Neowin's guide to smartphone hardware: Processors

With such a huge range of smartphone hardware on the market today from vendors such as Samsung, HTC, Apple, Motorola, LG and more, it can be very confusing to keep up with what exactly is inside each of these devices. There are at least 10 different CPUs inside smartphones, many different GPUs, a seemingly endless combination of display hardware and a huge variety of other bits and bobs.

In a multi-part guide Neowin will help you understand each and every one of the critical components in your smartphone and how they compare to other hardware on the market. They'll cover everything from connectivity to cameras and battery life. Each section is intended to give you all the necessary information about the hardware, and even more for the tech enthusiasts out there. Expect them to be lengthy and filled with details.

In today’s guide Neowin will be looking at smartphone processors: the different brands, types, how they perform and the critical differences between them.

System-on-a-Chip

This is a term you’ve probably come across before, and for good reason. When reviewers are talking about the processors inside a smartphone they are usually actually referring to the system-on-a-chip: a combination chipset that features things such as the actual processor cores, the graphics chipset, the RAM and possibly ROM as well, interface controllers for things such as USB and wireless tech, voltage regulators and more.

The idea behind a system-on-a-chip, or SoC, is that all the critical components of a device are located in a relatively small area on the device. This reduces the size of the component board needed inside and also can help make the device itself faster and more battery efficient. They also help reduce costs for assembling the product and can also be cheaper than an equivalent multi-chip set-up.

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This article is brought to you in partnership with Neowin