Qualcomm

Qualcomm is experiencing problems with its upcoming Snapdragon 810 chip, expected to power several of next year’s flagship smartphones – potentially delaying their launch. The high-powered chip is expected to be used in the Samsung Galaxy S6, LG G4 and Sony Xperia Z4, and has also been slated for a new Motorola phablet.

Business Korea cites an unnamed industry source in reporting that testing of the chip has revealed several issues.

The Snapdragon 810 overheats when it reaches a specific voltage. It also slows down owing to problems with the RAM controller connected to the AP. In addition, there is an error in the driver of the Adreno 430 GPU.

The 810 is a 64-bit octa-core chip supporting 4K displays, and hence a likely bet for the next generation of top-tier phones … 
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The Wall Street Journal reports that Google’s ultrafast Internet service Fiber has a new leader running the show, and not just any new leader. Dennis Kish, a former executive at semiconductor company Qualcomm, is replacing Milo Medin to head Google Fiber going forward. The Journal reports that Medlin will remain “an adviser to the Google Fiber team,” but the Google vice president will begin work on other unspecified projects.

Kish was brought in for his operational expertise and will lead Google Fiber as the high-speed Internet and television service expands to new cities.

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Amidst today’s plethora of exciting announcements from Motorola—including the Moto 360, Moto Hint, new Moto X, and Moto G—there’s still at least one more new product that the company didn’t really bring to the limelight. As can be found on the company’s website, Motorola is launching a new charger soon (via Android Police), and it claims to give today’s announced smartphones 8 hours of battery on a 15 minute charge.

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Photo: ibtimes.com

While Samsung has been producing its own in-house smartphone chips for a while now, its last few flagship smartphones have used a Qualcomm chips. According to a new report out of SamMobile, however, Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Note 4 flagship might shift back to Samsung’s in-house Exynos processors. Samsung Exynos devices have been available in select markets recently, but availability has been scattered due to the chip’s lack of support for LTE.

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Ahead of Mobile World Congress later this month, LG has just announced its new LG G Pro 2 device as a successor the original G Pro, unveiled at MWC last year. The G Pro 2 features a 5.9-inch full HD IPS display with a 3.3mm thin bezel, giving it a screen to size ratio of 77 percent, putting it near the top of the numbers we saw earlier this week about other devices.

The G Pro 2 also features a 13MP camera that is capable of 12oFPS slow-motion video recording, in addition to standard 4k recording. The camera also includes a variety of shooting modes, including a “Flash for Selfie” mode that offers more “soft” lighting for self-portraits.

In terms of power, the device features a 2.26GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor with an Adreno 330 GPU and 3GB of RAM. It has a 3200mAh battery, as well as a microSD card slot for up to 64GB of additional storage. The G Pro 2 itself will be sold in 16GB and 32GB variants. It will ship with Android 4.4 KitKat.

LG is also touting a new “Knock Code” feature that supposedly makes unlocking and using your phone even easier. Knock Code allows users to unlock their G Pro 2  by simply tapping their screens using one of the 86,367 “knock” combinations.

As far as availability goes, the device is available in Korea now, but LG says it does not know when it will launch in other areas. Full press release after the jump.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nupabf5zsGg

For those of you that aren’t going to make it to CES this year, Qualcomm has released several videos to its YouTube channel, showing off some of the features of its Snapdragon 805 processor. The videos focus mainly on the enhancements the chip can make to camera technology and styluses (via Engadget).

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Look, don’t get me wrong as I’m totally on board with wearables and smartwatches as a new part of the industry. However, I’m still having trouble swallowing Qualcomm’s $349 price tag even if they promise a significantly better display…

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If there is one inescapable fact when buying the latest, greatest tech it’s that whatever you buy today will soon be made obsolete by something launched tomorrow.

Today’s flagship Android devices come with Snapdragon 600 or 800 CPUs. As of today, that’s old hat, as chipmaker Qualcomm unveiled its Snapdragon 805 Ultra HD replacement. This – together with its on-board Adreno 420 GPU – will play 4K video and run at up to 2.5GHz.

But even that may soon pale against the chip announced by rival chipmaker MediaTek (via Engadget) … 
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As Samsung beats back rumors of poor Galaxy Gear sales, it made me wonder what buyers really want to see in their ideal smartwatch? The world may be waiting to see what Apple unveils in the wearables category, but that hasn’t stopped companies like Sony, Qualcomm, and Pebble from trying to capture just a small sliver of this up and coming market.

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Qualcomm’s first foray into the smartwatch category with the Toq is now set to hit retail shelves on December 2nd. Qualcomm’s just issued press release announces a price tag of $349 along with the December release date.

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There’s no question that with every new smartphone release, we look at the camera, the display and ultimately, the battery. As the Nexus 5 begins making its way to the masses, some new software and performance enhancements will offer a slight boost in battery life.

As GigaOM points out, the inclusion of Qualcomm’s new “envelope tracking technology” will make the Nexus 5 a more battery friendly, power-efficient smartphone. Qualcomm’s envelope tracker, dubbed the QFE1100 was first introduced to the world with the Galaxy Note 3, highlighting the Nexus 5 as the second smartphone to include the tech.
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Facebook announced today that it’s starting a beta program for its Android apps that will allow users to sign up to test and provide feedback on the latest build of the app before its released to the public.

Facebook is the most-downloaded app in the Play Store, so we need to make sure it works for everyone, no matter their amount of RAM, network conditions, or version of Android they might be using. Factors like data costs and network speeds are especially important to users, and we want to make sure we’re always optimizing their experiences. With so many use cases to solve, testing becomes crucial to ensuring positive, consistent experiences across Android.

While Facebook noted that it has been providing a beta of its Android apps to partners such as Qualcomm, HTC, Ericsson, Sony, Huawei and MediaTek over the last six months, starting today all users can now sign up to become beta testers.

If you’re interested in signing up, go join the newly created Google Group called Facebook for Android Beta Testers and allow your device to download the latest beta by selecting “Become a Tester” on Google Play. There’s also a Facebook For Android Beta Testers group on Facebook. 
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Earlier on Thursday, we reported on a press release from LG and Qualcomm that teased the successor to the Optimus G flagship would feature a Snapdragon 800 processor, and now the company has sent out another message regarding a mysterious press event. The affair will take place on August 7th in New York City, but no hints as to what we can expect were given, with LG simply calling it an “international media event.”

There’s a pretty solid chance that LG will announce the successor to the Optimus G at the event, but you never know. We’ll be sure to bring you everything you need to know from the event when it happens. 
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LG has announced that the successor to its popular Optimus G flagship will be powered by a Snapdragon 800 processor. While the company didn’t announce what the name of the device would be, it teased that it will see 75 percent performance improvement over its predecessor thanks to the latest Qualcomm chip. The smartphone will also have a new Adreno 330 GPU that delivers two times the performance of the Adreno 320 GPU found in the current Optimus G.

The device will also feature LTE capabilities on carriers that support it, Qualcomm IZat Location technology for improved GPS performance, and Enhanced aSMP (asynchronous Symmetric Multiprocessing), which is an architecture for dynamic power that senses peak performance per core and improves battery life. LG also teases HD multichannel audio via DTS-HD and Dolby Digital Plus with support for displays up to 2560 x 2048 pixels. It’s definitely interesting that the company mentioned that resolution.
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Well-connected Analyst Mingchi Kuo from KGI securities is known for his often accurate predictions (timing notwithstanding) of upcoming Apple products.  He’s got a detailed report out today on the new Nexus 7 that he thinks will be announced at Google I/O and could ship as early as June or July in large numbers.

Perhaps the most interesting bit is that the entry level price will  remain at US$199, with Google likely to lose US$5-10 per unit sold according to the analyst. Why is keeping the same price interesting? Because this thing is getting supercharged according to Kuo:

It will be interesting to see how close to the current display size the new screen is. 1920×1200 is a 16:10 screen ratio just like the current 1280×800 but enlarging it a few points would go a long way in making it more competitive with Apple’s 7.9-inch iPad Mini, and with the shrunken bezel size, Asus could keep the same handheld form factor.

Reuters has some vague new information on the Nexus 7 successor from Google today. Rather than being available at Google I/O in May (which would have been my guess), Reuters thinks it won’t hit the mass market until July. Perhaps a limited run will be available to developers in May?

As far as specs…

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For years, technology lovers who lived in a Sci-Fi world have longed for a way to charge devices in seconds. Last year, Qualcomm hoped to be the one to bring that dream to reality with the release of “Quick Charge 1.0”. It certainly helped ease the pain of long wait times for a phone battery to fully charge, but it wasn’t the “Insta-Charge” solution everyone wanted. Today, the same company hopes to bring us one step closer with the announcement of “Quick Charge 2.0”. Qualcomm promised up to 75 percent faster charge times compared to 1.0, with up to a 60W power output in a single ‘Quick Charge’ outlet-plug. The new charging tech is planned to be released sometime in 2014, along with the special outlet-plugs needed to make the tech work to its full potential.

Qualcomm also announced today something completely new: “Snapdragon Voice Activation”. It’s a hands-free way to wake your phone up without the need to press any buttons or have an active Internet connection. Along with Quick Charge 2.0, Snapdragon Voice Activation is expected to launch sometime in 2014.

Source: Android Central 

AT&T’s LG Optimus G

Sprint just announced customers could pre-order the LG Optimus G starting today for $199.99 with a new two-year contract or eligible upgrade.

So, what’s so special about this particular LTE Android smartphone? Well, it has a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor. It also features a 4.7-inch True HD IPS Plus display, 2GB of RAM, 32GB built-in storage, NFC, and a 2,100mAh battery.

Unfortunately, this powerful handset boasts the aging Ice Cream Sandwich OS. There is also no mention in the announcement of an upcoming upgrade. Take a look at 9to5Google’s hands-on review of the AT&T version for a full spec refresher.

Oh, but we must note the LG Optimus G’s cheese shutter. Yeah—you heard that right. The smartphone’s camera is voice-activated by words like “cheese” and “smile”—eliminating the need for a shutter button. Um, interesting?

AT&T folks should keep an eye out for availability too, as the competing Sprint carrier previously said it would open the pre-order gate Nov. 2.

Sprint’s press announcement is below. 

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We have heard a lot about the much-rumored LG Nexus. From surfaced images and retail inventory listings, we expect the device to bear “LG Nexus 4” branding and launch sometime in the coming weeks. We also heard much about the device’s specs and design that—for the most part—seem to mirror the LG Optimus G. In case you just cannot wait for official details from Google and LG, Russian blog Onliner.by has a full, lengthy review of what it claimed is a “prototype LG Nexus 4”.

As for the specs published by Onliner, the device seems to confirm rumors that the LG Nexus 4 is largely based off the Optimus G. Inside the prototype unit, at least, is a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 4.7-inch 1,280-by-720 IPS display. The device also measured in 1.5mm shorter than the Galaxy Nexus, but it is 1.3mm wider at 134 × 69,2 × 9,2 mm with a weight of 139 g.

The prototype unit reviewed was almost too buggy to review the software (Android 4.1.2), but we do get an excellent look at the physical design of the Nexus 4. A few things we noticed include a new micro SIM card tray, a green LED light on the lower bezel, chrome buttons, and headphone jack position at the top. The website also described the device’s textured back, saying it is “completely smooth” to the touch but extremely scratch proof. It stood up to a scratch test using a key.

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