Qualcomm has announced its Snapdragon SDK for Android at the Uplinq 2012 developers conference, which kicked off today in San Diego in the US. The company stated that the Snapdragon SDK (solutions developer kit) provides mobile application developers and device manufacturers with the ability to differentiate their applications on Snapdragon-powered mobile devices.

This is achieved by enabling them to access a new set of value-added features only found on devices running on a Snapdragon processor. Initially, the SDK will only support smartphones and tablets that employ the Snapdragon S4 8960 processor, but Qualcomm expects this SDK to support all future Snapdragon processors over time.

Some of the new features and benefits of the Snapdragon SDK include:

• Facial processing such as blink and smile detection, which makes it easier to take better pictures of people in groups.
• Burst capture - leverages zero shutter lag to photograph a stream of images at once to select the best shot.
• Surround sound recording for better audio capture.
•  Hardware echo cancellation for better real-time audio experiences.
• Sensor gestures (tap-left/tap-right, push/pull, face-up/face-down, tilt) that enable developers to offer new differentiated user interfaces.
• Indoor location that enables apps to continue providing accurate location info even when the user is indoors.