Sure, the LG Star, Motorola Olympus, and all of those upcoming dual-core Tegra 2 phones sound pretty awesome, but how would you like to have a quad-core processor in your handset?  According to the folks at NVIDIA, we're not too far off from seeing that very thing.  The company released some whitepapers yesterday titled "The Benefits of Multiple CPU Cores in Mobile Devices," and in it NVIDIA explains that they believe that as we head into 2011, dual-core chips will become the norm.  Right after that statement, they casually mention that we can expect quad-core processors "in the near future."  Before you get the urge to run out a battery bandolier, NVIDIA believes that smartphones and tablets will benefit from multi-core chips, even more than desktops and laptops, "because the battery life benefits are so substantial" with those mobile devices.  If you've got some free time and feel like getting into some light reading material, you can find the entire document right here.

While the term "in the near future" is about as vague as it gets, this certainly is good news for those of us with an insatiable need for speed.  We should be seeing dual-core handsets infiltrating the market within the next few months, so I don't doubt that they'll become more and more common in the next year.  Quad-core chips, though?  I have a feeling that it'll be a while before we're seeing them become routine.  Still, with the speed at which this industry evolves, I wouldn't be totally shocked to see quad-core phones begin leaking out at the end of 2011 or the beginning of 2012.  I just hope that battery tech begins making substantial advancements like these CPUs, and soon.  Even if NVIDIA says that the benefits are there, my battery is still trembling at the thought of a quad-core processor.

Via Android and Me, NVIDIA