Qualcomm Confirms Snapdragon 600 For Samsung GALAXY S 4
Though the details were a bit less than solid in the official Samsung releases over the past 24 hours, today Qualcomm has confirmed that the GALAXY S 4 will indeed be carrying the all-powerful Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor onboard. This processor is the same motor that runs the HTC One and the LG Optimus G Pro, devices you may have seen SlashGear work with before. This detail adds to the ever-growing list of specifications that the GALAXY S 4 has the same as one of its biggest competitors in the HTC One, and should prove to create an interesting set of benchmarks for comparisons between the two.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 is one of two monstrously powerful quad-core processors the company has revealed this year alone. The other is the Snapdragon 800, a System-on-Chip that's only thus far been revealed to be carried by the ZTE Grand Memo, a device whose USA release schedule is still not quite solidified. You'll find more information on the Snapdragon 800's implementation on the ZTE Grand Memo in our Mobile World Congress 2013 report.
The Snapdragon 600 and 800 were revealed back in the first week of 2013 in a full report detailing how they'll be appearing on smartphones (and perhaps tablets) throughout the year. As in previous iterations of the Snapdragon SoC, image processing continues to be a high point – have a peek at our LG Optimsu G Pro Photo Tour from Barcelona during Mobile World Congress 2013 as well for a view of how well the device does with the big Q under the hood.
As for the Samsung GALAXY S 4, the Snapdragon 600 will be appearing with a fantastically large performance increase over its predecessors. Compared to the Snapdragon S4 Pro, Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 600 offers a whopping 40% performance increase – the previous Galaxy smartphone had the Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor, a step below the S4 Pro, so you can imagine this GALAXY S 4 will be delivering quite the beastly bump compared to last year.
" The Snapdragon 600 processor helps consumers do more on their mobile devices, providing seamless app switching, high-speed Web browsing, email connectivity, GPS, multimedia, fast gaming, social networking and 4G/LTE connectivity." – Qualcomm
As it was with the Samsung Galaxy S III, this GALAXY S 4 model will be coming out with different processors in different regions. Inside the USA you'll be seeing the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor while in most (if not all) regions outside the states you'll find the Samsung Exynos "Octa" processor with 8 CPU cores (4 active, 4 backup). We'll be interested to see how these two builds compare to one another once they're both out on the market without a doubt!
Have a peek at the timeline below to see additional insight on the release of the Samsung GALAXY S 4 as well as a set of hands-on experiences and comparisons to other recent smartphone hero models. Stay tuned for more on Qualcomm as well in our fabulous Qualcomm tag portal, too!