The newest technological innovation in the highly innovative and fast moving mobile phone category is the quad-core processor. It has four processing cores in a single chip, meaning instructions are processed four times faster.

Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek shipped its first quad-core SoC (System on Chip) processor recently – the first of its kind to hit the market. “It’s not the first one announced, it’s the first one shipping,” a news source quoted MediaTek spokesperson Finbarr Moynihan as saying recently. 

‘Get things done super fast’ is what the company wants consumers to conjure in their minds with this latest offering. And, now the hi-end android based mobile phones are using the quad-core processor to give users the fastest mobile phone user experience.  

The average consumers know little of how software interacts with the CPU that’s installed within their mobile device, the only logic that runs through their heads is that the more the cores the better it must be. Technically, that’s correct as more cores means more power.

Already being tested by some of MediaTek’s mobile partners, the company expects the processor to ship in devices starting from the First Quarter of 2013. MediaTek is a company traditionally focused on the low-end smartphone market. But this processor, called the MT6589, will allow MediaTek to break into the mid and high-end Android smartphone and tablet markets. With this processor and GPU, MT6589 can handle 99 photo shoots at a time. The GPU used in the chipset is Imaginatioin PowerVR SGX 544 – the same series used by iPhones.

Android takes a more open approach to multitasking, deciding to manage the running applications rather than killing them. When the resources begin to run out, Android begins to take “notes” for the currently running applications. It identifies which ones are not being used at the moment, makes a note of what state the app is in, and then shuts them down. When a user resumes the app, it picks up at the same exact point and starts running again. Hence, quad core processor is the best technology currently to be used in the mobile phones. 

MediaTek doesn’t make smartphones, only the processors that run them. Its solutions, however, allow cell phone makers to create smartphones around those processors. The power-efficient MT6589 runs cooler than much of its competition, and offers a number of multimedia features that can allow manufacturers to make stand-out devices focusing themselves on making the hardware for those device rather than on building or enhancing the processor.

The MT6589 for instance has native support for 3D cameras and displays, and built-in high-end camera features such as face beautifier, a panoramic mode, best shot, and a smile shot feature. The processor can support up to a 13-megapixel camera, and supports 1080p video playback and recording.