Published in PC Hardware

Qualcomm launches Snapdragon 200 and 400

by on21 February 2013

Covers entry level and mainstream

Not only does Qualcomm have Snapdragon 600 chips ready and about to ship, but it is also stepping up its game in entry level and mainstream markets. The company has decided to formally introduce two new chips, detailed a few weeks back.

The Snapdragon 400 series is aimed at mainstream gear. It is powered either by two Krait cores 1.7GHz featuring Asynchronous Symmetric Multiprocessing (aSMP) or four Cortex A7 cores running at 1.4GHz. The A7 version is probably a bit more efficient as well.

The graphics of choice is Adreno 305, but not too much has been revealed about this graphics core. Snapdragon 400 is not an LTE chip, but it does play with HSDPA+ at speeds up to 42Mbits that should be sufficient for entry level phones.

The chip supports LPDDR2 or LPDDR3 RAM memory and camera sensors up to 13.5 megapixels, premium audio, and 1080p video capture and playback. The good news for wireless streaming fans, the chip supports Miracast out of the box. Snapdragon 400 processors will find their way inside the following chips 8226, 8626, 8230, 8630, 8930, 8030AB, 8230AB, 8630AB and 8930AB.

The runner up Snapdragon 200 is the real entry level part and it has four A5 cores clocked at up to 1.4GHz. It supports Hexagon™ QDSP5 digital signal processor and comes with Adreno 205 ancient GPU.
It can playback HD and support cameras up to 8Mpixels and it supports LDDDR2 memory. It is CDMA multimode or UMTS capable chip, it supports multi sim cards and dual sim stand by as well as high accuracy GPS.

Based on the specs one can clearly notice that this is a chip meant mainly for emerging markets in Asia market, where dual sim phones are a big deal.

These chips will join Qualcomm’s quite strong portfolio of Snapdragon processors that should be dominated by flagship 800 series, that should come in the coming months. The 600 that is powerful and ready right now, while 400 and 200 parts should cover the mainstream and entry level respectively.

This looks like a very good year for Qualcomm in the mobile space.

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