Windows Phone 8 might run on Snapdragon S4, coming to Sprint late 2012?

The engineering team behind Windows Phone is testing Qualcomm’s MSM8960 chip, part of the Snapdragon S4 series, and it could be ready for release on at least one phone running Windows Phone 8 by the end of the year, according to sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans speaking for TheVerge.

Additionally, Sprint has allegedly showed interest in an upcoming Windows Phone device with MSM8960 and has given details about its LTE network to Nokia. Another source claims that Sprint will hold off on Windows Phone device releases until WP8 rolls out late in 2012.

Now, the MSM8960 is in many aspects ahead of the industry - it’s the first one to be made using 28nm manufacturing process which allows smaller chip size, and it has all digital radios including LTE on the same die which should bring down the power drain noticeably. Qualcomm said it’s aiming for a full-day battery life on S4 phones.

Qualcomm also differs from most manufacturers as it makes it processors from scratch and the last Krait processor is specifically made with mobile devices in mind. This should translate into much improved performance over other, generic Cortex A9 chips and comparable performance with A15.

Qualcomm has announced it will deliver single, dual and quad-core versions of the S4, but we’re talking about the dual-core version which comes first. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 is said to also be the first version of WP supporting multi-core processors.

So far at MWC 2012, we’ve seen HTC back up the S4 with the HTC One S and the US version of the flagship, the HTC One X.