As mobile devices get smarter, silicon providers are hard at work creating chipsets that support more and more functionality. One such offering from Qualcomm Inc. is the Snapdragon chipset, which was revealed at Mobile World Congress to be the horsepower behind Toshiba’s new upcoming TG01 smartphone, as well as Xandros’ partner in tackling the netbook market.
Snapdragon offers Wi-Fi, HSPA and GSM, GPS, CDMA Rev. A and EDGE and Bluetooth, twice the average processing power and upgraded support for multimedia. It’s meant to target netbooks, mostly (Qualcomm recently said that it expected to use Snapdragon to take the Google Android mobile OS to the netbook category). However, the first Snapdragon device will be a smartphone.
Toshiba announced the new Toshiba TG01 at the conference, to become available in the summer. The device-maker said that while this is technically a smartphone, it might be pioneering a new device category, one that lies between a smartphone and a netbook, with a focus on Web apps and support for advanced multimedia within a smaller form factor than a sub-notebook. The TG01, incidentally, will run on Windows Mobile 6.5.
"The next generation of mobile computing is being defined by the user experience and by new devices that offer fast processing, rich graphics and intuitive software," said Paul Jacobs, Qualcomm CEO.
Xandros meanwhile announced a turnkey software solution for Snapdragon that targets mobile OEM vendors and carriers with an application suite that includes a browser, push-based email, PIM, instant messaging, a photo viewer, a media player and an office suite to create and edit Microsoft Office documents. It also comes with tools to customize its functions and interface for specific markets and user demographics, and it includes a brandable online application store.
"This new solution will change the way people think about mobile computing,” said Andreas Typaldos, CEO of Xandros. “By introducing the powerful netbook experience that Xandros developed for the Eee PC to Qualcomm Snapdragon, OEMs and carriers can reach new markets and create recurring revenue streams.
“With the help of Qualcomm's next-generation technology we deliver always-on 3G networking, high performance multimedia, location-aware content, and full Internet productivity,” he added.
