Apple iPhone 5 To Flaunt New A8 Processor 197
An anonymous reader writes "The release of iOS 4.3 beta for developers has revealed updates to gesture-based navigation, AirPlay and Personal Hot Spot in the next edition of iPad and iPhone. However, not all changes are UI-related; it is reported that Apple is due to add an ARM Cortex A8 processor to its iPhone 5. Apple Daily, a Hong Kong-based newspaper, reported that Apple's iPhone 5 will be powered by a dual core processor with SGX543 graphics. It is reported that Apple is in contact with a Taiwanese component maker for the A8 SoC. Currently Apple uses a custom made A4 SoC in its iPad and iPhone 4 and uses SGX535 graphics and video support."
Re:Not A8 (Score:5, Interesting)
Qualcomm does not use the ARM designed Cortex cores
The Qualcomm Snapdragon is a (very) heavily modified A8. Qualcomm has one of the most expensive ARM licenses, which allows them to extensively modify the cores, rather than just stamp them into SoCs with other stuff.
Basically, this article is filled with flawed writing based on the author's almost total ignorance of the subject. They know just enough, however, to be completely and totally wrong.
Yes, I think I lost 5 IQ points from reading TFA. That'll teach me to click on links in /. stories.
Re:flaunt? (Score:5, Interesting)
I still have yet to understand what's so amazing about iOS, from a GUI point of view. It's incredibly sparse and lacking in workflow functionality. The steps you have to take when you get an email or a text message, for example, are far more convoluted than on Android (in which you pull down the notification bar (regardless of what you're doing), tap the email/text, read it, then just hit the back arrow twice to immediately go back to what you were doing.
This is just one such example. iOS seems like it functions off a central core with a bunch of solitary roads going outward. Android, however, seems like it has the same layout, but each of the "roads" are interconnected.
Sure, you'll get where you want to go with iOS, but you have to get there in a specific way, whereas with Android you have much more navigational freedom. iOs is Good Enough®, but I still don't see how people applaud it so loudly when it isn't conducive to non-centralized navigation. Let's face it, the homescreen looks like an Android app drawer...
Re:flaunt? (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't have to understand it. It's not like there's a problem with people who aren't you liking things you don't like, is there? And it's not like you're the genius to end all geniuses. I don't need to ask there, I've read enough of your posts.
No. The problem is with the Big Lie that Apple actually knows anything about usability or will necessarily create a better UI just because it's Apple and it's magical.
Quite often they ignore trivial but interesting use cases and unnecessarily cripple available options.
Then fanboys crow about how this is "doing a few things well". No. It's just doing too few things to be really useful.
The sort of consumers willing to subject themselves to MS-DOS in another decade just are too oblivious to notice.