Snapdragon and Android in HP's New Smartbook

While Intel and NVIDIA are focusing their efforts on developing products that offer support for devices such as smartphones, tablet PC and netbooks, Qualcomm is looking forward to an upocming wave of new devices that will be designed to take advantage of the company's Snapdragon chipset platform. On that note, the company announced that it collaborated with PC vendor Hewlett-Packard to provide users with one of the first Snapdragon-enabled, Android-based smartbook devices. The new design is expected to be showcased during the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas Nevada.

“Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform delivers significant competitive advantages to our customers, enabling them to feature exceptional performance, ubiquitous connectivity and powerful multimedia in devices ranging from mobile handsets to smartbooks,” said Luis Pineda, senior vice president of product management for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. “Working together with partners such as HP, we will be able to bring a more valuable connected experience to consumers around the world.”

The Snapdragon platform has been received with enthusiasm worldwide, as it was expected to enable a new category of computer systems, namely that of smartbooks. The design announced by HP was built on using the chip maker's QSD8250 chipset platform, featuring the integrated Scorpion CPU, with a supported core speed of 1GHz. Similar to NVIDIA's Tegra processor, the Snapdragon platform is said to offer the combination of processing power, low power consumption and the connectivity that the end user requires. Although no specific details have been made available on the technical specifications of HP's Snapdragon-based smartbook, Qualcomm claims that its chip can enable smartbooks to last all day on a single battery charge.

“HP has a long history of providing consumers with an exceptional level of computing,” said Steve Manser, senior vice president in the Personal Systems Group at HP. “By leveraging the unique features of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipset and the Android operating system, HP is showcasing an entirely new type of mobile device designed specifically for consumers who live a large part of their lives online."