Qualcomm upgrades Snapdragon processors in competition to NVidia

Smartphone processor design firm Qualcomm has announced it is upgrading its Snapdragon mobile processors, with the announcement coming less than a day after competitor NVidia unveiled its next-generation Tegra 4 processor.

The announcement was made at the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

As part of its product refresh, the company will introduce four tiers of its Snapdragon processor product line, covering high-end premium devices (Snapdragon 800), “mid-high-tier” (Snapdragon 600), high volume smartphones and tablets (Snapdragon 400) and entry level smartphones (Snapdragon 200).

The company claims the Snapdragon 800 processors will deliver up to 75% better performance its current generation Snapdragon S4 Pro processors.

In terms of multimedia, Qualcomm claims the Snapdragon 800 will allow for video capture, playback and display in UltraHD video (with four times 1080p pixel density), Dual Image Signal Processors, HD multichannel audio with DTS-HD and Dolby Digital Plus and support higher display resolutions of up to 2560 x 2048 pixels.

Other features of the Snapdragon 800 include Krait 400 processor cores in a quad-core configuration with speeds of up to 2.3 GHz per core, a fully integrated third generation 4G LTE modem with data rates up to 150 Mbps, integrated chip-level WiFi connectivity and the company’s new IZat location technology, which combines multiple tracking systems into a single navigation platform