Qualcomm has started offering its partners samples of its third generation Qualcomm Gobi LTE chips - the MDM9225 and MDM9625. The mew chips are the first 28nm chips to contain new LTE and HSPA+ modems, which are faster and use less power than their predecessors.

Qualcomm Gobi LTE chips add cellular connectivity to products, including smartphones, tablets, notebooks, portable hotspots, dongles and more. Gobi allows these devices to connect to the Internet at fast 4G LTE speeds, but they?re also backwards compatible with older 3G and 2G cellular technologies.

Qualcomm Gobi's features include:

First chip with a LTE Advanced Modem
Delivers theoretical speeds of up to 1 gigabits per second.

First chip with a LTE Category 4 Modem
-Delivers theoretical speed of up to 150 megabits per second.

First chip with a 3GPP Release 10 Multicarrier HSPA+ (MC-HSPA+) Modem
-Theoretical speeds up to 84 Mbps

Qualcomm claims that the new Gobi Chips consume less power than their 45nm MDM9x00 and 28nm MDM9x15 predecessors, while their overall size of the board has also been reduced.

The company expects devices with the chips to be available for purchase in 2013.