Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 4K tablet hands-on review

Mobile World Congress 2014 saw a wave of new proc essors appear on the sc ene. This kic ked of with Intel, when it launc hed a major offensive into the smartphone market, unveiling its dual-c ore Merrifield and quad-c ore Moorefield Atom proc essors. Not wanting to be outdone by the PC heavyweight, Qualc omm answered bac k, unveiling its latest top-end Snapdragon 805 64-bit proc essor. Performance On paper the Snapdragon 805 is pretty impressive. Built up of four Krait 450 c ores with a maximum c loc k speed of 2.7GHz, the c hip also integrates an Adreno 420 GPU and 128-bit memory interfac e. But a c hip by itself is never the whole story, and it's all about how it works with the other parts and

software in the devic e. We got to test the Snapdragon running inside several demo Android tablets at Qualc omm's MWC stand, and we were very impressed by how well they ran. Trying out the first tablet with a variety of preinstalled applic ations, the devic e was lighting fast. We were partic ularly impressed with how well it dealt with heavier, more demanding tasks suc h as 1080p 3D gaming. We're guessing this is due to the c hip's upgraded Adreno 420 GPU, whic h is listed as offering 40 perc ent better performanc e than the older 320. It's also likely a c onsequenc e of the fac t that the Adreno 420 GPU supports new hardware tessellation and geometry shaders for 4K rendering. Hardware tessellation is a feature traditionally only seen in disc rete GPUs for PCs and it has only rec ently been inc orporated into Direc tX and next-generation games c onsoles suc h as Sony's PS4 and Mic rosoft's Xbox One. For us the feature's inc lusion on the Snapdragon 805 is sign that Qualc omm is working to further c lose the gap between PCs and tablets. 4K ultra HD resolution display We notic ed the biggest Snapdragon perk on a sec ond tablet, whic h had a 10.1in 4K ultra HD 3840x2160 resolution display. This display quality is only possible on the tablet thanks to the advanc ed GPU and CPU c ombination in the Snapdragon 805, and we have to c onc ede that the 4K display is a serious tec hnic al ac hievement.

Viewing a variety of images on the devic e, we found it one of the c rispest and sharpest displays we've seen on a tablet. From, what we've seen of the test devic e so far, the display easily beat the iPad Air's performanc e. Holding the tablet as c lose to our fac e as we c ould, we still c ouldn't disc ern individual pixels on the sc reen.

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As an added bonus the Snapdragon 805 Technical also offers 4K video playbac k, featuring support for the expert hardware 4K HEVC (H.265) dec ode for mobile. Sadly, we didn't get a c hanc e to test this during our hands on. Other Chances There's c urrently no word about when the first What Snapdragon tablets will be go on sale, but from are quick805 questions? what we've seen of the Qualc omm demo devic es, we're pretty exc ited. The demo tablets we tried seemed lightning fast and, while we didn't get a c hanc e to benc hmark them, they did seem to offer substantially improved performanc e on Qualc omm's previous Snapdragon 800 proc essor. That said, the real question isn't how the Snapdragon 805 c ompares with the 800, it is how it will matc h up to the performanc e of Intel's Moorefield. We're yet to get a c hanc e to test this, but with Dell, Lenovo and Asus c onfirmed to be working on devic es using the upgraded Atom c hips, hopefully we won't have to wait long to do so. By V3's Alastair Stevenson 03 Mar 2014

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