Qualcomm's next generation of Snapdragon system-on-chip, the one built around the Krait CPU, has been put to the test by AnandTech this week and the results are nothing short of astounding. Anand and his accomplices got ahold of Qualcomm's MSM8960 Mobile Development Platform reference unit and ran its dual-core 1.5GHz SoC through a gauntlet of popular Android benchmarks. Linpack scores, both in single- and multi-threaded tests, approximately doubled the highest results from any shipping devices, while the 1,532 score in SunSpider and 110,345 in BrowserMark showed appreciable gains in JavaScript performance too. In a real world comparison against the Galaxy Nexus, the Snapdragon S4 helped reduce webpage loading times by 0.3 seconds with the cache disabled or 1.4 seconds with it turned on. Qualcomm's MDP device was equipped with Android 4.0 and, says AnandTech, was the "absolute smoothest we've ever seen Ice Cream Sandwich run."

That's lofty praise, and even more so when you consider that this is only the dual-core variant of the S4. Qualcomm promises to deliver single- and quad-core options as well, with the former perhaps offering a more power-efficient choice while the latter has the potential to really blow the lid off current mobile performance. You'll find the full suite of tests at the source link below, including data on the performance of Qualcomm's Adreno 225 GPU. And if you're curious about phones that may feature some S4 goodness inside, stay tuned to our MWC 2012 coverage, which begins in earnest later on this week.