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."
It will be purchased with life energy (Score:4, Funny)
Rather than paying with dollars, iPhone 5 owners will have to pay with some of their own life energy. Every iPhone 5 owner will be required to give up one hour of their life. This way, with every 24 sold, Steve Jobs lives another day. Every million devices sold will grant Steve Jobs slightly more than an extra century of life.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgZKjJt-TkU [youtube.com]
(Not actual lifespan) (Score:2)
Lifespan at 5 deg C, 33% metabolic rate.
Sequence shortened.
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Lifespan at 5 deg C, 33% metabolic rate.
Sequence shortened.
Just wait till you have to deal with the Life Span Exporting Countries cartel.
Re:It will be purchased with life energy (Score:5, Funny)
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Wait, with the iphone 5 I only have to give up 1 hour?
Will I get the 4 hour refund of the 5 hours I gave up for being a iphone user from V1.0?
Not to 50! (Score:5, Funny)
I've just sucked one year of your life away. I might one day go as high as five, but I really don't know what that would do to you. So, let's just start with what we have. What did this do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity so be honest. How do you feel?
no it's like a wraith they can suck it real fast (Score:2)
no it's like a wraith they can suck it real fast
Flaunt? New? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Flaunt? New? (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, the A8 is ARM's old smartphone core. Putting two of them in a package is a little bit clever because, unlike the A9 that everyone else's next generation products are using, the A8 isn't actually designed for multicore applications (the A9 scales to 4 cores).
The article was translated a bit poorly. A8 means "Apple's new name for their processor", not "Cortex A8 architecture".
Re:Flaunt? New? (Score:5, Informative)
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Did you not read TFS? Apple is adding AirPlay and Personal Hot Spot! (Not that they need to really add personal hotspot, every apple fanboi would get a personal hotspot if apple released a line of napkins).
Look, it doesn't matter how crappy the actual hardware is, it's from Apple. Apple will make it shiny.
In the interests of full disclosure, I have no idea what AirPlay or Personal HotSpot are, nor do I care, but I will hazard a guess they are old technology for everyone else...
A4 has an A8 processor. Next SoC will be A9 based (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A4 has an A8 processor. Next SoC will be A9 bas (Score:5, Informative)
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Qualcomm recently demoed an upcoming SoC based on a dual-core Cortex-A9 that was putting out 1080p 3D video. I think they're planning on 1.2GHz cores, which can vary the clockrate, voltage, or just turn off a core entirely, as needed. Combine that with a smaller process, and that is likely to be VERY power efficient. EVO 2, please *grasping hands*. 2H2011 is going to be a very fun time for smartphone and tablet enthusiasts. I'm already really tired of the whole tablet craze, though. For more info on the upc
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Bleeeaaaaahhhh!
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N900? (Score:2)
Re:N900? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, the N900.
And the Palm Pre.
And the Motorola DROID, Droid X, DROID 2, and DROID PRO.
iPhone 3Gs, iPad, iPhone 4, iPods, and Apple TV.
Pretty much every non-Qualcomm based phone currently runs on Cortex-A8 based CPUs.
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galaxy s, nexus s...
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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According to : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapdragon_(processor) [wikipedia.org]
Snapdragon Platform. With the Snapdragon application processor core, dubbed Scorpion, is Qualcomm's own design. It has many features similar to those of the ARM Cortex-A8 core and it is based on the ARM v7 instruction set, but theoretically has much higher performance for multimedia-related SIMD operations.
Re:N900? (Score:5, Informative)
A very heavily modified A8. Qualcomm licensed the A8, but then ripped out the floating point pipeline and replaced it with something better, tweaked the rest of the pipeline in a few places and branded it Scorpion. It generally ships in their Snapdragon SoC. It's somewhere between the A8 and A9 in performance for most workloads.
ARM provides a variety of different licenses. The cheapest just let you take their core, pop it in the middle of a chip and put other cores around out (or fab it by itself). The most expensive ones give you all of the designs and the right to modify them in any way you like. Qualcomm is one of the few companies with the latter kind.
Most SoC makers get the cheaper ones and differentiate their products by adding different components to the ARM core. For example, the TI OMAP series comes with a TI DSP that provides a lot more performance (and a huge amount more performance-per-Watt) for a lot of media decoding tasks, nVidia's Tegra series comes with an nVidia GPU.
Qualcomm modifies the ARM core itself, which means that it takes them longer to get to market but gives better performance. It also has the effect that they are out of phase with the rest of the market. Everyone else was shipping A8s before the Snapdragon was out, but then Snapdragon (which outperforms the A8) came out before anyone was shipping A9 cores. They will probably do something similar with the A9 and bring their tweaked version to market just as the A9 is starting to show its age.
The other interesting company is Marvell. They have a license from ARM that allows them to modify ARM chips or produce their own independently designed ARM-compatible chips. They bought the XScale line from Intel, which is based on the StrongARM design from Digital. They make the chips in the SheevaPlug and similar systems, which are not ARM designs.
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There are quite a few companies with the ARM Architecture license. It was needed by anyone delivering an A8 at 1GHz, since that's beyond the point of ARM's certification. Apple has an Architecture license, though they probably didn't need it yet, since all their stuff so far is just stripped down versions of Samsung SOCs. The shopping for a foundry in Taiwan might be true, though... with Samsung emerging as a big player in both smartphone and tablet, Apple might be getting a little nervous about their suppl
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A Cortex A8 based CPU. Yep, lol. (FPU is heavily modified)
Abuse of terminology (Score:3)
I don't know why Apple does this. Just to confuse the market and make it seem like Apple has some special sauce whereas the reality is that Apple uses the same ARM designs as everybody else, running at the same silicons and Apples "customizations" are really minor hacks to the peripheral support. To me, this comes across as dishonest, and I wonder why they do it especially considering many people will perceive the next iphone as underpowered because of what seems to be an ARM chip from the previous genera
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Its not about the chip really, its about control of the OS, energy use and upgrade cycle. Apple can plot and predict the supply over years and under clock/lock out the hardware to ensure you will 'need' the next hardware device. Why sell one device that will last when they can ensure you feel the need to buy two in the same time period.
Cortex A8 = Single Core (Score:2, Informative)
Cortex A8 = single core people. Cortex A9 = dual core.
It might be that Apple is calling their new processor A8, like the called their old processor A4. These names, though, are arbitrary and don't reflect the underlying Cortex architecture.
Re:Cortex A8 = Single Core (Score:5, Funny)
single core people
That's not a nice way of talking about iPhone users.
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Hmm.
so the A4 is an A8 and the A8 will be an A9?
I guess this brain-hurting confusion is the reason why Steve has had to take medical leave. I think I need some too now.
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The Apple A4 in the iPhone 4 is a Cortex A8, and the Apple A5 in the iPhone 5 will be a Cortex A9.
That's what all the rumors are telling, and if this article isn't (I haven't RTFA), it's probably wrong. And confusing.
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Not A8 (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy cow that article is written from ignorance. Never put it past a business rag to get technical details entirely wrong.
Holy shit they're stupid. The A4 processor IS a Cortex-A8. I suppose Apple can be blamed for their stupid marketing garbage, though.
Goddamnit, no. Qualcomm does not use the ARM designed Cortex cores.
Apparently the author of this article is just throwing around words, instead of being aware that there's a difference between the actual processor core and the on-die GPU core.
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.
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:Not A8 (Score:5, Informative)
As does Apple and Marvell (who has the original architecture license - DEC (StrongARM) --> Compaq (acquired DEC) --> Intel (through litigation with Compaq, and produced XScale) --> Marvell (purchasing Intel's mobile division)).
Samsung might have one too - their Cortex A8's were modified by that company Apple acquired as well, unless the A8 licensing allows minor modifications. Still, the A8 core used by Apple and Samsung aren't stock - I think the Apple one is actually a bit more modified as well.
(Fun fact - Apple was one of the original ARM investors (back when it was Acorn RISC Machines) and pretty much made it popular with Newton...)
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I assume you mean Apple. :)
No, I meant Acorn. They did very well in the UK schools market and quite well in the UK home market, which got ARM's volumes up, but they had almost no international sales so they were basically invisible to US (or even EU) corporations looking for chips for handheld computers.
It's hard to beleive Apple would have invested back in 1989 or thereabouts if ARM hadn't gained a notable place in the market already.
ARM had almost no place in the market back then at all. The ARM2 was the existing chip back then, and it wasn't very impressive (although it was low power). ARM was created as a joint spin-out from three companies - Acorn and Apple
Re:Not A8 (Score:5, Funny)
Holy shit they're stupid.
Seriously. Who doesn't know that the A4 contains an A8 and that the A8 (the new A8, not the other A8 in the A4) will contain an A9? Shit, I learned that in pre-school.
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We're talking [topspeed.com] about Audis [audiusa.com], right [audiusa.com]?
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then we're asking too much for them to research it before writing about it?
I would be satisfied if we could just make a proper distinction between someone being of low intelligence (stupid) and someone simply being uninformed or misinformed (ignorant).
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Is he still stupid if he wrote the article with the assumption that the information he was given was correct? What if the engineer he talked to on the phone gave him incorrect information for whatever reason? How does he know it's not correct? Is that a sign of stupidity?
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As a software-hacker type, there are reasons why I don't even try to write articles for the Journal of Quantum Physics.
Not being stupid enough to think I could get away with it is one of those reasons, yes.
Re:Not A8 (Score:5, Funny)
The iPhone 5 will also use sixteen Qualcomm SGX543 graphics cards, seamlessly converting all running applications to multithreads. With 35 million polygons times 1 billion pixels, the SGX543 can render video and games at resolutions of 40000x25000, upstaging current Motorola devices that merely support 1080x1728. This will allow the iPhone 5 to natively support HDMI, DisplayPort and SCART display technologies.
This is Bob Bobson for the Podunk Future Tech Gazette.
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Also, Engadget reported that the next edition of iPad and iPhone will run on A9 multi-core chips designed by Qualcomm.
For me here's where it goes from educated guess to rampant, wild speculation without any logic. Most likely Qualcomm will not be designing any chip for Apple. Apple has acquired both Intrinsity [wikipedia.org] and PA Semi [wikipedia.org] in the last 2 years to do their chip design. PA Semi for general ARM design and Intrinsity specifically for mobile ARM. Intrinsity did a great deal of their A4 design then Apple acquired them. For the next chip, Apple is going to abandon the company they just bought? Doesn't make a whole lot of sens
flaunt? (Score:4, Informative)
verb [ trans. ]
display (something) ostentatiously, esp. in order to provoke envy or admiration or to show defiance : newly rich consumers eager to flaunt their prosperity. ( flaunt oneself) dress or behave in a sexually provocative way.
Apple flaunts the UI, not the tech specs (ram, processor, bus speed, etc).
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...
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"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."
Having never used iOS long enough to actually recei
Re:flaunt? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have pop-ups enabled, it appears in the middle of your screen as it happens. You click on the pop-up to get to the message. Going back is a bit more convoluted. You have to tap the home button twice to bring up the list of running applications, then tap the app you were in to go back. It's not bad, though the double-tap of the home button for multitasking is not that intuitive.
Remember, though, that Android and other platforms are building from what was learned on iOS. The closest thing to an iOS type operating system was Palm, and there are many reasons why that was light years different. Don't get me started on the royal crap that was smartphones at the time of the iPhone launch.
It's a bit like The Matrix. If you go back and re-watch it now, you have to wonder what was so special about it. "They're doing eastern mysticism, hong-kong kung-fu wirework, and slow-mo fight scenes. So what? Every movie does that." Well yes, every movie does that because they're all based on The Matrix. Similarly, there are several good portable smartphone operating system choices out there, which all do certain things better than iOS. They all also happen to exist because they copied iOS. And then they built out, did some things better, and became their own animals. But credit where credit is due: nobody was copying Windows Mobile 6. Everyone built from the basis established in iOS.
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"If you have pop-ups enabled, it appears in the middle of your screen as it happens. You click on the pop-up to get to the message. Going back is a bit more convoluted. You have to tap the home button twice to bring up the list of running applications, then tap the app you were in to go back. It's not bad, though the double-tap of the home button for multitasking is not that intuitive."
Ouch. And what happens if you don't have popups enabled? Just a status bar notification and the usual ringtone/vibrate?
I've
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offtopic, but:
PlayerPro, my music player, for instance, has an on-screen back button (same place as on iOS usually), and the hardware back button takes you out of the app instead of just to the last view/activity/whatever. That reminds me, I have to go file a bug report/complaint about that :p
Drop that crap. The Winamp Android app is pure genious. Supports Last.FM Scrobbling, Shoutcast streaming, library streaming from any computer with Winamp installed, wireless synch, iTunes playlist support, and more.
If you have an Android device, and you use it for music, you're wasting your time using anything else. Best of all? It's free :)
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I beg to differ. The Winamp app for Android is horrid... and I say that as someone who's been using Winamp since the early 2.x days.
1. It's basically just a skin on top of the default Android playback system, and doesn't offer any additional features other than Shoutcast.
2. The wireless sync is buggy and doesn't work properly 80% of the time. Wireless device discovery is completely fucked up and takes a lot of praying and swearing to get Winamp to recognize the device...
3. The latest Winamp (on Windows) ver
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Weird...I haven't really had any of those problems...what phone are you using it on?
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S-OFF'd HTC Desire with CM7. I'm definitely not the only one with these problems though, check out the Winamp for Android forum (on forums.winamp.com)... although I'm probably the loudest complainer ;)
If it works for you, that's great, of course. Do you use the WiFi sync regularly?
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Not on a regular basis, but at least a few times a month. Currently running a Droid Eris with Nonsensikal 15.2
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Maybe it's a WiFi network thing. Although mine's nothing special or weird, just regular old WPA2-PSK, no MAC filtering, DHCP on... there's a bunch of people who have had problems though. :(
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> Actually, Google purchased the Android OS project in 2005, two
> years before Apple even announced they were working on the
> iPhone. I highly doubt that the notification bar or the pop-ups
> for text messages were added after the release of the iPhone.
Ah, you do not know your history. Yes, Android had been around for a while, but before January 2007, it was nothing more than a BlackBerry clone.
http://www.google.com/images?q=android+prototypes [google.com]
Granted, that page will have some new models mixed in,
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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.
Looks like you answered your own question.
Geeks want everything connected in myriad ways so we can be as efficient as possible, but that extra complexity comes at a cost: you have to learn all those pathways in order to use them, and in some cases.. to avoid accidentally using them.
There is a large segment of the population that is happy with a swiss army knife that they can understand all the features of fairly quickly, and don't have to worry about the magnifying glass popping out of the bottle bottle ope
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I still have yet to understand what's so amazing about iOS, from a GUI point of view
It's simple. Before the iPhone, all mobile phone user interfaces sucked a lot. After the iPhone, all mobile phone users interfaces sucked.
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I still have yet to understand what's so amazing about iOS, from a GUI point of view.
It's very smooth and almost never stutters or freezes - at least compared to Android, which does that all the time. For touch UI, this is especially annoying, since it means that the UI is out of sync with your gestures.
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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.
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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?
I never said there was. I was talking about iOS, not the people that use it.
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.
That being said, I couldn't help but notice you insulted me rather than answering my question. Good form, old chap!
Confused (Score:5, Informative)
'A4' is Apple's name for a chip based on ARMs Cortex A8 architecture. The next chip will probably be called 'A5', and will probably be based on Cortex A9. A4/A5 and A8/A9 are two seperate nomenclatures.
Also, to 'flaunt' means to
display something ostentatiously, esp. in order to provoke envy or admiration
This is not something an inanimate object like a phone can do.
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Also:
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.
No, it applies to current iPads and iPhones.
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.
What has the iOS beta got to do with the next iPhone's CPU?
I know that chronically uninformed articles are par for the course on Slashdot, but not understanding the difference between software and hardware is a new one.
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A4/A5 and A8/A9 are two seperate nomenclatures.
Even more confusingly, the Cortex A5 is ARM's ultra-cheap line of processors aimed at not-so-smary phones. I'm looking forward to Apple hyping the A5 and Nokia putting a sticker on their bottom-of-the-range phones saying 'A5 inside' or similar.
Here's to hoping... (Score:3)
Here's to hoping that Apple puts a more powerful processor in the second iPad than they do in the 5th iPhone. I realize they likely had the same processor in the iPad/iPhone 4 just to keep things simple, but it seemed really strange to me that a device with a bigger screen (and marginally larger resolution) had the same CPU in it as the tiny version.
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Here's to hoping that Apple puts a more powerful processor in the second iPad than they do in the 5th iPhone. I realize they likely had the same processor in the iPad/iPhone 4 just to keep things simple, but it seemed really strange to me that a device with a bigger screen (and marginally larger resolution) had the same CPU in it as the tiny version.
Bigger AND marginally larger resolution? So if the iPad had a 1024x768 screen but a 12" screen, that would necessitate a more powerful CPU than a 10" version at 1024x768?
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but does it need it?
I mean really what does the ipad need more CPU power for than the iPhone? The resolution is the same so the graphics performance requirements are the same. I guess if you want to put more demanding apps on the ipad than the iphone maybe it would useful but on the whole I do not see a big drive need for more CPU power in the iPad over the iPhone.
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but does it need it?
No, but again...compare a 10" netbook to a 16" laptop (the difference in screen size between an iPad and an iPhone is slightly over 6 inches.) Would you expect a 16" laptop to have the same power as a 10" netbook?
I mean really what does the ipad need more CPU power for than the iPhone? The resolution is the same so the graphics performance requirements are the same. I guess if you want to put more demanding apps on the ipad than the iphone maybe it would useful but on the whole I do not see a big drive need for more CPU power in the iPad over the iPhone.
So...the people calling the iPad just a big iPod Touch are right, then?
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Yes it is a big IPod Touch.
No I do not think that it is wise to equate physical size with power. Resolution means a lot more. I have seen lots of notebooks with big screens with low resolution. They will require less GPU/CPU performance than a smaller high resolution screen will.
Think of it this way. Does your desktop require more performance to drive a video game on a 22" 1080p display or a 60" 1080p display.
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No I do not think that it is wise to equate physical size with power.
As I explained in another post, the iPhone is a phone. The iPad is a tablet. Would you expect a phone to have the same power as a tablet?
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No. I was referring to the fact that, generally, you expect a 10" device to have more computing power than a 3.5" device.
Did I really have to explain that?
I guess you don't HAVE to explain anything, but based on all the replies I just read besides mine, yeah, maybe you could have.
Besides, I think you're forgetting that when the iPad came out, it DID have a faster processor than the iPhone. That the iPhone 4 came out later, is a separate issue. If the iPad 2 still has the SAME processor, then you might have an argument.
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Besides, I think you're forgetting that when the iPad came out, it DID have a faster processor than the iPhone.
True, but then you're comparing a brand-new product to what was at the time almost a year old....
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Besides, I think you're forgetting that when the iPad came out, it DID have a faster processor than the iPhone.
True, but then you're comparing a brand-new product to what was at the time almost a year old....
Yes, that's true. I don't get your point, but it is true, that when the iPad came out it was newer then the (then top of the line) iPhone 3GS, and if you were to compare them, you'd find vastly improved hardware in the iPad.
I think it's pretty clear I have no idea what your argument is anymore.
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I think it's pretty clear I have no idea what your argument is anymore.
The iPhone is a PHONE. The iPad is a TABLET. You expect a phone and a tablet to have the same computing power?
That's my point.
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I think it's pretty clear I have no idea what your argument is anymore.
The iPhone is a PHONE. The iPad is a TABLET. You expect a phone and a tablet to have the same computing power?
That's my point.
That's the point you had hoped to make. I'm not really sure you've done that. You see, when the iPad came out it had MORE power than the iPhone. Then, a new iPhone came out, and took advantage of the power saving innovations of the iPad's chip, and caught up... no, leapfrogged it by doubling the memory and upping the overall screen resolution as well.
Now, the iPad's refresh is approaching, and all the speculation is pointing to a multi-core CPU, more memory, an SD slot, and perhaps a doubling of the over
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Jesus fucking christ.
You see, when the iPad came out it had MORE power than the iPhone.
It had more power than a one-year old device, which is not what my original post is about.
Then, a new iPhone came out
Yeah, a couple of months later...meaning the internal architecture had long since been decided upon before the iPad was released.
You expect a phone to not advance technologically because a tablet exists? Perhaps you're aware that over the last almost one year period Apple's been developing the next iPad, which will surely feature improved specs versus the old one. At the same time, they continue to work on newer iPhones, no doubt guaranteeing the same thing on that side.
No, I expect a tablet to be more powerful than a phone released within the same time frame and as part of the same product line. I'm not talking about cross-generation comparisons, I'm talking about same-generation comparisons. This is the key thing that people seem to
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I'm comparing a PHONE and a TABLET, and the fact that the tablet has no performance advantage over the same-generation phone from the same company in the same product line. What was so hard for people to understand about this?
I'm sorry if I seem rude, I just didn't think I'd have to spell things out like this on a tech-oriented website. That's a bit ridiculous.
The Samsung Galaxy S (phone), released early last year has a 1GHz A8 based processor with 384mb RAM, and PowerVR SGX540 GPU.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab (tablet) is radically more advanced, in that rather than a 1GHz Cortex A8 with PowerVR SGX540 and 384mb of RAM, it adds... 512mb of RAM.
Perhaps your expectations are off. Seems to be the smartphone and tablet markets are using the latest possible technology that compromises between power and battery life, and are both about equally cutting edge in terms of
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Perhaps your expectations are off.
This seems to be the most likely explanation.
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I think it's pretty clear I have no idea what your argument is anymore.
The iPhone is a PHONE. The iPad is a TABLET. You expect a phone and a tablet to have the same computing power?
That's my point.
Why not? We have this thing in electronics call minaturization. Stuff gets smaller. So the difference in volume between a phone and a "tablet" might not make any difference to the relevant components. Since a phone is the "device of convenience" it's far more likely to be actually used. So more power in the phone will be generally more useful.
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You might expect that - I certainly don't. The devices with the most computing power tend to have no screens at all.
OK, but we're talking about all-inclusive devices that function completely on their own...not desktop parts.
Do automatically think a laptop with a smaller screen has less computing power than one with a larger screen? Really?
If the difference is as drastic as 6+ inches (the difference between an iPad and iPhone...6.2, if you want to be exact), then yes: I generally expect a 16 inch laptop to have more power than a 10 inch netbook.
I've got a 20 inch monitor at home does that make my several year old iMac totally bad ass from a computing power stand point?
I'm not talking about desktop components, I'm talking about portable components. Apples to oranges, bud.
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Seriously? Are you just trolling, or are you really this ignorant?
I'm comparing two products from the same company that run the same operating system and are, for all intents and purposes, a part of the same product line. I'm NOT saying this comparison extends to all aspects of the computing world, nor did I imply it.
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GRAUGH.
My point was a larger display (especially a 6.2" larger display) means two things:
It's used for different, generally more intensive purposes
and
It's a larger form factor.
More intensive purposes + larger form factor (i.e. more physical space for components) SHOULD = more powerful hardware.
BUY BUY BUY! (Score:3, Informative)
Flaunt? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, "flaunt"?
So, does "having" this processor mean it is going to be "flaunted". "Flaunt" has a kind of negative connotation of waving something around to be sure everybody can see it.
Maybe words like "have", "sport", "use", "be built with", or "ship with" might be more applicable.
TFA doesn't have the word "flaunt" in it. Maybe a little less editorializing in the headlines would be good here. In this case, it's just plain not applicable -- no more than my desktop machine is "flaunting" it's quad-c
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Seriously, "flaunt"?
My first impression, too. My mind's eye pictured a lowered iPhone with the A8 mounted on the outside, spinner rims, ground effect lighting, and an airbrushed graphic of a busty chica in a bikini sporting a Bob Dobbs tattoo on her navel.
The RDF is strong with this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. There is a reasonably limited set of companies with performance-oriented ARM SoC designs. There is a similarly fairly limited set of GPU options for power constrained scenarios. Shockingly enough, Apple(just like everybody else) is pretty much going to combine the most recent one of each that they can shoehorn into their design and production process and go from there.
In other news, the next Mac Pro will probably have a newly released Xeon in it...
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You really have to hand it to Apple: Very few other companies garner headlines for what amounts to "Pre-release software build indicates that version N+1 of product X will incorporate version N+1 of the assorted off-the-shelf hardware that went into version N".
Except that Apple has nothing to do with the articles. Their typical response to questions about their future products has always been: "We do not comment about future products." These articles comes from every "expert" on the web making speculation on what Apple will do next in order to get more clicks.
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bbbbbbut (Score:2)
Uh, no, no it's not. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless the package says "Now with A8 Processor!" or something similar, it's not flaunting the A8. Given Apple's general refusal to put any kind of hardware specs they can avoid on packaging for these devices, it seems very, very, unlikely that they will "flaunt" anything so meaningless to the average reader.
"Flaunt" (Score:2)
Yeah I'd totally hit some of that hot piece of ass Apple is flaunting in Main road.
Oh wait I got confused. They are utilising an upgraded processor in their upcoming iPhone refresh.
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Apple: one maker, a handful of models, little to no revision with a model line, one vendor.
Android: many makers, many models, revisions within model lines, multiple vendors.
I think iFanboys can still point out the plank in the Droidbois' eye despite the new mote in theirs.
(btw 4.3 wasn't the first version to not make it onto the early models)
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Slow ass jvm vs blazing native code execution.
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Sorry. Old argument. Next.
with these new tools, applications targeted at Gingerbread or later can be implemented entirely in C++; you can now build an entire Android application without writing a single line of Java.
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/01/gingerbread-ndk-awesomeness.html [blogspot.com]