Qualcomm announces Snapdragon 800 flagship processor chip at CES 2013

Prominent mobile chipset maker Qualcomm has officially taken the wraps off its latest pair of processors in the famous Snapdragon line – the Snapdragon 800 and Snapdragon 600.

The two chipsets appear to be part of Qualcomm’s rumoured ‘Prime’ range and pick up where the company’s quad-core S4 Snapdragon Pro models left off.

Outlining the new hardware Qualcomm’s senior vice president of product management, Raj Talluri, said devices using them would ‘feel really fast and offer long battery [life]’.

The Snapdragon 800 is the new flagship which will compete directly with Nvidia’s newly announced Tegra 4, it’s based on the 28 nanometre (nm) quad-core ‘Krait’ 400 chip and can be clocked as high as 2.3GHz.

It’ll also introduce the latest Adreno graphics processing unit (GPU), the Adreno 330, which Qualcomm says has been extensively tuned to ‘expand the use of GPU processing for general computing and other SoC tasks,’ meaning it’s not just going to handle your gaming.

According to the chip-maker the Adreno 330 will be twice as fast as its predecessor but the whole Snapdragon 800 SoC will allegedly be around 75 per cent faster than the Snapdragon S4 Pro, which powers many newly announced flagships such as the Sony Xperia Z.

Onboard RAM will be dual-channel and clocked at 800MHz and the chip features on-die LTE connectivity along with new 1 gigabit Wi-Fi tech.

Other enhancements include support for dual image signal processors for up to four cameras, 3D capture and cameras rated up to 55-megapixels.

The Snapdragon 800 features the ability to capture and playback UltraHD ‘4K’ video, which apparently has four times as many pixels as 1080p at a 4096x2304 pixel resolution. HD audio is also supported with Dolby Digital Plus and 7.1 surround sound.

The Snapdragon 600 is one tier down from the flagship and is based around the ‘Krait’ 300 chip. It can be clocked to 1.9GHz and sports the Adreno 320 GPU and dual-channel RAM.

Qualcomm claims this chip will be 40 per cent faster than the Snapdragon S4 Pro.

The Snapdragon 800 is expected to appear in phones from the middle of the year, while the Snapdragon 600 will arrive a bit earlier in the second quarter.