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4G LTE or Quad-Core Tegra 3? Which Is More Important For The HTC One X?

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The HTC One X and HTC EVO 4G LTE will both launch in the coming weeks and are both destined to be among the summer’s hottest new phones. However, as I see more and more reviews of the International version, I’m starting to feel more and more miffed that the American market doesn’t get the benefits of the quad-core Tegra 3 processor.

Yes, dual-core chips in smartphones is a relatively new thing and, yes, a lot of consumers don’t know or don’t care about the difference. They should, though, because a quad-core chip means more power which means you can do more with your phone.

Last week SlashGear posted a hands-on video showcasing the One X’s gaming prowess. Since the phone has a Tegra chip inside it benefits from game optimizations from developers that work closely with NVIDIA, makers of the chip.

Chris Burns points out:

What you’ll notice is that not only do these games open extremely fast, their performance is second to none. When you’ve got NVIDIA’s quad-core processor here working with you to this phone’s full potential… NVIDIA’s ability to push secondhand tasks (keeping a game open in what’s essentially idle mode) to the back of their importance list for processing is one of many great features included in this next generation chipset.

The performance boost from quad-core isn’t just a boon for gamers but for all smartphone users.

The point Burns’ makes about the phone’s “full potential” is also important. In my hands-on time with the dual-core version of the One X and the EVO 4G LTE I noted that they are fast, capable phones. In some benchmarks, the dual-core One X even beat out the quad-core version. We’ll have to see if it makes as much difference in everyday tasks as it does in gaming.

(Related: AT&T’s HTC One X Goes With Dual-Core Rather Than Quad-Core CPU)

So why can’t the One X and the Evo have quad-core as well? According to HTC, it’s due to the LTE chips. They’re incompatible with Tegra 3 right now. Given that Verizon Wireless is only releasing 4G LTE phones this year and both Sprint and AT&T are making an LTE push to stay competitive, someone, somewhere need to hurry up and figure out how to make LTE and Tegra 3 play nice together.

Dual-core chips serve smartphones and their users well, so I’m not advocating for a wholesale move to quad-core right away. However, I’m looking toward the not-too-distant future and seeing where smartphones are headed.

No matter what you think about Motorola’s phone Lapdocks or the ASUS Padfone in their current incarnations, they do point us toward the potential for smartphones to be a core element in a larger piece of mobile tech. Just look at Ubuntu for Android, which aims to put a full-fledged desktop operating system on your phone next to the mobile operating system you already enjoy.

(Read: Video — Ubuntu for Android Running On Motorola Atrix 2)

For that kind of use case, you’re going to want quad-core. You’re also going to want LTE.

As I said, that’s near future stuff. For the current moment I wonder if consumers would rather have LTE speeds or quad-core power since you currently have to choose one or the other?


Let us know in the comments.

7 Comments

7 Comments

  1. Sowhat1069

    04/09/2012 at 11:37 am

    Quad core for me.

  2. Lark IronCloud

    04/09/2012 at 11:50 am

    Clearly, the number of cores and LTE SoC aren’t the only things that separates the MSM8960 from the Tegra 3.  In this case, I’d take the Snapdragon S4 over the Tegra 3 for all the details you failed to mention.

    • ddamowanye

      04/10/2012 at 8:28 pm

      I’m going to get the Evo LTE because it gives more features than the One X. I’m not a phone tech type but it never hurts get get as much info as possible on something i gonna spend my money on so I would like to hear all the things he forgot to mention. If it’s not too much to ask?

      • fm123

        04/12/2012 at 10:41 am

        The Snapdragon is the “half step” to the next generation processor (A15), while the Tegra 3 is the current generation (A9).  So right now A9 is “current” and A15 is the next generation processor.  Snapdragon is the design between A9 and A15, which is why I call it a half step newer.  Almost all manufacturers are going to A15 by the end of this year, taking the “full step.”

        That means Snapdragon is the newer design, so it is a comparison of current 4/5 core versus “half step” 2 core demonstrating how much the next generation will improve.

  3. Critic

    04/09/2012 at 3:00 pm

    I don’t like the way the guy in the video uses adverbs. Its the definite most incredibly extreme over usage of them I’ve ever seen.

  4. YoureStupid

    05/02/2012 at 4:01 pm

    its adjatives…… dumbass

    • jabuzan

      09/12/2012 at 3:20 pm

      It’s adjectives, dumber-ass

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