According to VP of product management Raj Talluri, there may be conceptual models - which would be in line with the company's February 2011 announcement that samples of 2.5 GHz APQ8064 quad-core chips will be available in early 2012, but the firm's focus will be on reduced power consumption for LTE phones.
Talluri said that the dual-core, 28 nm MSM8960 that was shown in prototype phones at MWC 2011, will debut in several production phones during MWC 2012. The 8960 will integrate the updated Adreno 225 GPU core and deliver much better battery life on 3G/LTE phones than previous processors due to the integrated LTE radio that takes advantage of resource sharing.
If Qualcomm can deliver on the promise, the 8960 chip could be a big deal for the industry as there may actually be an LTE phone that does not eat through an entire battery charge within a few hours. However, the lack of a quad-core chip on the high-end may divert the attention at MWC to Samsung and Nvidia, both of which will be showcasing new and production-ready flagship models. Talluri said that 8064-based phone will not be available until this fall.