Articles about Qualcomm

Qualcomm has entered an agreement with the Chinese province of Guizhou to enter into a joint venture to develop chips for server systems.

This is the latest bold step by Qualcomm, which is keen to expand from relying on manufacturing chips for the smartphone and communications market. Though this could be seen as a risky strategy as Intel dominates the server chip domain with over 90 percent of the market, and with addition worries regarding both the Chinese economy and the global drop in technology demand, Qualcomm is pressing ahead with a $280 million dollar commitment for a 45 percent stake.

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Qualcomm and Japanese tech firm TDK Corporation have announced a joint venture, valued by Reuters at approximately $3 billion (£2bn).

The new company, named RF360 Holdings, will be building modules needed to communicate wirelessly with mobile devices and IoT devices. Those modules include the RF front-end (RFFE) and RF filters, the two companies said in a press release.

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In a press release that announces the start of mass production of chips that are made using its second-generation 14 nm FinFET technology, Samsung has revealed itself as the manufacturer for Qualcomm's upcoming flagship mobile processor.

Qualcomm's next top of the line mobile processor is called Snapdragon 820, and is expected to be available in new mobile devices in the first half of 2016. What's more, it is rumored that Samsung has selected Snapdragon 820 for the upcoming Galaxy S7 flagship, which will likely make its debut at MWC 2016, which takes place next month.

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Xiaomi announced Redmi Note 3 last year, in late-November, alongside the Mi Pad 2 slate. The affordable phablet, which sports a metal body and fingerprint sensor, arrived with a MediaTek Helio X10 processor, but the company is now adding a Qualcomm Snapdragon version into the mix.

The new Redmi Note 3 version is powered by a mid-range, 64-bit, 1.8 GHz hexa-core Snapdragon 650 processor, which offers Adreno 510 graphics, support for UltraHD video and VoLTE, and an integrated X8 modem which enables higher transfer speeds over cellular networks. This model is likely introduced for international markets.

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Qualcomm has officially unveiled its new flagship mobile processor, Snapdragon 820. The new chip promises major improvements in performance across the board, like 40 percent faster graphics compared to Snapdragon 810, and supports new technologies, such as Wi-Fi 802.11 ad.

The CPU inside Snapdragon 820 has four cores running at up to 2.2 GHz, and is touted to offer twice the performance and efficiency of Snapdragon 810's CPU. This leads to a decrease of up to 30 percent in energy consumption compared to its predecessor, which has been reported to run a bit too hot.

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Samsung is going to start using Qualcomm’s processors again with its next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S7.

If you cast your mind back to the start of the year, that was when news first emerged that Samsung was abandoning Qualcomm CPUs for the Galaxy S6, with the phone maker deciding to exclusively use its own Exynos chips (previously, Samsung had used both Exynos and Snapdragon).

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As our electronics become more and more advanced, there is still something that is severely lacking -- battery life. While there are always promises of longer-lasting batteries, they still prove to be deficient. Making it through a full day with heavy use is still impossible for most smartphones, causing consumers to carry battery packs and spare chargers.

Qualcomm's Quick Charge technology has been a godsend for charging. While it won't make your battery last longer, it will allow you to juice it up much faster. The second version of the technology, for example, can charge a device 75 percent faster than traditional methods. Today, the company announces Quick Charge 3.0 and it means even less time tethered to an outlet. Hallelujah!

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Samsung's latest flagship smartphones, the Galaxy Note5 and S6 edge+, are wonderful. We are currently hard at work testing them in the BetaNews laboratory, and will publish reviews soon.

These devices no longer offer removable batteries. While I am totally at peace with losing that feature, other consumers aren't. I'm here to tell you that it truly isn't a big deal. Why? USB power banks are better. I am pleased to share with you all, dear readers, that I have discovered the best such battery pack for owners of the Note5 or S6 edge+ -- the Aukey Quick Charge 2.0 External Battery.

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We all love Qualcomm processors, and so do the manufacturers. And while Qualcomm is enjoying a good hold over almost the entire mobile industry, the regulators are in doubt as to whether the US company has achieved its dominance through fair practices. Or is there something else to the story?

The European Commission (EC) has now opened the case. They announced today that they have opened two antitrust probes into the company.

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Even though it is nowhere near as popular as Apple, LG, HTC or Samsung, up and coming Chinese maker OnePlus has managed to capture the public's attention with the One flagship, and is likely to do so again with its successor. Known as OnePlus 2, it will be officially unveiled towards the end of the month.

In the meantime, OnePlus has revealed some interesting things about its upcoming Android flagship smartphone, including a pricing estimate. Here is everything we know about OnePlus 2 so far.

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For some companies, bringing the internet to the entire world is an important part of giving people greater opportunities. Mark Zuckerberg has been pedalling Internet.org for some time now -- even if a lot of people don’t like the scheme -- and now there's a new kid on the block.

Airbus is due to start building more than 900 satellites for OneWeb, a company looking to bring highspeed internet access to billions of people all over the world. The aim is to offer 100 percent coverage of the globe, and there is a great focus on speed. Airbus is hoping to build more than one satellite per day and launch the first batch in 2018.

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Car maker Daimler has announced that it’s partnering up with mobile tech company Qualcomm to bring wireless charging to mobile phones in cars, as well wireless charging to the vehicles themselves.

The move comes in time of increased pressure towards carmakers to downsize their engines due to tightening emission rules, Reuters writes in a report.

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Samsung has long been criticized for making smartphones that look and feel cheap. This has not only been the case with its low-cost offerings, but also with its mid-rangers and flagships -- you don't need to look further than the Galaxy S line -- which is supposed to be Samsung's cream of the crop in regards to design -- to understand the problem.

Fortunately, Samsung has paid attention lately, proof being the introduction of the A lineup as well as the design changes made for the Galaxy Note 4 flagship, which will trickle down to future premium offerings. And, today, Samsung is expanding the A lineup by adding the A7 phablet into the mix. It is the biggest, most powerful and thinnest of the bunch.

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Mobile devices equipped with a kill switch are starting to become fairly common, in no small part thanks to Apple and Google, which have added this nifty security feature to their respective operating systems, iOS and Android. Now, US chip maker Qualcomm is also joining the party, albeit using a different approach, which, on paper at least, appears to be superior.

That's because Qualcomm has decided to go for a hardware kill-switch, which will first ship in its flagship mobile processor, Snapdragon 810. The main selling points? Users will be able to take advantage of it no matter which operating system runs on their Snapdragon 810-powered device, or whether the operating system offers such a feature or not.

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The mobile device market is extremely diverse judging by the number of companies which sell smartphones and tablets today. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of vendors worldwide. On the other hand, when it comes to mobile processors, there are only a handful of companies which make them. Of those, even fewer are also handset vendors and even fewer still are well known by the average consumers: Apple and Samsung.

It is tough to make a splash in the mobile processor market, as top players such as Qualcomm and Apple are so far ahead in the game that it is very difficult for a new player to catch up and compete on equal footing with the leaders. LG, however, is not afraid to give it a try, as it just unveiled its first in-house mobile processor. And the South Korean maker is not wasting any time as it has already put it to use in its new G3 Screen phablet.

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