Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro developer tablet is a powerhouse

Qualcomm is busy showing off its 10.1-inch developer tablet with the quad-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 SoC and Adreno 320 GPU on it. And going by the ratings that the tablet managed to get at the benchmarking test by The Verge, Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 Pro looks determined to give sleepless nights to its competitors.

The guys at The Verge are pretty impressed with the performance of the tablet, which is quite evident in the following words, “Our hands on time wasn't extensive enough to get a real idea of how the battery life holds up, but after an hour and a half of benchmarking, taking snapshots with the 13-megapixel camera and browsing on the venue's woefully spotty Wi-Fi, the battery level shifted about 15 to 20 percentage points. That's hardly a scientific measurement, but Qualcomm reminded us that the Snapdragon S4 Pro's asynchronous cores are design to manage workloads intelligently; individual cores will shut themselves off when necessary, to give users a bit of extra juice.”

As for the tablet itself, it’s a powerhouse and is sure to attract developers as well as impatient tech junkies who can’t just wait till the Snapdragon S4 Pro starts showing up in laptops and phones later this year. The package is bundled in a simple black plastic shell that proudly displays the model number and the Snapdragon badge. The tablet runs on Android Ice Cream Sandwich and comes with some very enticing features, including seven microphones scattered all over the machine.

Here are some of the specs of the tablet:-

• 10.1-inch WXGA multi-touch display
• 13-megapixel camera with flash
• 2GB LPDDR2 RAM and 32GB storage
• Quad-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 SoC
• Adreno 320 GPU
• microUSB port with microSD slot
• Fingerprint reader
• 3D accelerometer
• 3-axis gyroscope and compass
• Temperature and pressure sensors
• 3.5mm audio jack
• Seven mics for surround sound audio capture

Qualcomms's processors command respect and enjoy a high status in the industry. And it's not for nothing that Qualcomm regards itself as the champion. We all know how Qualcomm had snubbed its competitors with the butter melt benchmark last month, to show the prowess and thermal efficiency of its Snapdragon S4 processors. During the procedure, Qualcomm’s Vidyasagar Rao demonstrated the test by using a thermal camera to prove how cool the handset using a Snapdragon S4 SoC is in comparison to its competitors. He stated that butter melts at 35 degree Celsius and went on to state that the Snapdragon S4 is much more thermally efficient as compared to the competitors. Rao repeated the test by placing the same three handsets together and adding a big chunk of butter on each of the handsets, to check which one melts the last.

One of the competitors in this butter melt benchmark heated up to 55 degree Celsius, which is really hot. The handset using the Snapdragon S4 SoC was the clear winner and Vidyasagar Rao exclaimed, “The Snapdragon S4 is the coolest kid on the block and we mean that quite literally.”

We can expect the same performance plus much more from Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 Pro. Anyway, the developer tablet is expected to start shipping in two to three weeks for a price tag of $1,299. Though it's primarily aimed at  developers, we are sure there are enough enthusiasts who would want to get their hands on this powerhouse tablet.