Qualcomm's (NASDAQ: QCOM) Snapdragon family of processors has grown to more than 15 different chips, but between the array of options and a confusing naming system, the Snapdragon family has become unwieldy.

"With such a deep roadmap of chips, our customers and industry colleagues have told us that it has become increasingly difficult to quickly and easily identify which chips are best suited for different devices," said the company in an Aug. 3 blog post.

The company has divided the Snapdragon family, by performance and feature set, into three classes: System 1 (S1), System 2 (S2) and System 3 (S3).

The Snapdragon S1 is designed for snapping pictures, causal gaming, full-stereo sound and downloading and watching movies, according to the blog. Phones running Snapdragon S1 include the HTC Droid Incredible, Samsung Focus, LG Quantum and SonyEricsson X10i. This series includes the QSD8650, QSD8259, MSM7627, MSM7227, MSM7625 and the MSM7225.

The Snapdragon S2 is designed for watching HD videos in browser, a rich gaming experience, top-quality pictures and video and streaming movies in 720p HD, according to the blog. The BlackBerry Bold, HTC Thunderbolt, HP Veer and the SonyEricsson Xperia Play all use this series of chips. It includes the MSM8655, MSM8255, APQ8055, MSM7630 and MSM7230.

The Snapdragon S3 provides the "power of a PC in your pocket," according to Qualcomm. It's designed to capture and share 3D pictures and video, allow console-quality gaming, stream videos in 1080p HD and offer HDMI out to watch HD movies on the TV with Dolby 5.1 surround sound. 3-series chips are being used in the HP TouchPad, HTC EVO 3D and T-Mobile Mytouch 4G. The S3 class includes MSM8660, MSM8260 and APQ8060.

S4, which has not yet been released, includes all chips that fall between 1.6 Ghz and 2.5 Ghz. The first devices in this range likely won't hit the shelves until 2012 at the earliest, reports TechCrunch.

For more:
- see the Qualcomm blog post
- see this TechCrunch article
- see this Sign On San Diego article

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