Qualcomm Articles

Apple and Qualcomm are now locked in a legal battle. The claim from against Qualcomm is that the company is anticompetitive in its methods to keep their monopoly on the semiconductor market in mobile phones.

Qualcomm chips are found in iPhones, Samsung, HTC, LG, Xiaomi, Sony, LeEco, HP, ZTE, ASUS, OnePlus, Moto and more. With so many companies using Qualcomm chips, it’s easy to see how the semiconductor company is a target for lawsuits. Samsung and Apple made up 40% of Qualcomm’s $23.5 billion revenue the last financial year.

An interesting idea for a smartphone is on Kickstarter, the Robin by NextBit. The Robin is an Android-based smartphone that, instead of having the best camera or best display, claims to have the best ability to connect to a cloud intelligently. Smartphones are something used daily and gather a lot of information in their storage. No doubt you’ve been using your smartphone for a while and notice that the storage is filled despite you not saving much to it. It’s easy to run out of room in your smartphone’s internal storage. The Robin aims to fix that problem for users.

It’s helpful to have a smartphone with powerful specs inside it. Not because of the power, but due to it being compatible with new apps being released or to take advantage of new features added to OS updates. The cost of having the latest flagship model Android or Apple smartphone is usually not worth the upgrade. As said, having a powerful smartphone is helpful but it isn’t required.

Last year, OnePlus, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer released a smartphone that wasn’t expected, the OnePlus One. This smartphone packed with powerful technology and was priced at a low $299. This year, rumours have gone around about a new model that’s planned for release this month, the OnePlus 2.

Recently net neutrality supporters, backed by President Barack Obama, came out in favor of reclassifying broadband internet as a public utility under the Telecommunications Act. Cable and wireless companies have been avid in their opposition to this solution, but other industries have been rather silent on the issue. Now, tech companies including Qualcomm, SNC, IBM and Intel have spoken against the measure.

A joint letter was sent to Congress this week, signed by 60 influential brands in the tech world. It stated that they were all opposed to the idea of creating a Tier II classification for internet service, claiming it would impede the growth of the web’s economy, and stop companies from investing in broadband.

Processor manufacturing stalwart Qualcomm has announced the coming of the Snapdragon 810 and 808 chipsets. These next-gen chips are expected to power the latest smartphones and gadgets coming in the year 2015.

The majority of smartphones have a Qualcomm of some description powering it, with the exception of a few (like Apple). The Snapdragon series are quite popular(especially Snapdragon 800), used in a huge number of high and medium end models to keep up with the rising improvement of graphics on even less impressive devices.

In the United States there is fierce competition between e-readers, especially between the two biggest names in the business: Amazon and Barnes & Noble. While both the Kindle and the Nook have incredible features and are fantastic e-reading devices, a new contender recently emerged overseas and was just announced at the Consumer Electronics Show on January 10^th.

Qualcomm Chief Executive Paul Jacobs had the pleasure of announcing the thinnest and lightest e-reader at the CES 2012 the other day. It’s called the Hanvon C18 and Hanvon utilized Qualcomm’s new energy efficient mirasol display for their new e-reader.

Mirasol is a technology Qualcomm has been working on for several years and it is a solution to the energy consuming LCD displays that other devices utilize. Mirsol is a type of display screen that utilizes soft indirect light which is then tuned and reflected back at the viewer. Overall the Mirasol display uses 1/10^th of the power to create a vivid image than an LCD screen does.

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs announced at the Consumer Electronics Show Tuesday that the S4 processor, their latest creation, will be loaded later in 2012 into notebooks, smart TVs, and smartphones, and digital media adapters. They are not joking either. There are more than 70 devices designed around this new chip, from more than 20 manufacturers. Qualcomm is even working together with Microsoft on LTE solutions, utilizing S4 chips. The S4 chips have integrated Wi-Fi and high performance built-in graphics adapters.

A 1.5 GHz quad-core is the main feature of the Snapdragon S4 MPQ8064 processor. Both the graphics and audio are built-in, based on Qualcomm’s Krait micro-architecture-Adreno™ 320 graphics and advanced audio/video capabilities. This reduces power consumption and increases the performance in the mobile computing experience.