing technologies from Snapdragon for smartphones but shaping them for ultraportable computing.

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It's easy to get caught up in the 5G hype. Blistering speeds and dramatically lower latency have networks falling over themselves to boast of bigger and more impressive roll-outs, and Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform is at the forefront of that 5G wave. The thing is, while 5G is clearly better than 4G - not least because it has an extra "G" in the name - in reality the Snapdragon 855 is actually much more important in several other ways.

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Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 is about to be everywhere in the Android smartphone space come 2019, but we can break down the five reasons why you should be excited about that. It's faster than its predecessor, more power-efficient, and unlocks new camera features - read on for the five things you need to know.

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