After a new device has been launched, there’s the initial hands-on time, followed by a complete review, and of course the teardown comes at some point so that we can know what the “guts” of the device are. UBM TechInsight has taken a BlackBerry Z10 unit apart and found that BlackBerry is using a Qualcomm SnapDragon S4 (MSM8960) in the company’s latest smartphone. We expected as much in our own complete review of the Blackberry Z10 and said then that ” We wouldn’t be surprised if we heard further down the road the processor turning out to be a Snapdragon processor”.Note that while the USA Galaxy S3 uses a dual-core Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, the international version uses a quad-core Samsung Exynos. The choice for using the S4 in north America probably comes from the integrated 4G LTE modem from Qualcomm which is integrated to the chip and already tested/approved/liked by carriers like AT&T.
The same MSM8960 chip can be found in numerous 2012 phone designs, including the Motorola Atrix HD, the HTC EVO 4G LTE, the Samsung Galaxy S3, the Samsung ATIV S, the Droid Motorola RAZR HD and RAZR Maxx HD and many more. We think that it is a great choice, given that it works great and has been proven. Of course the downside is that it’s not the latest processor technology and Qualcomm has since released the Snapdragon S4 Pro, which is used in the LG Optimus G, and Samsung has announced its powerful Exynos 5 Octa at CES. That said, BlackBerry is right to focus on the user experience (which is excellent by the way) because it simply cannot afford to enter the specifications Arms Race at the moment.
Filed in . Read more about BlackBerry, BlackBerry Z10, Qualcomm, Snapdragon S4 and Teardown.