Think you could game on a tablet for 26 hours in a row? Ever dream that your name would appear in the Guinness Book of World Records? Want a shot at $50,000 in cash prizes?

Today Qualcomm announced they are working with the Guinness Book of World Records to host the first ever Snapdragon Gaming [...]]]>

Think you could game on a tablet for 26 hours in a row? Ever dream that your name would appear in the Guinness Book of World Records? Want a shot at $50,000 in cash prizes?

Today Qualcomm announced they are working with the Guinness Book of World Records to host the first ever Snapdragon Gaming World Record Challenge at this year’s E3. Gamers will be provided with a Snapdragon-powered Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and then be challenged to play the latest Android games to beat the record of Longest Video Games Marathon on a Tablet.

Qualcomm tells us they have partnered with popular developers Gameloft, Halfbrick, Sega, NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc., Glu and Com2Us, so there should be plenty of games to keep you going.

If you live in the Los Angeles area, and we know a lot of you do, then you should register for the qualification event that is taking place later this month. Anyone who is a California resident and over the age of 18 can sign up, and they will be entered into a random drawing for one of 120 spots for the qualification party.

Qualification Party details include:

• What: Snapdragon Gaming World Record Challenge Qualification
• Where: Lexington Social House, 1718 Vine St., Hollywood, CA
• When: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 at 7:oo PM
• How: Register now

Once the 120 participants have been chosen for the qualification event, they will compete on one game that will be announced at the event. The top 50 Challengers will win a coveted seat for the Snapdragon Gaming World Record Challenge at E3 from 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 5 through to 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 6.

Those who are lucky enough to qualify for the World Record challenge will have a chance to score some serious cash prizes and a new Android tablet.

Prizes include:

• Grand Prize – $20,000 and a Samsung Galaxy 8.9 Tab
• Second Prize – $15,000 and a Samsung Galaxy 8.9 Tab
• Third Prize – $7,000 and a Samsung Galaxy 8.9 Tab
• Fourth Prize – $5,000 and a Samsung Galaxy 8.9 Tab
• Fifth Prize – $3,000 and a Samsung Galaxy 8.9 Tab

We love Android games and I’m thinking about attending, so let us know if you register and plan to attend. Are you up to the challenge?

The HTC EVO 4G LTE, Sprint’s variant of the HTC One X, was unveiled today at Sprint’s press event in New York city. Sprint’s CEO, Dan Hesse, took the stage during the press event, showing off what will be Sprint’s flagship smartphone for the summer.

The HTC EVO 4G LTE features a 4.7-inch 720p HD [...]]]>

The HTC EVO 4G LTE, Sprint’s variant of the HTC One X, was unveiled today at Sprint’s press event in New York city. Sprint’s CEO, Dan Hesse, took the stage during the press event, showing off what will be Sprint’s flagship smartphone for the summer.

The HTC EVO 4G LTE features a 4.7-inch 720p HD display, a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor, 8 megapixel rear camera with an f2.0 lens BSI sensor, dedicated imaging chip and HTC’s new Image Sense technology. Other specifications include a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera, 1 GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, NFC, LTE and a 2000 mAh battery which will keep the EVO 4G LTE up and running for over 24 hours.

One of the new unique features found of the HTC EVO 4G LTE is HD Voice. The feature uses voice over LTE in combination with noise cancelling technology on the handset to deliver extremely clear audio calls.

From a design standpoint, the HTC EVO 4G LTE features a uni-body annodized aluminum shell similar to other HTC devices. HTC has brought back the kickstand (painted red) which is featured prominently as a design feature on the back side of the handset. The placement of the kickstand would make most people think that they would be able to use in only in landscape mode, but HTC’s engineering magicians have created a dual-directional kickstand which works in landscape and portrait more – giving user the flexability allowed by the thicker kickstand featured on the HTC Thunderbolt.

Gallery

The HTC EVO 4G LTE willbe available for pre-order of May 7 for $199.99, with a launch date scheduled for later in Q2.

Is the HTC EVO 4G LTE from Sprint the One you’ve been waiting for?

Qualcomm has posted a cool video on their YouTube site promoting the impressive battery life that users can experience on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon line of processors. The premise of the video? Can a phone go around the world on a single charge? The video shows a mobile device taking videos from 9 cities in 8 different countries [...]]]>

Qualcomm has posted a cool video on their YouTube site promoting the impressive battery life that users can experience on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon line of processors. The premise of the video? Can a phone go around the world on a single charge? The video shows a mobile device taking videos from 9 cities in 8 different countries around the world, traveling over 36,000 miles along the way. In the top, right hand side of the screen, you’ll see a battery meter showing the Qualcomm battery draining as the trip progresses.

What Qualcomm wasn’t expecting was the amount of negative backlash they’d receive for the video. Several users are bemoaning the fact that Qualcomm buried some key details at the end of the video in fine print, like the fact that they used an extended battery and turned the phone off on the plane (thankfully), and that the battery drained a significant amount to produce a 2 minute video.

One of the gem comments came from user mutantemc, who stated:

2:04 minutes of battery? still better battery life than the iPhonemutantemc

The full video can be found below, but you’ll probably want to venture over to the YouTube site for all the lulz.

Update: QualcommVlog posted the following response on their YouTube page.

Hi all – we’ve seen a few questions about the video and wanted to share some answers. We turned the device off when traveling, but squeezed in a few extra texts before the flight attendants gave us the glare. It was a great trip. We had fun making the video and hope you enjoy it too.

Today Qualcomm launched a new promotion called The One Charge Challenge, in order to highlight the energy efficiency of their Snapdragon processors. They released a cool video called Around the World on One Charge to show what they accomplished with a single charge and are now asking users to do the same, in order [...]]]>

Today Qualcomm launched a new promotion called The One Charge Challenge, in order to highlight the energy efficiency of their Snapdragon processors. They released a cool video called Around the World on One Charge to show what they accomplished with a single charge and are now asking users to do the same, in order to win a new Snapdragon-powered smartphone or tablet.

Battery life continues to be one of the top concerns among our audience, so it’s nice to see Qualcomm focus on this important issue. We actually saw the battery life of Android devices decrease in 2011 with the introduction of new 4G LTE networks, but Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon S4 processor should help reverse that trend. It’s built on a more power efficient 28nm process technology and it’s the first system-on-a-chip to feature an integrated LTE modem.

Check out the video below and head over to the Snapdragon Facebook page if you want to participate and try to win a new device.

How to participate:

• Think of an awesome One Charge Challenge.
• Choose to submit a video or photo of yourself. One submission only.
• Give your challenge a catchy title & fill out the necessary information.
• Describe what your challenge consist of. Let us know the necessary details and how it works. Being specific will help voters understand your challenge.
• Submit it on the Qualcomm Snapdragon Facebook page.

Consumers hoping to get their hands on a new Android phone powered by a Qualcomm S4 SoC (system on a chip) this spring may have to wait a few extra weeks. Reports are coming in that TSMC, the manufacturer of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 chip, abruptly stopped production of all their 28nm chips three weeks ago [...]]]>

Consumers hoping to get their hands on a new Android phone powered by a Qualcomm S4 SoC (system on a chip) this spring may have to wait a few extra weeks. Reports are coming in that TSMC, the manufacturer of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 chip, abruptly stopped production of all their 28nm chips three weeks ago to make changes to the production process. Production is expected to be back in full swing in “short order” with supply levels reaching normal levels by the end of March.

The three week production halt of Qualcomm’s S4 chip (which began before Mobile World Congress) could translate into supply shortages or even launch delays for a few Android phones this spring. The HTC One series relies on the S4 chip for the HTC One S and One XL (One X for AT&T). While the phones are expected to debut in Europe during the first week of April, T-Mobile USA, AT&T and other service providers in Europe have not announced exact release dates for the HTC One.

The Qualcomm S4 SoC has been in full production since early 2012, so it’s hard to say how this production issue will actually affect the different OEMs who are using the chip in their phones. Handset delays of supply shortages will be directly affected by Qualcomm’s inventory level before the production stoppage. We hope TSMC gets the production line back up and running in the next few days. Any more delays could cause a serious chip supply shortage for Qualcomm that could carry into the summer.

Next week at Mobile World Congress we will see the debut of several Android devices that feature next-generation mobile processors. Companies like NVIDIA, Samsung, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm will show off their latest silicon, and each one will tell us why their processor is the best.

Just like I wrote last year around this time, [...]]]>

Next week at Mobile World Congress we will see the debut of several Android devices that feature next-generation mobile processors. Companies like NVIDIA, Samsung, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm will show off their latest silicon, and each one will tell us why their processor is the best.

Just like I wrote last year around this time, it is too early to tell which companies’ next-generation offering might be the fastest, but I don’t think it really matters at this point. From what I was shown at CES, all the next-generation of multi-core processors will offer similar experiences, features, and performance.

Today Anand Shimpi and Brian Klug of Anandtech posted some benchmark scores for the upcoming dual-core 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 (MSM8960). I’m glad these guys were able to benchmark the Snapdragon S4, since a surprising majority of geeks have been ignoring this dual-core processor simply because it wasn’t quad-core.

As we reported back in October when we visited Qualcomm, the Snapdragon S4 features Qualcomm’s custom Krait CPU architecture.  This CPU core is different than the reference ARM Cortex-A15 core that will appear in upcoming parts, but it still supports the latest ARM instruction set architecture and should offer comparable performance.

Snapdragon S4 vs the current competition in Qualcomm's Vellamo benchmark.

So when Anandtech benchmarked the Snapdragon S4 against a bunch of current-generation processors based on ARM’s Cortex-A9 core, we shouldn’t be surprised that it outperformed them easily.

What I did find interesting is that each competitors part will have its own small advantages. Intel’s Medfield processor will be slightly faster in Javascript performance and NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 will be faster in graphics performance.

And of course the industry moves so fast that these benchmarks will look vastly different in a couple of months. When Texas Instruments releases their 1.8 GHz OMAP4470, they could take the lead in graphics performance. And then a few months after that Samsung will release their Exynos 5250 which should outperform everything else. After that we will have quad-core Snapdragon S4s, OMAP5, and probably Tegra 4.

Yes, I know it’s difficult to keep up. No matter how much you research this stuff it will continue to change at break-neck speeds.

But for the immediate future, as in Android smartphones shipping this quarter, NVIDIA’s quad-core Tegra 3 will generate the most hype and design wins. It’s still based on ARM’s Cortex-A9 CPU core, but it has four of them (actually five) and the OEMs seem to be obsessed with “quad-core”, just like consumers.

A perfect example of this is HTC’s new smartphone lineup. They have two devices about to be announced, One X and One S, that feature NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 respectively. Even though Snapdragon could offer faster overall performance, HTC chose NVIDIA to power their flagship device the One X.

So why did HTC go with NVIDIA over Qualcomm in their top smartphone? Maybe it was the faster graphics performance, “quad-core” branding, or even NVIDIA’s Tegra Zone, but we don’t have the answer yet.

Hopefully at Mobile World Congress the picture will become more clear, because I haven’t seen many reasons for any consumer to be loyal to any one mobile processor company yet.

Want to catch a glimpse of HTC’s thinnest Android smartphone ahead of Mobile World Congress? A YouTube video just appeared online which reveals the HTC Ville, a device that is rumored to feature a metal unibody design under 8mm thick.

Additional details that have been leaked so far include Android 4.0, Sense 4.0, 4.3-inch qHD [...]]]>

Want to catch a glimpse of HTC’s thinnest Android smartphone ahead of Mobile World Congress? A YouTube video just appeared online which reveals the HTC Ville, a device that is rumored to feature a metal unibody design under 8mm thick.

Additional details that have been leaked so far include Android 4.0, Sense 4.0, 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED display, 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 8 MP rear camera, VGA front camera, HSPA+, Bluetooh 4.0, and a 1,650 mAh battery.

The dual-core Snapdragon S4 will feature Qualcomm’s new Krait CPU core that offers a 60% performance increase compared to the existing Scorpion micro-architecture found in the Snapdragon S1, S2, and S3. A new Adreno 225 GPU will also provide 50% faster graphics performance.

In the video we can see the performance lags quite a bit, but this is pre-production software. Hopefully HTC can achieve the same smooth performance that we have seen on the Transformer Prime.

HTC is scheduled to hold their MWC press conference on February 26th at 8:30 PM (Barcelona Time) and we will be on-site to check out whatever they announce. Be on the lookout for more details over the coming weeks.

Update: The video has been pulled at the request of HTC. We saved a copy, but don’t want to piss off HTC by re-uploading it. A screen capture can be seen below.

When it comes to new phones, we’re all a little curious as to how they’ll perform when compared to devices currently on the market. Since Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon S4 (MSM8960) CPU with Adreno 225 GPU will be all the rage at Mobile World Congress next month, you can probably imagine our ecstasy to see the first benchmark [...]]]>

When it comes to new phones, we’re all a little curious as to how they’ll perform when compared to devices currently on the market. Since Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon S4 (MSM8960) CPU with Adreno 225 GPU will be all the rage at Mobile World Congress next month, you can probably imagine our ecstasy to see the first benchmark scores for the new chip hit the web.

Over the weekend, a mysterious device running Android 4.0.3 with a 1024×600 resolution display (a typical resolution for 7-inch Android tablets) hit NenaMark’s website, posting a score of 54.9 for NenaMark2. A score of 54.9 may not sound much higher than the 46.2 the Samsung Galaxy S II received running on a Cortex-A9 paired with the Mali-400MP GPU, but it does translate into an 18.8% performance increase. Add in that the mysterious device is pushing 60% more pixels than GSII, and you have yourself a pretty impressive feat.

Benchmark scores don’t always paint a full picture of how a device will perform in the real world, but they do give us an idea of how a device will be able to handle 3D gaming and multitasking. While we only have one benchmark to go on, it looks like the Snapdragon S4 chip will live up to the high expectations that Qualcomm has set before us.

How many of you are looking forward to purchasing a new phone powered by a Snapdragon S4 chip in the near future?

Earlier this month Qualcomm launched their GameCommand application into the Android Market to showcase all the titles that are optimized for their Snapdragon devices. The app couldn’t be installed on non-Snapdragon devices and the design of the layout was rather uninspiring, but Qualcomm is investing a lot of resources to make sure that GameCommand [...]]]>

Earlier this month Qualcomm launched their GameCommand application into the Android Market to showcase all the titles that are optimized for their Snapdragon devices. The app couldn’t be installed on non-Snapdragon devices and the design of the layout was rather uninspiring, but Qualcomm is investing a lot of resources to make sure that GameCommand is a success.

Recently we had the opportunity to sit down with Dave Durnil, Director of Advanced Content and Gaming at Qualcomm, who provided a quick walk-through of the app and talked about the future of the program. He told us that the next version of GameCommand is already in development and it should launch next month around the time of Mobile World Congress. New features include the ability to add custom RSS feeds to the news reader, a landscape layout for tablets, and new filters to sort games by category, publisher, and more.

Dave also told us that Qualcomm now has an in-house studio dedicated to making Android games for Snapdragon devices. We don’t know the exact size of the team, but we were told their goal is to release one flagship title per year. Their first game will be a full blown sequel to the mini-game Desert Winds.

GameCommand already boast over 100 titles, which is more than NVIDIA’s Tegra Zone. Not every game is a blockbuster, but Qualcomm has already made deals with Gameloft and EA Mobile to release exclusive titles. Both Gameloft and EA Mobile were originally listed as partners for Tegra Zone, but we never saw any games come from that.

Qualcomm actually shipped more mobile GPUs than anyone else last year (thanks to the integrated Adreno GPU found in Snapdragon), so developers have a lot of reasons to target Snapdragon devices. GameCommand has yet to crack 5k installs, but if Qualcomm refines the app and pumps out some exclusive titles they might be able to catch up with NVIDIA’s Tegra Zone (currently 1 million+ installs) this year.

If you have a Snapdragon device, have you tried out GameCommand yet? Let us know what you think of the app and list the things that Qualcomm could do to improve it in the comments below.

Update: Snapdragon S4 could still be the first platform to enable WiFi Display, but OMAP4 is more likely to beat them to the punch.

Wouldn’t it be cool to walk into your living room and have your smartphone’s content automatically displayed on your TV? WiFi Display is a new industry standard that allows users [...]]]>

Update: Snapdragon S4 could still be the first platform to enable WiFi Display, but OMAP4 is more likely to beat them to the punch.

Wouldn’t it be cool to walk into your living room and have your smartphone’s content automatically displayed on your TV? WiFi Display is a new industry standard that allows users to easily share content from device to device without the need for an Internet connection or access point.

The WiFi Display technology that allows a direct, peer-to-peer wireless connection is known in the industy as WiFi Direct. Analysts predict that every consumer electronics device will be WiFi Direct enabled by 2014, but Qualcomm will deliver this new wireless standard to Android devices this summer.

Every Snapdragon S4 device will support WiFi Display, but the first ones to ship will not have it enabled out of the box. Android already supports the WiFi Direct software stack, but the WiFi Display still needs to be tested and finalized.

The Wi-Fi Display standard should be certified by the WiFi Alliance in Q2 and the first Android devices to support it will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 platform. Today at CES we spoke with Kishore Jotwani, Sr. Director of Product Management at Qualcomm Atheros, and he estimated we could see working WiFi Display on Android by June if things go according to plan.

Once the standard is ratified, existing Snapdragon S4 devices will have it enabled by a firmware over-the-air update.

All devices that support WiFi Display can discover each other automatically and establish a secure connection. Once two devices are paired, they can easily exchange data and services. An example of this would be full screen mirroring of your smartphone onto any screen that has WiFi Dispaly enabled.

For the current generation of TVs and projectors that do not support WiFi Display, a special HDMI dongle can enable this feaure. Expect these dongles to retail for under $100.

Gary Szilagyi, vice president and general manager, consumer electronics group, Qualcomm Atheros said, “Allowing devices to connect and share video and audio content wirelessly eliminates the need for messy cables and allows for viewing from the comfort of your sofa. These new WiFi Display-enabled solutions will encourage manufacturers to create a new generation of interoperable and compatible devices that make for friendlier device connectivity and easy content sharing.”

I’d love to sit down on my couch and browse the web on a big screen using only my smartphone, while it rests in my pocket or sits on the table. Paired with a wireless keyboard and mouse, it would create a PC-like experience, which is pretty damn cool.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 is shaping up to become the do-it-all mobile platform. Check off WiFi Display as one of the must-have features of the next-generation of superphones.