Qualcomm says it won't be bringing a quad-core phone to MWC, but will be bringing something better

Qualcomm VP of product management Raj Talluri might have taken the air out of the balloon a little when he said on Tuesday that the company will not be bringing any phones to MWC 2012 at the end of the month powered with Qualcomm's quad-core Snapdragon processor. Talluri said that the only quad-core models that Qualcomm might display at Barcelona will be conceptual models. Of course, that doesn't include the NVIDIA Tegra 3 powered HTC One X that is expected to be introduced at a press event the night before MWC 2012 opens on February 27th.

Before you start that temper tantrum that has been building up inside of you since you read the headline to this story, Qualcomm says it does have something even better than quad-core to present at the expo. We won't keep you in suspense any longer. Grab those smelling salts!  At MWC, Qualcomm will be displaying an LTE phone that won't be a battery hog.

Qualcomm will introduce its 8960 chipset, a dual-core Snapdragon processor with an integrated LTE chipset that will be powering some of the smartphones on display at MWC. To save battery life, the integration allows the apps processor to share resources with the radio. And as Qualcomm's first 28 nanometer chip, Talluri calls it one of the most power-efficient processors around. "All of the LTE devices out there today use separate modems and use separate radios," the Qualcomm executive said. "With integrated LTE we’ll see significant improvements in power efficiency."

LTE's hunger for battery power comes from more than separate processors and radios, but this integration should make a nice difference in LTE battery life. Additionally, Qualcomm's quad-core processors run differently than the competition's products. With Qualcomm's design. each of the four cores does not have to power up at full speed when activated, saving on power usage.

The Qualcomm executive did say that the company might decide to bring a concept model to MWC with a quad-core 8064 Snapdragon processor under the hood. While this model won't be shipping until the fall, some of Qualcomm's customers might come to MWC with quad-core prototypes of their own.

source: GigaOM