The Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 Series tablet showcases the brand's latest chipset, which is capable of capturing and playing back content in 4K
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 series 2.3GHz chip was announced at the company's keynote speech and the company has built a tablet around it. The device we saw was only a prototype - more of a showcase for the company's new chip that a new piece of hardware.
CEO Dr Paul Jacobs wouldn't be led into telling exactly which manufacturers Qualcomm will be working with, but we'd expect to see the chip turning up in kit made by other companies, rather than a Qualcomm-branded product.
All we know is that we can expect to see some Snapdragon 800-toting products by the end of the year. We were also told that the aim is to produce products with all-day battery life.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 tablet: Processor
The main draw for the new chipset is that it enables you to capture, playback and display content in UltraHD (4x full HD). It also has Dual Image Signal Processors (ISP), so that one can be used for each camera on a mobile device (rear- and front-facing).
There's also a new Adreno 330 GPU which is designed to deliver more than 2x the performance compared to the current 320 GPU. According to Qualcomm, Snapdragon 800 processor will deliver up to 75 percent better performance than the S4 Pro chipset.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 tablet: Screen
As a prototype, obviously this isn't the best looking tablet around, with little attention paid to aesthetics, but it's really all about the speed and the screen.
There are no specifics on the screen size yet, but it looked like a 10-inch screen to us, and whatever the PPI is, it's set to be a fair bit higher than that of the Retina display on the iPad 4 and iPhone 5 (4x that of a 1080p display).
The tablet was running an animated video clip that Qualcomm has produced for its keynote speech. We originally saw this on a huge screen, but it looked no less impressive on the tablet, which eye-popping detail and clarity.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 tablet: Performance
After we'd managed to grapple the tablet away from the over-protective staff on the Qualcomm stand, we were able to have a quick browse around the UI which was very zippy and responsive.
We also had the chance to try out a modified version of The Dark Knight Rises game. New layers and texturing have been added in to showcase what the chip can do when it comes to graphics processing and the result is superb.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 Series tablet: Verdict
With Qualcomm promising that we'll see the Snapdragon 800 chip in products in the second half of 2013, it will certainly be interesting to see what they come up with. The clarity on the graphics was outstanding, so this is set to be particularly good news for gamers.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 Series chip release date: 2nd half of 2013
