Qualcomm Reveals Snapdragon 835 - collaboration with Samsung

With the year nearing its end, the famous smartphone chip maker Qualcomm just announced their next year’s flagship processor, the Snapdragon 835.

Qualcomm has joined hands with Samsung to bring its next biggest processor that will eventually end up powering the next wave of mobile devices.

Improvements Over Snapdragon 820/821

The company is collaborating with Samsung and utilizing its 10 nm FinFet technology to manufacture the Snapdragon 835. The new chip will perform better than its predecessors and use less power as well.

The new design promises an increase of 27 percent in overall performance and will consume 40 percent less power compared with Snapdragon 821.

Quick Charge 4.0:

You may be wondering that this collaboration with Samsung is not a coincidence. Qualcomm is going to introduce the next version of its Quick Charge technology named Quick Charge 4.0.

The next Quick Charge version will be complying with all the safety measures required for it to be approved by Google and with its partner in chip making, Samsung.

Quick Charge 4.0 will be about 20% faster than Quick Charge 3.o, found in smartphones with Snapdragon 820 and 821 processors. According to Qualcomm, Quick Charge 4.0 will get your device 5 hours of usage time with just 5 minutes of charging.

Better Availability and Better Safety Measures:

Quick Charge compliant cables and power adapters were also less common with smartphone companies often bundling a regular power adapter with their phones instead of Quick Charge compatible adapters. Customers had to buy the charger separately to be able to use the fast charging technology.

Qualcomm is going to remedy this problem by increasing the availability of Quick Charge-compliant adapters and cables next year with the release of Snapdragon 835 in future devices.

These are the safety measures that Qualcomm is looking to employ with Quick Charge 4.0:

"Quick Charge 4 comes with advanced safety features for both the adapter and mobile device. Protection is implemented at multiple levels and throughout the entire charging process to more accurately measure voltage, current, and temperature while protecting the battery, system, cables and connectors. An additional layer of protection is also being added to help prevent battery over-charging and regulate current throughout every charge cycle."

Via TechCrunch 

Samsung introduces its first ever cord free earbuds - For ANDROID ONLY

Samsung showed off its first-ever cord-free earbuds Thursday, extending its line of wearable fitness gadgets.

The Gear IconX has built-in heart rate and distance monitoring that works by using an optical sensor and accelerometer.

The earbuds can play music with or without a phone, and they can take calls when paired with a phone by acting as a Bluetooth headset. They have 4 GB of internal storage and can stream Spotify, Google Music and Pandora (P) through a Bluetooth-connected smartphone. There's also a cool ambient sound feature that lets outside noise blend in with the audio.

I spent a little time wearing them and found the earbuds to be very comfortable and secure. I ran on a treadmill at about 6 mph for two minutes and they felt securely tucked in my ear -- after I found right size plugs. (One of the earbuds fell out about halfway through on my first attempt.)

The sound quality is rich and full, and volume and menu options are accessed through touch control.

The Gear IconX earbuds come in a charging case that can hold two additional full charges. Samsung says battery life should run around one and a half hours if the earbuds are paired to a phone and three hours if they're not.

Cordless earbuds aren't a new concept, but current models tend to be either too expensive with too few features, or inexpensive and questionable quality.

At $200, the Gear IconX isn't exactly cheap, but Samsung will likely offer promotions for the device in the third quarter when they become available. There are three colors -- black, white and blue.

I stopped listening to music at the gym last year after I crushed my iPhone between the pedals of an elliptical machine. Luckily, only the charging port was dented, but it was enough for me to understand that cords and swinging arms don't mix.

Still, cords and wires at least make it easier to find headphones in a bag, and if you lose one of these earbuds, you'll have to buy a whole new set.

Samsung also introduced an update of its Gear Fit activity tracker Thursday.

The Gear Fit2 now has GPS, a much wider screen that displays text vertically and a curvier shape for better fit. The Gear Fit2 also comes in a smaller size.

Like the Gear IconX, the new Fit has 4 GB of storage and Spotify is built in to play play music without a phone. The Gear Fit2 is also waterproof for up to half an hour.

Pre-orders for the Gear Fit2 start Friday for $179.

How Samsung plans to keep the Galaxy S7 cool

As hardware makers cram more power into smartphones, the heat produced by the CPU and GPU becomes more of a problem. Samsung hopes to address this issue with the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge by using liquid cooling. 

"Whoa, liquid cooling?" I hear you scream at your screens. "Doesn't that mean pipes and radiators and water and so on?"
The sort of liquid cooling we're talking about here isn't like the liquid cooling systems that performance gamers use to cool their PCs. Instead, what we're talking about here is a closed-loop heat pipe technology.

There's still a liquid involved, but only a drop, and this is safely held inside metal tubes that are made of copper or aluminum. The liquid, which in this case is probably water or ethylene glycol, passes over an evaporator where it is exposed to the heat of the CPU of GPU. Here it is turned into a gas, and this vapor then makes its way along tiny tubes to a diffusion plate or radiator, where the heat is given off and the vapor turns back into a liquid and then makes its way back to the evaporator.

Note that the diffusion plate doesn't feature a fan or such, and there are no pumps inside the heat pipe moving the liquid and vapor about. It's a purely passive device, and its purpose is to take the heat from the CPU and GPU and dissipate it over a larger area, preventing the formation of hot-spots, and hopefully putting an end to overheating (which was a problem that Qualcomm had with the Snapdragon 810).

All of this sounds big and clumsy, but it isn't. Fujitsu has a heat pipe system designed specifically for smartphones where the pipes are only 0.1mm thick, and the evaporator and diffusion plates are only 0.6mm and 1.0mm thick, respectively

And the Samsung Galaxy S7 isn't the first smartphone to feature liquid cooling. Microsoft's Lumia 950 and Lumia 950xl both use liquid cooling. Sony's use of the technology goes further back, to the Xperia X2, which was released in March of 2014.

Why use liquid cooling? It's probably being used for a number of reasons. First, Qualcomm had problems with the Snapdragon 810 overheating, a problem that resulted in Samsung passing up on the chip for the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. The liquid cooling would certainly help to prevent this issue from happening again.

Another reason is that smartphone makers are using more and more glass in their smartphones. Because glass is a poor conductor of heat, hot spots can form on the device, and even if the back is metal, these hot spots can make the device uncomfortable to hold when it's running demanding apps.

Also, let's not forget that "liquid cooled" looks good on the sales material. I have little doubt that by this time next year, every major smartphone manufacturer (with the exception of Apple) will be touting liquid cooling as a feature on high-end devices.