Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 210, a Cheap Chipset with LTE Support
Qualcomm dominates the mid-range and premium smartphone space with its chipset, while the low-end entry market was ruled by MediaTek, until it launched its premium LTE octa-core chipset recently. According to IDC, around 40 percent of the smartphones shipped in 2014 Q3 are powered by MediaTek, versus 27 per cent by Qualcomm with NVIDIA and Intel holding less than one percent share.
As we know, entry level market is where the money is these days, with budget phone flooding the market. It’s no surprise that Qualcomm’s striking back by offering an LTE-enabled SoC, the Snapdragon 210, for the entry-level market.
As expected, Qualcomm’s new 28nm low-power Snapdragon 210 isn’t a powerhouse chipset like other high-end chipsets you find in the flagship smartphones usually. However, it’s still a complete package in itself. The chipset boasts 1.1 GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 CPUs, Adreno 304 GPU, Bluetooth 4.1 and 802.11n WiFi, along with support for display resolutions of up to 720p, up to 8-megapixel cameras (1080p video capture and playback; H.265 codec supported to cut bandwidth by half) and QuickCharge 2.0. More importantly, this chip supports multi-mode 3G as well as dual-mode LTE (up to Cat 4 at 150 Mbps with 2×10 MHz Carrier Aggregation) and dual-SIM.
The Snapdragon 210 will be the only chipset in the market that will offer LTE Advanced in the sub-$100 device category, hence the company doesn’t need to worry about any competition. Of course, it’ll all depend on the device manufacturers to hit that sub-$100 spot using this new chip, though Qualcomm will also be lending a hand with its upcoming Snapdragon 210 smartphone and tablet reference designs. The only hiccup we see is that these devices won’t launch until some time in the first half of 2015.
