Qualcomm’s chips power most of the Android devices out on the market. Why’s that the case? Because back in 2009 the company was smart enough to see that handset makers wanted a completely integrated solution, and thus Snapdragon was born. What is a Snapdragon? It’s a system on chip that has an application processor, a graphics processor, cellular radios onboard, and even WiFi/Bluetooth/GPS. In other words, someone like HTC calls Qualcomm, orders a chip, shoves it in a plastic body, slaps Android on the device, and then a smartphone is born. Snapdragon chips used to have complicated names like MSM8660, so last year Qualcomm introduced the S naming scheme. A device with an S2 inside is slower than something than something with an S3, which in turn is slower than an S4. The S4 is currently the fastest Snapdragon that’s shipping.
According to The Verge, things are going to get a bit more confusing. It’s no longer going to be enough go to a store and ask for a phone or tablet that has an S4 inside. Now you’re going to be confronted with the S4 Play, S4 Plus, S4 Pro, and S4 Prime. Starting with the Play, that’s for “low end” smartphones. How will the S4 Play compare to an S3? We have no idea. The S4 Plus is for high end smartphones such as the HTC One X. The S4 Pro is also for high end devices, but more specifically tablets and laptops. You’ll probably be seeing Windows RT (read: Windows 8 on ARM) hardware with the S4 Pro inside. And finally there’s Prime, which is meant for televisions and set-top boxes.
Got it? Good, because we’re frankly a bit surprised that Qualcomm is making things even more complicated. And please, don’t ask us about the S5, because we have absolutely no information about that.