Smartphones have gotten incredibly complex over the years. Today’s mobile phones can easily outperform computers from just few years ago. Qualcomm has been leading the pack for some time now when it comes to mobile processors, and their latest Snapdragon chip is poised to blow the competition completely out of the water.

The new chip, due to hit the market by the end of 2010, will be a dual core 1.5 GHZ powerhouse. The new Snapdragon will support DDR2 and DDR3 RAM, and HDMI 1080p video playback. The new chip is expected to show up in devices ranging from smartphones, to netbooks, and even tablet PC’s. It seems unlikely that we’ll see any of these devices before next year, but it is possible that a particularly ambitious hardware manufacturer could have a product out by the holidays.

There have been a lot of rumors swirling lately about new Android OS tablets due to hit the market in the not-too-distant future, and Qualcomm’s next Snapdragon could lend some credibility to these rumors. The next version of the Android OS is rumored to require a 1GHZ processor to run. With a new 1.5 GHZ processor on the way from Qualcomm, it seems likely that all of these rumored tablets could hit the market running Android 3.0 sometime next year.

It will be interesting to see what developers do with this new found horsepower. Current smartphones have a pretty broad feature set, handling everything from email to gaming, to GPS navigation. Every day, apps with more robust features hit the Android Market, and we can only imagine what new games and apps developers will come up with when they have access to stronger hardware.

A new chip might not sound like an exciting announcement, but in reality, it could shape the face of mobile computing over the coming years. With a small form factor, and support for powerful technologies like DDR3 RAM, and HDMI video output, the possibilities for what this chip can mean to smartphones and mobile computers are endless. The chip itself will be ready by the end of the year, and new devices that utilize it should start showing up soon after. I’d be surprised to see anything with the new Snapdragon in it on store shelves this year, but as mentioned above, it is possible.

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