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Contrary to yesterday’s bogus specifications T-mobile has now officially confirmed that the T-mobile G2 aka HTC Desire Z features the new Qualcomm MSM7×30 chipset clocked at 800Mhz (with the new Adreno 205 GPU inside). As I said a few days ago, it will be intesrting to see if HTC uses this SoC or if it will stick with the more convetional QSD8×50 (or even jumped directly to the QSD8×50A) for it’s first batch of Windows Phone 7 devices.
A leaked T-Mobile G2 aka HTC Vision / Desire Z reveals that the chipset powering the device isn’t a regular QSD8×50 Snapdragon but the new MSM7×30 that was introduced at MWC in February. The MSM7×30 is part of Qualcomm’s SnapDragon family of products (but strangely isn’t branded Snapdragon) as it packs a similar CortexA8+NEON clocked at 800Mhz but has the newest Adreno 205 GPU instead of the Adreno 200 found in the QSD8×50 platform. The MSM7×30 basically fits between today’s QSD8X50 and the upcoming QSD8X50A (CortexA8 @ 1.3Ghz + Adreno 205). It will be interesting to see if HTC is also going to uses this platform in the upcoming Windows Phone 7 devices (HTC Schubert, Mozart,Gold etc…).If you remember, the leaked HTC Mondrian Rom indicated that the mysterious device had an QSD8X50A. You can read more about the Adreno 205 here. Continue reading The T-Mobile G2 aka HTC Desire Z will feature a Qualcomm MSM7×30 Chipset →
A T-Mobile employee has uploaded partial GLBenchmark 1.1 results of the upcoming HTC Glacier handset a few hours ago. Many blogger think that the score of 1432 Frames in the GLBenchmark Pro ES 1.1 CPU Skinning is a proof that the device is powered by the new MSM8260 or MSM8660 dual-core Snapdragon. Well sorry to disappoint you but this probably isn’t the case at all. First off performance doesn’t scale like that (you can’t just multiply x2 previous single core Snapdragon results and claim that this is how the dual-core will perform. Secondly, my HTC HD2 is faster at this particular skinning test. See the results below:
Google can deny it all day long but the fact is that the Android ecosystem is suffering from hardware fragmentation and things aren’t looking like they are going to get better any time soon. One of the main hardware difference between Android devices is he GPU which is part of the SoC (System On a Chip / Chipset) powering the handset. There’s currently three big players in the market today: Qualcomm’s SnapDragon SoC with the Adreno 200 GPU, TI OMAP 3XXX with the Power VR SGX 530/535 and finally Samsung’s Hummingbird (S5PC110A01) with a PowerVR SGX540 GPU all three of them feature a CortexA8 CPU core. Android and Me wrapped up a couple of benchmarks comparing them and the final verdict is clear as bottled water. Samsung’s Hummingbird is heads and shoulder above the competition thanks to the SGX540 GPU, followed by TI’s and Qualcomm’s chipsets. This should come as no surprise, the SGX540 is currently the most powerful mobile GPU on the market but one has to take into account the quality of the drivers. Qualcomm has been far behind in this sector ever since its acquisition of AMD/ATI’s mobile GPU division nearly 2 years ago. Benchmarks conducted on Windows Mobile devices like the HTC HD2 (SnapDragon with Adreno 200/AMD Z430 GPU) have shown up to a %500 increase in performance in some bechnmarks when homemade/tweaked drivers where used instead of the ones supplied with the retail device. This doesn’t mean that it can rival Samsung’s SGX540 equipped handsets like the Galaxy S line of Android phones but SnapDragon based devices would have graphics performances more in line with what you should expect from a hing-end smartphone in 2010. It will be interesting to see how things will be like on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform (Only Qualcomm is certified to provide chipset for the first WP7 handsets) now that Microsoft will provide/certify the drivers. From what I have seen the graphics performance of the prototype devices is tons better than what we have now on the market. It has been said by me many times (and others who have played with the Samsung Taylor): the UI of WP7 ( Direct3D fully hardware accelerate by the Adreno GPU) is more responsive than the iPhone. Things will only get better in the future when devices like the HTC Mondrian WP7 handset will supposedly feature the updated Snapdragon core and when Google finally sets minimum performance and hardware requirement in a future version of Android (rumored to come in Android 3.0).
As you probably already know by now all Windows Phone 7 handsets will be powered by a Qualcomm SoC. The specifics of the chipsets used are still unknown but we do know that it will have minimum click rate of 1Ghz which hints at a SnapDragon or similar architecture (the QSD8×50, MSM8×55, MSM7X30, QSD8×50A all qualify). The only reall info we have so far comes from the leaked HTC Mondrian ROM which mentions the presence of a QSDx50A chipset on board. So how is this piece of hardware interesting? Well, first off it is still unreleased and when the HTC Mondrian finally launches this fall it will probably one of the first devices to sport one. Secondly it’s the new shrunk down (45nm) version of the now famous QSD8X50 found in the majority of high-end Windows Phone and Android phones and is clocked at 1.3ghz (compared to the regular 1ghz chips shipping now). But the most interesting aspect of this new SoC is the updated GPU known as the Andreno 205 (the current SanpDragon CPU is the Adreno 200 aka AMDZ430). This new unit has been tweaked to have better OpenVG and Flash perfomance as well and improved shader performance:
Continue reading The future hardware powering Windows Phone 7 →
Qualcomm announced yesterday the sampling of the first Dual-Core Snapdragon chipsets:the MSM8260 and MSM8660. The First generation of SnapDragon chipset known as the QSD8×50 is now available in a wide variety of handsets like the HTC HD2, Google Nexus, Acer Liquid etc. The second generation Snapdragon, the MSM8×55 and QSD8×50A features a higher maximum clock rate (1.3Ghz), enhanced multi-media features and is supposedly going to first appear in HTC’s first Windows Phone 7 device, the rumored HTC Mondrian. The new MSM8260 and MSM8660 dual-core chipsets have a maximum clockrate of 1.2ghz and will ship in products probably at the end of 2011. Check out the full press release after the break: Continue reading Qualcomm samples first MSM8260 and MSM8660 Dual-Core Snapdragon chipsets →
It didn’t take long for Acer to announce their new high-end Android device after it passed the FCC Tuesday. The Acer Stream is the company’s new Android 2.1 smartphone featuring a Qualcomm SnapDragon Chipset clocked at 1GHZ coupled with 512 Mb of RAM and 2gb of internal Flash. The screen is a 3.7″ WVGA (800×480) AMOLED panel (but there is a huge bezel!) and the 5Mpix camera is capable of shooting 720P videos. Other features included are: HD video playback on MP4, XVID and WMV-HD files, a Digital compass, GPS, FM Radio, HDMI port, UPnP & DNLA support, Micro-SD slot and Acer’s new UI. The device is 11.2mm thick. Check out the 22 minutes long hands-on video and press release below: Continue reading Acer Stream Android handset announcement and hands-on video → Following the launch of the Google Nexus One in the US, many Android users, especially in Europe, were eagerly waiting for a similar device to launch worldwide. The HTC Desire was officially announced during Mobile World Congress in February alongside the HTC Legend and HTC HD Mini but wasn’t really a surprise thanks to the leaked roadmap that surfaced a few months earlier. Codenamed HTC Bravo, the Desire is essentially a Nexus One with a few hardware changes and HTC’s Sense UI sitting on top of Android 2.1. So how does it stack up against HTC’s other top of the line handset?
Announced back in February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the HTC HD Mini is the company’s latest (and probably one of the last) Windows Mobile 6.5.3 handset to hit the market. Marketed as a slimmed down version of the HTC HD2 the HD Mini’s announcement was unfortunately overshadowed by Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 unveiling one day earlier. How does it stack up against HTC’s similar priced and speced Android devices especially now that we know that not a single WM 6.X device will ever be upgradable to Windows Phone 7? Time to review the HTC HD Mini.
More info and pictures of the HTC Incredible have popped-up today. According to some poster at the Androidforums, the Android 2.1 device packs a SnapDragon chipset under-clocked at 768Mhz (like the Acer Liquid), 512MB of Ram (+ a 8Gb micro-SD?), 8Mpx camera with WVGA video capture and It measures 117.5 x 58.5 x 11.9mm. It should be head to Verizon in Q2 2010. source: Androidforums via Engadget
Source: Engadget
Source: Google Docs via WMPoweruser This came out of no where and looks mighty interesting. Lenovo’s upcoming IdeaPad laptop just leaked before its official announcement at CES. The IdeaPad U1 Hybrid is a CULV Intel Core 2 Duo powered laptop running Windows 7 premium and also a 11.6 inch multi-touch tablet power by a Qualcomm SnapDragon Chipset running Lenovo’s Skylight Linux distro with a 16GB SSD. As you can see in the pictures, when the screen is attached to the chassis the device is a standard laptop but you can also detach the screen to use it as a tablet. Rumored released date is June for a price of $999 with 4GB of RAM, 2x USB 2.0 ports, eSATA, VGA, HDMI, 4-in-1 memory card reader and 1.3-Megapixel camera. Interestingly if Windows Mobile 7wasn’t so late this thing wouldn’t feature the Linux distro and you’ll probably have a better seamless experience (check out Mary Jo Foley’s post here & here). As I’ve mentioned several times already the HTC HD2 running Windows Mobile 6.5 is currently unable to natively playback 720p videos even-thought the SnapDragon chipset supports it and the recently released Acer Liquid Android smartphone can do it (same for the future HTC Bravo / Passion). So far it seems like this is a Windows Mobile 6.5 limitation (FYI I have never seen any demo or video of a WM6.X/WinCE5 device playing back a 720P video, only WinCE 6 and Android/Linux demos). We already know that this feature should be enabled in Windows Mobile 7 according to the info here but are we going to be stuck with sub-par video decoding on Windows Mobile 6.5?
So it now looks like Qualcomm is still developping drivers for WM6.5. It remains to be seen how all this would work given that the SnapDragon’s FPUs aren’t even supported/enabled in WM6.X.
NexPlayer is also the multimedia player licensed by Samsung on all their latest smartphones like the Omnia II, OmniaLite, Omnia Pro , Samsung Jet etc.. Source: Nextreaming
IntroFor many years Windows Mobile users have been disappointed every time a new handset was announced because this or that feature was missing. Not long ago it was screen resolutions, people wanted VGA screens, before that it was Wi-Fi or GPS, 3D acceleration or camera flashes etc. This year HTC finally announced what everybody’s been wishing and waiting for. A Windows Mobile smartphone that has every single feature imaginable (besides a hardware keyboard), the HTC HD2. Will this device be enough for the power user? Is it too late to “save” WM6.5 ? Continue reading HTC HD2 Review: The best smartphone ever? →
Source: AcerLiquid Blog |
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