Microsoft Announces First Windows Phone 8 Hardware Partners, Qualcomm SoCs Inside [Update: MSM8960]
by Brian Klug on June 20, 2012 2:11 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Snapdragon
- Qualcomm
- Mobile
- windows phone 8
Probably one of the biggest rumors leading up to the Windows Phone 8 announcement was some speculation that Qualcomm would lose its exclusive status as the sole SoC vendor for Windows Phone handsets. As a recap, WP7 and WP7.5 started out with QSD8x50 65nm Snapdragon, and later moved on to 45nm single core MSM8x55 and MSM7x30.
Today, Microsoft announced that Qualcomm will be the sole provider of dual core SoCs for initial launch devices from hardware partners Nokia, Huawei, Samsung, and HTC. There's some wiggle room in there for what comes after that first phase, but for now Qualcomm still holds that exclusive spot.
Update: Qualcomm stated in a note to us that the initial Windows Phone 8 devices will use a Snapdragon S4 Plus SoC. I asked for clarification about which specific SoC this is, and found out it is indeed MSM8960 inside - dual core krait with Adreno 225.
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minhasbabu - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
I love my Win7 phone and will probably still update to the cool looking Nokia 900 Win7 anyways. www.weblobby.netVisual - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
So, it is the same as the Galaxy S III?I wonder if it will be hacked to dualboot Android too, or if the SGS3 will be hacked to boot Windows...
SunLord - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
Even if all the WP8 phones use Snapdragon S4 SoC the initial ones will be using the same basic and powerful chip as a GS3 or One X and will probably be priced at $150 on contract at launch this leaves room for a halo device or refresh running the upcoming S4 with the upgraded Andreno 320 gpu at $199.I'm also not surprised they used Tegra to show off Windows RT given the quad core Krait SoC won't even ship till the end of this year making it unavailable to Windows Rt/8 launch
Laststop311 - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
This is actually a good thing. WP8 will more easily be optimized to run nice and smooth and the a15 cores are actually the most advanced and qualcomm will be moving to quad core a15 and adreno 3xx next gen gpu in 2013 so this manufacture will be in the top for performance.