Qualcomm unveils lower-end Snapdragon 400 and 200 processors

After having unveiled its high-end processors back in January during CES, Qualcomm doesn’t seem to be resting on its laurels. The company has announced its lower-end processors—the Snapdragon 400 and 200. While the 800 and 600 were both geared towards high-end devices, the 400 and 200 are aimed at mid-end and low-end devices respectively.

Snapdragon 400 processors are designed to deliver the performance, connectivity and battery life that consumers expect in high volume smartphones and tablets, and include the following features:

• An option between dual Krait CPUs running at up to 1.7GHz per core, or Quad ARM A7 CPUs running at up to 1.4GHz
• Adreno 305 GPU
• Support for modern technology, including TDSCDMA, DC-HASPA+, 1x Advanced, W+G CDMA and multi-SIM capabilities of DSDS (dual-SIM, dual-standby) and DSDA (dual-SIM, dual-active)
• LPDDR2 or LPDDR3 RAM which gives a speed boost to memory
• 1080p video capture and playback capabilities
• Support for Miracast

The lower-end Snapdragon 200 and 400 may let lower-end phones get high-end capabilities

Snapdragon 200 processors are designed to deliver a balance of value and performance, including robust connectivity and better battery life for entry level smartphones. They include the following features:

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• Quad ARM A5 CPUs clocked at up to 1.4GHz per core
• Hexagon QDSP5
• Adreno 203 GPU
• LPDDR2 RAM
• HD video playback
• CDMA multimode/UMTS modem options
• GPS
• Multi-SIM capabilities of DSDS
• Support for up to an 8 megapixel camera

Snapdragon 400 processors now include the following part numbers: 8226, 8626, 8230, 8630, 8930, 8030AB, 8230AB, 8630AB and 8930AB. The Snapdragon 200 processors now include the following part numbers: 8225Q, 8625Q.

Qualcomm had unveiled its high-end Snapdragon 800 and 600 chips during CES back in January. The company claims that the Snapdragon 800 offers 1.75 times better performance than the S4. While this is yet to be seen, the  specifications of the new SoC include 28nm HPm fabrication, an upgraded Hexagon V5 digital signal processor, 800MHz LPDDR3 memory, Krait 400 architecture running at clock speeds of up to 2.3GHz and an Adreno 330 GPU.

The Snapdragon 600 seems to be an upgraded version of the S4 with some tweaks to the architecture, including a 1.9GHz maximum clock speed, an Adreno 320 GPU and LPDDR3 memory. Both the 600 and the 800 include 802.11ac WiFi, Miracast HD at 1080p and 150Mb/s LTE with Advanced Carrier Aggregation.

While the 800 will be showing itself in the middle of the year, the 600 will be in devices by quarter 2 of 2013. Qualcomm looks like it wants to compete with Nvidia and its Tegra 4.