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Snapdragon S4 Pro

Qualcomm's quad core tablet

By on Aug 10, 2012 in Technology

Snapdragon S4 ProQualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro quad core tablet is close to consumer release, a moment much awaited by developers interested in making apps and games for the S4 Pro platform. Early reviewers report that they are impressed by the speed,  performance  and graphic capabilities of the SoC tablet and anticipate it breaking to the front of the Android pack. Here’s a look at the features:

SoC stands for System-on-Chip devices that hold the electronics for a complete, working product on a single chip. Imagine the microprocessor, the digital signal processor (DSP), RAM and ROM, and graphics processor, all on a small chip with an ancillary reduction in power. The result is tremendous speed and mobility.

In August of last year, Qualcomm was introducing the Snapdragon classification of its chips and mobile solutions, ranked after the processor’s power in S1, S2, S3, and S4 classes. To simplify things, the company presented afterwards four secondary versions for the superior class S4: Prime, Pro, Plus, and Play.

The top version S4 Prime is meant for smart TVs and home theater systems, but the following version, S4 Pro, is the one that made it to the tablets and ultraportable ARM, a bit more appealing to the public. It is loaded with goodies and gadgets, including:

  • 4 Asynchronous Quad CPU cores running at up to 1.5GHz;
  • Adreno 320 GPU;
  • 10.1 inch display running a 1366 x 768 resolution;
  • 13 Megapixel Camera with Flash;
  • 1080p HD video and playback;
  • 7 microphones;
  • 2GB of RAM and 32GB of inbuilt storage running on Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich;
  • Android 4.0 ICS;
  • 5200 mAh battery;
  • Charging dock with two USB 2.0 ports, port for HDMI and Ethernet.

The APQ8064 CPU, named Asynchronous Symmetric Multiprocessing or SMP, has the ability to be clocked at different frequencies, depending on the load/usage, so that a 5th core for power saving is unneeded. It allows each CPU to run at a different voltage and frequency, saving power in stand-by or when performing easy tasks, and having all cores kick in when playing a resource intensive game.

Qualcomm says that the Quadcore CPU has been designed to deliver all day battery life, which could be beneficial for business on the go – you won’t have to return to the office to sign a lease, just hand the tablet to the future tenant for an e-signature. The same process can be adopted by the maintenance technicians: having a tablet with an all-day-long battery life they no longer have to go back and forth wasting time checking the Work Order Pipeline, instead being able to do so remotely by accessing it on a tablet that doesn’t need to be recharged all day long (like a laptop would require).

Adreno 320 GPU is the integrated Graphics Processing Unit, upgraded from Adreno 225 GPU, with advanced lighting and shade effects, beyond HD display support, higher frame rates, and smoother game play. Ease of use for graphics rendering (writing pixels to a display as directed by a visual application like a game or UI),  composition (combining multiple surfaces of video, images, graphics to construct a single, final frame for display), and GPGPU Compute (the general purpose computing on GPU, to perform functions previously handled only by systems like CPU). An exciting addition is the GPGPU support for Object Cloning, Object Removal and Low Light Noise reduction.

Putting together the marketing material for your apartment complex could become great fun on this device as you work with photos and floor plans of units, videos and other graphic components.

Performance wise, the S4 Pro scored impressively on standard tests: 7641 on Quadrant benchmark, 5554 on Smartbench, 13971 on AnTuTu Benchmark, and 118938 points in Chrome on BrowserMark. These results beat the Nexus 7and the Galaxy S III easily.

Of course, all this power and performance comes at a price. The Snapdragon is one of the most expensive tablets on the market at $1300. Consumers can look for the Snapdragon S4 Pro quad core tablet to be available during the holiday shopping season, which is just a few months away.