Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro Quad Core: Is It Worth The Fuss?

BSQUARE Corporation recently announced Mobile Development Platform (MDP/T) for Android tablets running Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 processor. These are designed particularly for developers and manufacturers and the MDP/T will be the first to feature the Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core (APQ8064) processor clocked at 1.5GHz, running with the Adreno 320 GPU. The MDP/T features a 10.1in WXGA multi-touch display, Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), 2GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and 32GB storage.

The new quad-core chip - the Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 - is similar to the MSM8690 (Snapdragon S4 dual-core) processor that powers US variants of the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the HTC One X. AnandTech conducted a benchmark test of the APQ8064 running MDP/T and the test results show the S4 Pro is quite a powerful processor.

The APQ8064-based MDP/T performed well in all seven GLBenchmark tests - sometimes topping the chart and beating Apple's new iPad and iPad 2, the HTC One X, ASUS' Transformer Pad Infinity and Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the process.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 MDP/T wound up top of the pile in the SunSprider JavaScript benchmark, Vellemo and BaseMark OS performance tests. In the Rightware BrowserMark test, the S4 Pro took second, only margianlly behind the Transformer Pad Infinity.

Meanwhile, Engadget ran another benchmark for the S4 Pro APQ8064 MDP... this time against the Google Nexus 7 (Tegra 3) and the global and US versions of the Galaxy S3 and One X (Exynos 4 quad core for global version of S3 and Tegra 3 and Snapdragon S4 dual for global and US versions of the One X, respectively). The S4 Pro APQ8064 scored highest in five out of six tests.