Garrett
Advanced Member
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Motorola Razr i - 2GHz Hyper Threaded smartphone
- Thread starter Garrett
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craigix
Mega GP Mania
X86? In a phone?! 2000mah battery. I wonder how long it really lasts?
Or if it gets hot?
Or if it gets hot?
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Exophase
Nothing good will ever come of Exophase.
Medfield is fiercely overrated, thanks to having a big software advantage in Javascript, since unfortunately the current state of mobile benchmarking uses a lot of poor JS benchmarks. In native tasks Cortex-A9 usually beats it clock per clock, and the clocks are almost the same, especially when not counting turbo where who knows how long it can actually sustain 2GHz - probably long enough to look good in Sunspider. HT is a very strong advantage for Atom by itself, but when it's up against competitors that have two or even four real cores it just can't compete. Cortex-A15 is going to make short work of it, and if Apple gets serious about CPU performance and ramps the up the clocks in A6 the next iPad could put the hurt on Medfield too.
The power consumption is fine for low-CPU tasks, as you would expect, but no one has measured it under load (or even while running any kind of real game). It also has a big performance penalty when it has to emulate ARM NDK stuff, again something reviews don't often investigate, just trumpeting that everything runs. All we have is Intel's claimed numbers, which are on the low end of okay, nothing that'd make you think that it'd kill your battery instantly, but still not especially competitive. The "omg x86 in phones lolz" attitude is unwarranted; IMO Intel has a perfectly fine shot in the future with their process advantage, they just need to do a better uarch than their current Atoms. Silvermont on 22nm next year is supposed to be new and better.
WINE would be cool, but first you need that on Android or someone needs to get something else on these phones.
So far Medfield phones have been released in a lot of foreign markets (or should I say, non-English speaking at the least - mostly poorer/developing nations, but also France IIRC) but have been doing poorly. This is the first release from a big worldwide vendor, although apparently still in a limited market (UK only?).. I don't know what's keeping Intel out of major markets like USA and Japan but whatever it is they need to fix it.. But first lets see if anyone in these target markets actually shows interest in these phones. Motorola is a good start, AFAIK their strongest partner (and was known to be making a Medfield phone for a long time, this is no surprise, pretty much right on schedule) but they're going to need more than that. At least they finally managed to put ICS on a Medfield device.
The power consumption is fine for low-CPU tasks, as you would expect, but no one has measured it under load (or even while running any kind of real game). It also has a big performance penalty when it has to emulate ARM NDK stuff, again something reviews don't often investigate, just trumpeting that everything runs. All we have is Intel's claimed numbers, which are on the low end of okay, nothing that'd make you think that it'd kill your battery instantly, but still not especially competitive. The "omg x86 in phones lolz" attitude is unwarranted; IMO Intel has a perfectly fine shot in the future with their process advantage, they just need to do a better uarch than their current Atoms. Silvermont on 22nm next year is supposed to be new and better.
WINE would be cool, but first you need that on Android or someone needs to get something else on these phones.
So far Medfield phones have been released in a lot of foreign markets (or should I say, non-English speaking at the least - mostly poorer/developing nations, but also France IIRC) but have been doing poorly. This is the first release from a big worldwide vendor, although apparently still in a limited market (UK only?).. I don't know what's keeping Intel out of major markets like USA and Japan but whatever it is they need to fix it.. But first lets see if anyone in these target markets actually shows interest in these phones. Motorola is a good start, AFAIK their strongest partner (and was known to be making a Medfield phone for a long time, this is no surprise, pretty much right on schedule) but they're going to need more than that. At least they finally managed to put ICS on a Medfield device.
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ghostpatch
Active Member
In Germany it goes on sale in mid-October.
Chip Online a German computer magazine got their hand on one and did a few tests. The UI works flawless - no lags, no enything. They say especially browsing is very fast and smooth. No surprise, the graphics power is weeker then other high end smartphones. Dead Trigger for example is only playable without lags with reduced details, but given the price of 399Euro its no big deal. You probably get it for 300 half a year later.
Don't know how it works with Android drivers in general but is there any chance RAZR i drivers are being integrated in the Linux Kernel so you can run a regular Linux? I dont trust smartphones. They tend to "loose" to much data
Chip article: http://www.chip.de/n...k_57566723.html (German only)
Chip Online a German computer magazine got their hand on one and did a few tests. The UI works flawless - no lags, no enything. They say especially browsing is very fast and smooth. No surprise, the graphics power is weeker then other high end smartphones. Dead Trigger for example is only playable without lags with reduced details, but given the price of 399Euro its no big deal. You probably get it for 300 half a year later.
Don't know how it works with Android drivers in general but is there any chance RAZR i drivers are being integrated in the Linux Kernel so you can run a regular Linux? I dont trust smartphones. They tend to "loose" to much data
Chip article: http://www.chip.de/n...k_57566723.html (German only)
me too ; )Garrett said:
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takato14
Member
We'd better get a x86 in the Pandora 2 :3
But eh, hyperthreading is bad. If it were a physical dual-core CPU I'd get it in a heartbeat.
craigix
Mega GP Mania
It will be blown away in general by the next generation of ARM cores too.
X86 in phones just .... just isn't right. I really hope we never see it take off as it's a step backwards.
I don't worry too much though as I'm pretty certain it won't.
X86 in phones just .... just isn't right. I really hope we never see it take off as it's a step backwards.
I don't worry too much though as I'm pretty certain it won't.
elwing
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I don't understand why they would use an X86 in a phone... in a linux device meant for games, on the other hands... this (bad) processor would be much better and gives us more performance for PC games using wine that we'll get using qemu with the fastest ARM processor on the market... but on a locked down phone where the majority of the user won't ever want to run PC software...
ghostpatch
Active Member
@elwing
ARM got powerful enough to hunt in Intel x86 territory (set-top PCs, low coast Laptops etc.). Its no surprise that Intel tries to prepare themselfs or hit back. Smartphones are getting closer to negate the need of a PC (http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android)for some modest (boring) people. Of course Intel wants a pice of that cake.
I don't think its a bad phone. The CPU gets good mid range ratings. Taking up to 10 pics a second is quite tempting for me. It doesn't have to compete with the top ARM CPUs because its sold ceaper. I'm looking forward to see what people will do with that phone ; )
ARM got powerful enough to hunt in Intel x86 territory (set-top PCs, low coast Laptops etc.). Its no surprise that Intel tries to prepare themselfs or hit back. Smartphones are getting closer to negate the need of a PC (http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android)for some modest (boring) people.
Of course Intel wants a pice of that cake.I don't think its a bad phone. The CPU gets good mid range ratings. Taking up to 10 pics a second is quite tempting for me. It doesn't have to compete with the top ARM CPUs because its sold ceaper. I'm looking forward to see what people will do with that phone ; )
elwing
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@elwing
ARM got powerful enough to hunt in Intel x86 territory (set-top PCs, low coast Laptops etc.). Its no surprise that Intel tries to prepare themselfs or hit back. Smartphones are getting closer to negate the need of a PC (http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android)for some modest (boring) people.
I don't think its a bad phone. The CPU gets good mid range ratings. Taking up to 10 pics a second is quite tempting for me. It doesn't have to compete with the top ARM CPUs because its sold ceaper. I'm looking forward to see what people will do with that phone ; )
you misunderstood me, I've no doubt of that, what I was talking was about performance of old x86 software on ARM using QEMU compared to x86 using only wine...
