Samsung planning dual-core 2 GHz smartphones for 2012

Samsung may be developing phones that run so fast, they'll leave today's most cutting-edge dual-core phones in the dust. The company apparently has dual-core 2GHz smartphones in the works, which would theoretically be capable of 4GHz speeds, says Korea's Maeli Business Newspaper.

"We are planning to release a 2GHz dual-core CPU-equipped smartphone by next year," the paper reports a "high-ranking official" from Samsung said. "This product will have the data processing capacities of a regular PC."

The report comes as dual-core 1GHz phones such as the Motorola Atrix and LG Optimus 2X, which was the world's first dual-core phone, are just beginning to become available. A phone running with two 2GHz chips would technically be capable of running at speeds up to 4GHz, though real-world tests almost never match specs.

In addition to being built into Samsung phones, the chip would probably be marketed to third parties under the company's new Exynos brand, which Samsung unveiled in Feburary. The coming Samsung Galaxy S II and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 will feature some of the first Exynos-branded chips.

There's no word about when Samsung might bring to market devices using dual-core 2GHz chips, though such a move would put pressure on competitors like Apple with its A5 and Nvidia with its Tegra 2, both dual-core processors. The dual-core Cortex-A9 design from ARM, which creates the low-power architecture that virtually all mobile processors are based on, is said to be scalable to such speeds. That would most likely be the basis of Samsung's new chip.

Reps for Samsung didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

This article, written by Peter Pachal, originally appeared on PCMag.com and is republished on Gear Live with the permission of Ziff Davis, Inc.