Next Qualcomm Snapdragon chips will integrate LTE for better battery life
Qualcomm are prepping their next generation of Snapdrgron mobile system-on-a-chip tech at next week’s Mobile World Congress show, and look set to include some innovative new ideas.
The new chip (the MSM8960, or Snapdragon S4) remains only a dual-core affair, but thanks to integrated LTE connectivity, is able to boast vastly improved battery life for 4G-enabled smartphones.
American phones tapping into LTE networks currently have to make do with a separate LTE module that not only is a drain on battery performance, buts adds heft to the overall size of the handset.
Even though the handset is only dual-core, benchmark tests from AnandTech show the S4 doubling the speeds of its predecessors, shaving as much as 1.4 seconds off page load times with the cache turned on when compared to a Galaxy Nexus smartphone.
A quad-core version (tentatively rumoured to be called the S8) is said to be in the works. Thankfully by the time the UK’s LTE network spectrum has been auctioned off by Ofcom, we’ll have phones powered by these tasty looking chipsets.
