HTC seems to be getting into the custom chip game, probably bothered by the production problems of the Snapdragon S4, found in the HTC One Xl smartphone. We all know that Apple makes it own custom chip designs, while Samsung has the Exynos and Sony has ST-Ericsson chips. Even Huawei has its own quad core chipset and now HTC goes down that route, too.
HTC is working together with ST-Ericsson to create a custom processor, that’s ideal for lower end smartphones with Android. The result will hit the market next year and I really wonder what the contribution of HTC is here, since they’re new in this field. They might simply give their partner some power and performance figures to go by. The chip that’s being developed may end up being a version of the ST-Ericsson U4500, announced in February 2011. That one combines the 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 with an ARM Mali 400 GPU and HSPA+ modem.
WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and NFC are also supported and the chip was created with $100 smartphones in mind. The good thing here is that HTC can deliver these chips in time and not be forced to wait on the likes of Qualcomm, that are overwhelmed by demand for the Snapdragon S4. Still, I wonder if HTC will share the goods with other companies…
