Samsung Galaxy S III Phones Going Quad-Core in 2012

 
 
By Clint Boulton  |  Posted 2012-01-02 Email Print this article Print
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I've been off for the past week, but this report from The Next Web caught my eye.

It's nothing special -- just the annual post about what Samsung is doing at Mobile World Congress in February. For this year, that includes the Galaxy S III smartphones.

Recall last year that Samsung unveiled its popular Galaxy S II handset, which has gone on to sell over 10 million units worldwide since April. Those were dual-core handsets, ranging from 1.2GHz to 1.5GHz clock speeds.

The S III represents a natural processor leap to quad-core. It won't be the first quad-core Android device. Asus' Eee Transformer Prime uses Nvidia's Tegra 3 quad-core chip.

Here's what seems unnatural to me. I've had my Motorola Droid X -- the single-core, 1GHz Android phone -- since November 2010. Verizon's Website tells me I'm eligible for upgrade in August 2012. Great.

If Samsung is really loading quad-core chips on its S III, you can bet Motorola, HTC and other Android handset makers are planning to do the same. That will mean more choices for quad-core communicators.

If most of the high-end Android handsets will be quad-core by then, and I want to upgrade to the latest and greatest phones with the most efficient processors, that means I'll be eschewing the current dual-core phones for a quad-core imbued phone. Obviously.

I've tested a dozen dual-core Android phones and tablets in 2011 -- the S II, Motorola Droid Bionic and Droid Razr, the Galaxy Nexus, the HTC Jetstream and Motorola Droid Xyboard, etc.

But a whole legion of Verizon customers currently on contract may be skipping dual-core chips for the next-generation quad-core CPUs. Wow.

Maybe this is normal in the PC space, where Intel and AMD pump out tons of new PC chips, but this is warp speed for mobile, where we were stuck on MHz chips for years.

The mobile processor innovation will surely slow as space constraints on the dies challenge silicon scientists, but in the meantime we're in a super-frenetic mobile processing boom. Enjoy it while it lasts.

 
 
 
 
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4 Comments for "Samsung Galaxy S III Phones Going Quad-Core in 2012"

  • Galaxy S III January 09, 2012 3:34 am

    I'm hoping that the Galaxy S3 will have: 1. Notification LED 2. better battery 3. More OTA updates 4. Quad-core CPU

  • TD January 03, 2012 11:53 pm

    I love my Samsung Galaxy S2 Epic 4G touch. The best phone I every had in my hands. This is y I go to Best Buy to buy my phones, so I can get there buy back program. I like keeping up with technology. I will get 50% for the phone if I decide to get another phone within 6 months and after 6-12 months it 40% of what I paid for it. So I will be getting a quad core, if Samsung bring there A game again it will be the Samsung Galaxy Slll.

  • c2rarz January 02, 2012 1:05 pm

    Dude, I had a DX from when they first started shipping. I now have a RAZR. The performance is not imaginary. There is a BIG difference in performance with dual core. It will be interesting to see how well application load balancing works across multiple cores. Keep in mind that more cores consume more power, performance is not free.

  • Michael January 02, 2012 8:51 am

    I just spent over $600 on my SG II. Now there's going to be an SG III in 2012? Wow, I'm sticking with my SG II for a while.

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