While the flagship smartphone itself will remain under wraps until next week’s press conference, Samsung on Thursday unveiled its next-generation mobile processor, the Exynos 4 Quad, which will power its upcoming Galaxy S3. The new 1.4GHz quad-core SoC is built on 32-nanometer architecture, and Samsung says the chipset will offer significant performance improvements over its previous-generation Exynos processor while consuming 20% less power. “The quad-core processor offers phenomenal multitasking...

Following rumors of a $199 Google-branded tablet, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said he believes that more Tegra 3-powered tablets will be coming to the market this summer at the same low price. By removing things like expensive memory, a $199 tablet is quite feasible, Huang said. Amazon’s immensely popular Kindle Fire tablet — which shipped with just 8GB of storage and no cameras — is available at the $199 price point and managed to capture 14% of the tablet market in its debut quarter. Huang has been...

During Apple’s press event on Wednesday, the Cupertino-based company took direct aim at NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 processor, claiming its own A5X chip delivers four times the performance. The company neglected to show hard evidence to support its claim, however. Ken Brown, a spokesman for NVIDIA, told ZDNet that while it was “certainly flattering” to be mentioned by Apple, the performance claims are unfounded without more data. “We don’t have the benchmark information,” Brown said. &...

Reports that Intel was notifying partners about plans to postpone mass shipments of Ivy Bridge processors turned out to be only partially true, according to VR-Zone. The new report claims that desktop processors are still on schedule and “only the dual-core [mobile] models have been pushed back.” The reason behind the the delay is said to be tied to the massive stock of Sandy Bridge CPUs Intel still has on hand. Intel reportedly has large quantities of leftover CPUs that have not yet been shipp...

Intel could be preparing to unveil most of its next-generation 22nm Ivy Bridge processors ”on or around” April 8th according to a recent rumor. The company is set to introduce 25 different models in total, DigiTimes reported, including 17 chips designed for use in desktop PCs and eight for notebooks and ultrabooks. Intel will announce the following desktop processors in April according to the report: the Core i7-3770K, 3770, 3770S, 3770T as well as the Core i5-3570, 3550 and 3450. The desktop p...

Samsung on Wednesday announced the Exynos 5250, the company’s latest system-on-a-chip (SoC), which packs two ARM Cortex-A15 processors clocked at 2GHz. Samsung said the dual-core chip, which will be used primarily in high-end tablets, offers about twice the CPU performance of its existing products that are equipped with a pair of ARM’s 1.5GHz Cortex-A9 processors. The Exynos 5250 supports 2560 x 1600-pixel resolution displays and also offers more than four times the graphics performance of existin...

NVIDIA has finally announced its quad-core ARM Cortex A9 Tegra 3 processor, previously codenamed “Kal-El,” that will deliver “PC-class performance” for tablets and smartphones. NVIDIA said the new chip will offer 3 times the graphics performance of its dual-core Tegra 2 chip and it will consume up to 61% less power. If a user is listening to music or using a phone in a way that does not demand a lot of power, the new chip will automatically throttle down to use a companion core. Once a...

ARM announced the Cortex-A7 MPCore processor on Wednesday, which it is touting as its most power efficient mobile processor yet. The Cortex-A7 is just one-fifth the size of the Cortex-A8 but provides 5x the energy efficiency and greater performance. The single-core chip was designed for use in budget-friendly smartphones that will be priced under $100. ARM explained that it can create a system on a chip (SoC) with better performance and longer battery life by taking advantage of “Big.LITTLE” proce...

There’s a photo floating around that’s been published on a Chinese Twitter-like site that appears to reveal parts from a new iPhone with Apple’s dual-core 1GHz custom A5 chip. There are a few possible explanations assuming the photo is legitimate in the first place. The front case attached to the internal components in the photo clearly shows the first and original white front panel assembly Apple was planning on using for the white iPhone — the company noticed that there were proximity s...

Following weeks one and two of Qualcomm and BGR’s Snapdragon giveaway, six lucky BGR readers are now proud owners of six awesome Snapdragon-powered devices. Now we’re back for the third and final week of this awesome giveaway series, and we’ve got three brand new devices ready that fall into Qualcomm’s Snapdragon System 3 category, offering up to 1.5GHz dual-core CPUs, Adreno 220 GPUs, HSPA+ support, 1080p recording support, Dolby 5.1 surround sound support and support for stereoscopic 3D...

Trial production of Apple’s next-generation A6 mobile processor has begun, Taiwan Economic News reports. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has kicked off a test run of A6 chipsets — which could be 28-nanometer SoCs that feature dual or quad-cores and ARM-based architecture according to earlier reports — and Apple devices carrying the new chips are expected to be released in the second quarter next year at the earliest, according to multiple anonymous industry sources. Reports dating back to Ju...

You thought we’d be done after three devices? Not a chance. Following week one of Qualcomm and BGR’s Snapdragon giveaway, we’re back with three more awesome devices to send out to three lucky BGR readers absolutely free of charge. Last week’s handsets fell into Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon System 1 category, and this week’s devices are powered by beefed up System 2 chipsets, which offer up to 1.4GHz of processing power, an Adreno 205 GPU, stereoscopic 3D support and plenty mo...

In an age where mobile device components seem to grow by leaps and bounds every few months, it’s pretty remarkable that a pioneer in the space still manages to find itself among the top chipmakers in the world. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip was the first 1GHz mobile device processor to hit the market when the LG eXpo launched in December 2009, and it kicked off a gigahertz craze that has gained steam ever since. Today, Qualcomm is still a leader in the space and the company on Wednesday revealed the ...

Apple will begin to merge its OS X and iOS operating systems in 2012 according to predictions made by Jefferies & Co. analyst Peter Misek.”We believe Apple is looking to merge iOS (iPhones/iPads) with OS X (Macs) into a single platform for apps and cloud services starting in 2012-13,” Misek said. He believes that the A6 processor is “capable of PC-like strength,” and that Apple will implement it into its iPad 3 during the first quarter of 2012, into the iPhone 5 next summer, and in...