Mobile Processor Snapshot

The goal here is to break down the main differentiating features of recent, new, and upcoming mobile processors. ARM-based processors lead the superphone and tablet market. I will break-down and quickly explain fabrication and number of cores plus touch on the graphics engines each mobile processor uses. Let’s dig in. Fabrication: Starting with the original Motorola Droid, Palm Pre, Google Nexus One, Droid Incredible, and even HTC EVO 4G the chips were built on a 65nm technology.

Line2 Review for Android

Took the opportunity to load Line2 (Toktumi) from the Android market for a free 30-day trial review. After all it did receive great praise from David Pogue of the New York Times. Balderdash. Let me preface this by saying I’m not the target audience for Line2. Under certain circumstances this app could fit your needs. Although I find it hard to believe that audience would use Android…more than likely it would suit the zombies of Apple nation.

LTE, WiMAX, and HSPA+: the 3.xG battle

According to Verizon, the initial LTE network will support average 5-12 Mbps down and 2-5 Mbps up. Sprint/Clear WiMAX currently supports average 3-6 Mbps down and up to 1 Mbps up. While T-Mobile’s current HSPA+ network along with AT&T’s planned rollout should fall somewhere in the middle. The two key factors to achieve any of these are actual device throughput and backhaul/tower support in a given area. Currently there are no handsets that support HSPA+ or LTE speeds.

TI OMAP 4

After mentioning Nvidia’s latest Tegra updates and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon announcement; it’s only fair to plug Texas Instruments as well. Their OMAP 3 line already does rather well for itself by powering Motorola Droid, Palm Pre, and Nokia N900 to name a few. Here is a quote from Slashgear.com involving their visit with TI: “Of course, Texas Instruments aren’t the only company with a high-profile mobile chipset to talk about, so we asked them how the OMAP4 compares to NVIDIA’s second-generation Tegra, announced back at CES 2010.

Maemo 6 coming soon

Nokia announced phones coming out in 2H 2010 with Maemo 6. It could be a great upgrade and provide much more user friendliness than their developer oriented N900 phone (running Maemo 5 with a TI OMAP 3430). Maemo is a linux based OS (like Android) for handheld devices that is a drastic change from Nokia’s main Symbian based operating systems. Qualcomm has announced upgrades to the Snapdragon that look to compete with Nvidia’s Tegra 2 line.