When the 1GHZ Snapdragon processor was released last year, it was reserved for the very high-end of smartphones; there was the Nexus One, HTC Desire, HTC HD2 (ummm…), and since, it has become relatively mainstream. Yes, for its time the processor power was, compared especially to the other top Droid at the time, the Motorola Droid, extremely fluid and noticeably more powerful than anything else on the market.

Well, the crown has been tarnished and a new one has landed, though it is uncertain which processor is faster: the 1GHZ Hummingbird processor in the Samsung Galaxy S (exclusive to the phone for now) and the 1GHZ OMAP3630 processor in the Droid X and likely Droid 2.

These processors, due to their smaller die size, are optimized to “sip” power from tasks, and effectively improve battery life over the Snapdragon, which, while efficient, is more power hungry than the two never processors.

Here we have a YouTube video showing the major graphics capability improvements of Samsung’s Hummingbird over the Snapdragon processor. Quake 2, while no longer a graphically-intensive game on anything but a smartphone, still pushes the Snapdragon to the max on an HTC Desire running Android 2.1. Compare it to the Hummingbird which runs the game demo beautifully, and we have ourselves a pretty capable mini computer.

(via Phandroid)