blah blah blah same crappy gameboy resolution screen blah blah blah talk to nokia blah blah blah.
maybe if half the price of the stupid thing went into the device instead of paying for all the worthless marketing they'd have a killer device that i would gladly pay $130 a month for for unlimited data service.
I dunno why ,i have a good feeling
not knowing much at all about (only what seems to be a negative
evaluation on parts; by the community).
This phone its main uphearst performace being, we'll see a comprised Flash/Flex player on the iTunes store ?a good deal onwards agreed on a Mac-device friendly version of the Flash Player?? Anyone else hoping/caring?
Arh, interesting question. I think everyone were too concentrated on its CPU, Memory and GPU and forgot the most fundamental / important issues.
To be honest iPhone is rather weak for its Radio Reception. I think this is partly due to Infineon are new to Mobile Chipset.
Is there an updated chipset to fix iPhone Comparatively poor quality reception?
( Last time i heard the 7.2Mbps speed increase has to do with Firmware unlocking, so i am not sure if the chipset has been updated )
Was talking with the Apple engineers at WWDC which technical data sheets to look up concerning the GPU within the new iPhone. It's the PowerVR SGX 535.
This chip is one up from the Palm Pre which is the PowerVR SGX 530.
The difference between these is more video based than anything else. 535 has hardware acceleration for H.264 encode/decode, MPEG 4 and JPEG. It also handles HD content to 720p in real time.
These specs seem to give a hint to what Apple are planning for future upgrades of the iPhone or other device. Suggesting, that if your developing for the 3GS then you're already developing for the next generation too.
My guess is that the 535 was used more for optimizing the video option on the phone than for any future planned uses. Not required to do video, but is extremely useful in reducing file sizes of video output and may help with some of the video editing functionality it supossedly has. So far Apple hasn't really preplanned any added functionality so much as reacted to demand for certain features they seemed to have left out useablity and performance trade off. Copy, cut, paste being the most glaring example. Basically I am quite doubtful they have a handset like the Omnia HD that probably uses this same chip in their sights just yet.
I really hope anand do some detail article on Mobile Tech. MIPS, ARM, difference between ARMv6 and v7. SnapDragon and OMAP. I mean if iPhone uses a SOC that is 90% the same as TI's OMAP, why not just buy it from OMAP? Do different implementation of ARM matters? How does Tegra compare to SGX, what about Mani ( ARM ) 's graphics department?
There are about 10 dozens more questions i hope anand could answer. The truth is, as a tech news reader, i haven't been as excited as this for a long time. PC are already way too powerful then 90%+ of our needs. That is why Netbook are so popular. They are cheap, and gets the job done.
The next battle, and most interesting development in the next decade will be on Mobile front. Where ARM and PowerVR dominate. PC tech are used to Intel and ATI/Nvidia so ARM and PowerVR's tech are Alien to us.
I really hope there will be more in depth article about Mobile Technology. The only thing that interest me in PC is development of SSD.
I've been dabbling in it for a while but I think I agree with you. Such a comparison may be necessary. I'm going to start chasing some of these technologies and see where I end up. If I find something sufficiently interesting, I'll be sure to share :)
I am guessing Apple gets a better deal with Samsung as I think most of the flash in iPods was from them prior to iPhone. TI may make flash memory, but pretty sure they don't touch Samsung volume. From what I can gather also the Samsung ASIC and OMAP are pretty much the same anyhow or atleast have pretty close ARM/IM SoC matched lines.
I am with you 100% on this. If you goto page 5 of these comments I linked to some good info on what is behind snapdragon and qualcomm's plans now that they own AMD/ATI handheld graphics IP. They also spent 100's of millions making their cortex core more powerful than the competition also. I am with you on Anand doing a more in depth look at the competing offerings here using his connections to get info tough to find for us. Its intersting stuff as this market is more IP oriented, but Qualcomm, intel and probably a lot of others add their own IP as they package these things in SoC's.
Yes I read it. On paper Qualcomm seems to have an edge on everything. ATI powered Graphics, Better then Cortex A8 design, and expertise in Mobile Wireless Chipset.
However it doesn't seems any Manufacture are using their chips. From the charts Mainly Japaneses and Korean ( LG ) based phone maker. Given LG recently switched side to Non Qualcomm based to due to cost issues. We will see even less QualComm chip in Global Market since Japaneses Handset are not exported and unusable outside Japan.
Was waiting to see what the fuss about Iphone 3G S was about. If I wasn't already tied down to a 2 year contract I'd buy one.
Do you think Apple will gain dominance over the phone market as they seemingly are or other companies will get their feet in the door? Apple is looking at a Windows-like monopoly of the mobile phone market at the moment!
these smartphones will eventually make PC, laptop, & netbook less rellevant, Apple already has 50,000 apps just for iphone, do they even have that much apps for their own macbook line?
Intel,Amd & Nvidia is becoming a niche, with consoles and smartphone taking their customers away little by little.
the only weakness to smartphone is how badly these cartel cellular operate. Get your acts together At&T and get aggressive broadband roll out.
"Apple could be their own worst enemy with this faster hardware, and they have been seen to drop legacy support quite quickly already (Snow Leopard anyone?), things that other people can't get away with."
Apple drop legacy support quite easily? No. You don't know anything about the history of Mac OS if you say that. Google Rosetta for one. Look at how long people are able to continue to install the latest Mac OS on old hardware for another. SL is a major rewrite of huge portions of the OS that Windows 7 could only dream about. It's the kind of rewrite that Microsoft doesn't have the skills, the will, or organization to do.
"Palm has the Pre, it has faster hardware."
Not anymore. Read the article.
"The problem here is that either Apple developers are going to have to develop for the (s)lowest common denominator (20million units), and either risk annoying customers by making them unable to use the stuff/forcing them to upgrade, or making applications which aren't as impressive as they could be."
Palm wishes they could have this "problem'". Palm has every little money in the bank and is in league with Sprint which is the most dubious cell company in existence right now. They make AT&T look good. They have terrible dev tools, have already pissed of a lot of developers, and you can only write web apps for the Pre. 8GB of ram and the terrible keyboard are showstoppers for me.
Developing for iPhone or Pre is a quite easy decision. iPhone has the mass of the marketplace and a real SDK. Palm has neither and may never have.
"While Leopard had nearly as shaky/buggy a start as Vista (though 99.9% of Mac users won't admit it), Leopard has reportedly morphed into a very stable and serviceable system."
You must have dreamed this. Leopard had nowhere near the shaky start of Vista. I used both Leopard and Vista pre-beta and RC for many months. Its really amazing the things people say with no idea what they are talking about.
"The greatest weakness of the iPhone is the controls."
Why, because it doesn't have the kind of controls you are used to? Developers have done amazing things with multi-touch and the accelerometer.
"The average phone user doesn't care much about games and game controls"
I don't know what you consider average. Apple does in fact care about games and the iPhone and plenty of iPhone users buy them. Enough for a very robust marketplace. Check the numbers.
I'm interested to hear about the radios and if we can expect better, stronger, clearer signals.
2 cents? All you gave was a penny. I laughed at your post so much. Could you be anymore of a fanboy? You purposely go out of your way to diss Microsoft and Palm, but completely ignore the points you quoted. Snow Leopard is Intel only (READ: no G4/G5). Where is the support? You are talking about the past, we are in the present and looking to the future.
The sad thing is you probably don't even own a iPhone. You are a sad excuse of a fanboy. PERIOD.
You hint ARM and Imagination Tech own the mobile procesing space here, but wondering if you have any write ups in the works that compare the PowerVR based intgrated GPU offerings to th also popular Qualcomm ATI based cores? Also in January Qualcomm purchased the ATI handheld unit and got rights to all related IP along with some staff to keep said mobile ATI core competitive.
To me this could mean an advantage for qualcomm 's Snapdragon if PowerVR's cores aren't a lot better than Qualcomms ATI or PowerVR offering VERY affordable licencing? I know this goes outside the iPhone 3Gs review a bit, but it will have probably ALOT of snapdragon competitors soon! And some of these Snapdragon competitors could show up with even more mature Android.
Here is some good info on the unique ARMv7 ISA based Scorpion core used in snapdragon! I for the life of me can't find info on the ATI handheld core that Qualcomm uses and now owns?? They seem to have invested more in the ARMv7 ISA than their more or less standard Cortex competition. Of particular interest is the lower power and double width SIMD unit.
i liked this review, especially the comparisons to 486 & older gpus, u know your crowd well.;) i actually prefer computer reviews but this was'nt abd at all. thanks again.
I wouldn't, I currentlt have an iPhone 3G and the new features even if 2x faster doesn't seem worth me spending $400 to upgrade. I'll just wait till next year when my contract expires and I will qualify for the new iPhone
..all very interesting, but what about other smartphone platforms, such as Symbian's S60, which have handsets which far out-perform the likes of the iPhone and Pre?
So tell me, what are these S60 handsets that "far out-perform" the iPhone 3GS and Pre?
The Samsung i8910/Omnia HD uses the exact same TI OMAP3430 chip as the PRE. The OMAP3430 has the same 600Mhz Cortex-A8 and PowerVR SGX as the iPhone, although the iPhone may be SGX520 where the OMAP3430 uses the SGX530.
Tegra is ARM11, so it won't be as fast. No idea how the GPUs compare though. If Apple are designing an in-house product that uses A8 or A9 with NEON, they probably wanted to use the A8 earlier.
Also there is the matter of support for Apple to use it, having to learn a new SoC (who knows - this SoC could be pin compatible with the old one) and so on. Otherwise they could have used the TI OMAP that the Pre uses...
In addition to the ARM11 core, I believe the GPU side of tegra does use too much power for something like the iPhone. I can't find detailed specs for NVIDIA's low end Tegra, but Wikipedia lists ~4W for the higher end model - that's simply too much. We need to see values in the mW range.
From what I gathered, Apple is increasing support for iPhone peripherals. Could this allow for a controller / docking cradle for the iPhone? Imagine 4 buttons and a couple of directional pads on either end of the phone in landscape mode. Would make for a great little gaming unit.
One thing that wasn't clear from the article is how certain are you about the information? Is it just speculation at this point until somebody gets one and tears it down?
I'm very certain. The info comes from sources very close to the licensees for both the CPU and GPU. Without hardware in hand it's impossible to be 100% sure, but what Apple has implied lines up well with what I've been told.
The ~2x gains in app performance would only come from a faster processor. Apple's options there are to either use a much higher clocked ARM11 or move to the Cortex A8. You can't get 2x out of a 200MHz speed boost to an ARM11 core, so that leaves the A8.
The graphics side I'm also very sure about, although I can't post why :)
I think you should point out that the CPU and GPU are actually on the same die, indeed everything apart from the RAM will be on that die. Some parts of the article imply that the CPU and GPU simply share the package, but could be separate dies.
A little sad that the GPU is the SGX520 - the lowest end, but it's still so much better than the MBX it doesn't matter. Shame you can't snaffle a die shot from Samsung ;) maybe the graphics are by comparison quite large, even considering the A8 with L2 cache.
The crypto co-processor that's been added is certainly being used, as hardware crypto was mentioned in the keynote. That will aid iPhone SSL web browsing speed I'd hope.
Also the A9 is out-of-order, so comparable to a Nano, as the A8 is comparable to Atom and the ARM11 is comparable to a very fast 486.
[quote]Paired with this CPU is a PowerVR MBX-Lite GPU core. This GPU, like the CPU, is built on a 90nm process and is quite simple. The GPU does support hardware transform and lighting but it’s fully fixed function, think of it as a DirectX 6/7 class GPU (Riva TNT2/GeForce 256).[/quote]
This is not strictly correct. IIRC the MBX model in the iPhone has a programmable vertex shader that exceeds DX8. The pixel pipeline, though, is fixed function. Having said this, I'm not sure if the programmable aspects of the vertex shader are exposed in the iPhone interface.
i have by and large stayed away from apple my entire life, but given their recent innovation on the consumer devices front and their virtual monopoly on the high capacity music players market with the ipod, i have been keeping them on my radar none the less. when a family member picked up an iphone3G when we switched to AT&T for our wireless service, i was actually rather impressed at simply how much better it was than the blackjack 2 i picked up, at just about everything. the only complaint i had was in its texting performance, but with a cloned SIM card i could get around that simply by pulling out my blackjack 2 instead. I have been looking at getting an iphone since i use my phone for mobile browsing excessively, and even using opera the blackjack 2 doesnt come close in ease of use compared to the old iphone on edge. with the new 3Gs also supporting picture texting (a requirement of my GF) i may just look into this if i get the promotion im gaming for by the end of the summer.
I avoided the iPhone for so long and I even bought one to jailbreak and play with, but it wasn't until OS 3.0 that it became my daily phone. The Exchange support on it beats most other smartphones.
I'd say high capacity music players are the only segment of mp3 players where the Ipods are not dominant. The only high capacity models are the classic/video ones, which don't seem to be that popular and don't appear to have been upgraded nearly as recently as the touch and nano.
Anand, thanks so much for your preview. I can't wait for your review after you get a hold of the phone. I am really interested in battery life. During the keynote I thought they said something about a new battery and that was why more battery life. I guess we will soon know for sure.
Compared to the DS, the iPhone 3G (and 3GS) are both way more powerful. That thing uses an ARM9E based processor and runs at no more than 133MHz I believe. The Cortex A8 should run circles around it. According to Wikipedia, the DS' "GPU" can reach a peak of 120K triangles per second...the first iPhone is capable of 1M per second. The iPhone is a superior hardware platform from a specs standpoint.
The PSP is a bit more difficult of a comparison. It's got two MIPS cores plus a GPU. I haven't looked deeply into its architecture but I believe the 3GS should still be faster.
Memory size is a huge limiting factor. The PSP has 2MB of video memory, 32MB of application memory and 4MB of embedded DRAM? The DS is even worse, it only has 4MB of RAM and < 1MB of video memory!
The original iPhone had, what, 128MB? Everyone is expecting 256MB from the next-generation model.
It's only a matter of time before handheld consoles are replaced by something like the iPhone. Console makers have to subsidize the cost of their hardware across games, cellular providers already subsidize the hardware costs of smartphones. There's huge potential here.
Update - digging more into the PSP specs it's quite possible that the PSP is a faster gaming platform. It's difficult comparing CPUs since we're talking about a cross-architecture comparison, but on the GPU side the PSP appears to have more raw power. How that translates into real world performance compared to the PowerVR SGX in the 3GS remains to be seen. The 3GS most definitely has an efficient core.
The memory comparison is still valid, especially with the 3GS at 256MB of RAM things get even more interesting.
Depending on whether we're talking about the DS or the DSi, the main CPU is 66mhz or 133mhz respectively (always operating at 66mhz in DS mode). Both come with the ARM7 co-processor, which runs at 33mhz. The RAM value for the DS is right, meanwhile the DSi has 16MB. RAM's a bit iffy of course, the DS isn't running an operating system in the background and Slot-1 affords some in-place use of assets (albeit not true in-place execution like the GBA that let it get away with virtually no RAM). At any rate, the DS is still less powerful than the iPhone 3GS obviously.
You're correct about the PSP, it has 2 MIPS processors (one for CPU use, one as a graphics processor) that can run between 22mhz and 333mhz. Most games for it are at 222mhz, a small number of titles push it to 333mhz. In raw CPU performance the 3GS is likely ahead, in GPU performance however it's entirely possible the PSP is still in the lead. When properly optimized the PSP is capable of near-PS2 graphics, which looking at the SGX's specs may be just a bit more than it can do. But we'll have to see what's done with it.
The more limiting factor however is power consumption. The DS Lite is a champ here - on the lower screen brightness settings it gets over 10 hours running at full tilt. That's Nintendo's tradeoff on performance and power. The PSP isn't nearly as good, but even when everything is cranked up it can do about 4-5 hours (I'm going to ignore the UMD here), more if it's a 222mhz game.
Both of these are well in excess of what the iPhone 3G got on its most demanding games. Even though the 3GS is faster, games aren't going to offer it much of an opportunity to drop to a lower power state since they're tasks that never end. For a 3G game I'd expect better battery life (50%, so 3 hours maybe?), but for a 3GS game it's likely going to be even worse.
As you note the 3GS can eat more power, so if devs try to max it out (and they will, there's 20 years of console history that says shiny sells) it's reasonable to expect that it'll crash harder than even the 3G. Unless the SBX eats significantly less power, the worst case battery life scenario for the 3GS is going to be far worse than any dedicated handheld on the market, and worse than the existing 3G and iPod Touch.
To that end, unless Apple can reign in on developers and make them NOT max out the hardware, I don't see handhelds going away any time soon. You'll get some convergence (e.g. solitaire) but the battery/hardware balance for a phone and a handheld are completely different. A gaming platform that only gets a couple of hours is a Sega Game Gear (or a Nomad, for the sadistic), and at least that had removable batteries.
I GS must be faster than the N95's 3D acceleration as well, I know the 3G was slower, but this looks much faster. I've seen 3D demos on the N95 and wow they were impressive. At that 320x240 resolution it probably performed better than the PSP.
The greatest weakness of the iPhone is the controls. Developers can get pretty innovative with the touch screen and accelerometer but really they can only do so much. id did a great job with Wolfenstein on the iPhone but the controls are still not as precise as physical buttons, and the controls take up the already limited screen estate of the phone.
Nintendo threw as many input methods as possible with the mic, touch screen, physical buttons, and now camera. They also put in dual screens. The result is that developers could get wildly creative and I think it has been key to the DS' success because it allowed for some pretty innovative games.
I've yet to see many "serious" games for the iPhone; most appear to be catered to very casual gaming. There's a huge market for that as evidenced by the Wii, but it's not ready to displace the dedicated hand held consoles yet.
Yeah we'll probably see convergence happen down the road, but not in this or the next generation.
The average phone user doesn't care much about games and game controls, so I don't really see apple or palm incorporating these into their phones and cluttering up the interface. But all it would take is for a company to create a peripheral that, say, the iphone snaps into and docks with that has an analog stick, some buttons, and some hand grips. Could even make it so it folds up when not in use. Something like that could really open up possibilities for gaming on iphone or pre. Just thinking about it makes me a little giddy hehe. Nintendo hand helds have always been too cheesy for me, but I can't bring myself to spend big money on a psp. Now if I can justify it with "but, its a phone and so much more." maybe my conscience would say "hey, your right! Go ahead and buy it."
There's been one in the works for more than a year. (http://www.icontrolpad.com/)">http://www.icontrolpad.com/) They've been stalling, though, and apple's releasing of new models every year is hurting, too. They originally were just aiming for jailbroken phones / ipods, but now want to enable full SDK support. I have cash set aside to buy one, if they'd just put them on sale...
Glad to see someone is working on this. From the video on the sight it looks like the latency on the controls is kind of an issue, and it looked like it wouldn't accept multiple button presses at the same time i.e. forward and right simultaneously. Could just be an issue with the way the interface with the iphone works, although the multiple button thing could just be me :P also, would like to see an analog stick. The days of on/off style movement controls are long gone.
They've had the iPhone, and the iPhone 3G.
They've sold quite a lot of them, using the same hardware.
Now they are releasing a new product with faster hardware.
Palm has the Pre, it has faster hardware.
The problem here is that either Apple developers are going to have to develop for the (s)lowest common denominator (20million units), and either risk annoying customers by making them unable to use the stuff/forcing them to upgrade, or making applications which aren't sa impressive as they could be.
The Pre has the advantage of being out later, so everything has the same base point (although it has no install base or history yet).
While it's good Apple have improved their hardware, it will be interesting to see how the handle the software side (after all, they have been forcing programs to be forwards compatible with something which was unreleased at the time - OS3.0).
Apple could be their own worst enemy with this faster hardware, and they have been seen to drop legacy support quite quickly already (Snow Leopard anyone?), things that other people can't get away with.
The problem with the Pre is that it's not meant for gaming. The SDK is only HTML and Javascript. There won't be any serious gaming on it. In the mobile phone area Apple is pretty much to themselves.
Actually, I don't mind that Snow Leopard is going to be Intel only. With it coming out in September I would not suggest that anyone other than the bleeding edge crowd upgrade to Snow Leopard until October or November at the earliest. That makes the oldest Intel based Mac almost four years old.
If I were still running G4s or G5s (PowerPC based) systems as of this coming November I clearly don't *need* the performance enhancements of a full 64-bit kernel and drivers, OpenCL or Grand Central Dispatch.
While Leopard had nearly as shaky/buggy a start as Vista (though 99.9% of Mac users won't admit it), Leopard has reportedly morphed into a very stable and serviceable system. If you're keeping your Mac for 5+ years, sticking with Leopard might be a great option.
I think I read somewhere that developers for the Ipod would put in options to enable for the faster models. So you just check the box if you have a faster cpu and you get the cooler looking graphics.
The day WoW comes to iPhone is the day when I gonna buy the little bastard. I guess this will happen next year or so. I can almost hear Blizzard devs steaming away, downloading iPhone SDK and buyng more and more Macs. This thing is gonna freakin ROCK.
Not now. The gpu and CPU are still way to slow to play anything like world of Warcraft, just look at some of the demos of the openpandora which uses the same CPU/GPU combo, it runs quake 3 around 22fps from what I can see and most of us now how much of a pushover that game is.
I would expect that the next generation omap 4 might be able to run it being a dual core 1Ghz, but I would think it would still need a faster GPU. Also you have to imagine trying to play a game like world of warcraft with those controls, it would be terrible. You might see a game like eve do it since the game developers are very forward thinking, but not Activision blizzard.
I've never seen Quake3 compiled for CortexA8 and OGL 2.0ES. The best Q3 currently available is actually designed for TI Omap 2/Samsung 6400 which are based on Arm11 processor core and Ogl 1.1 ES.
While I don't see Blizzard releasing a mobile version of WoW anytime soon, just imagine the amount of time you could waste if they simply released an Auction House app.
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araczynski - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
blah blah blah same crappy gameboy resolution screen blah blah blah talk to nokia blah blah blah.maybe if half the price of the stupid thing went into the device instead of paying for all the worthless marketing they'd have a killer device that i would gladly pay $130 a month for for unlimited data service.
ah well, maybe in a few years.
punkball - Saturday, June 13, 2009 - link
I dunno why ,i have a good feelingnot knowing much at all about (only what seems to be a negative
evaluation on parts; by the community).
This phone its main uphearst performace being, we'll see a comprised Flash/Flex player on the iTunes store ?a good deal onwards agreed on a Mac-device friendly version of the Flash Player?? Anyone else hoping/caring?
lateef - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
does anyone know if the radio/wireless chipset been upgraded in the 3gs rather than a tweakiwodo - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
Arh, interesting question. I think everyone were too concentrated on its CPU, Memory and GPU and forgot the most fundamental / important issues.To be honest iPhone is rather weak for its Radio Reception. I think this is partly due to Infineon are new to Mobile Chipset.
Is there an updated chipset to fix iPhone Comparatively poor quality reception?
( Last time i heard the 7.2Mbps speed increase has to do with Firmware unlocking, so i am not sure if the chipset has been updated )
PhilipOrr - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
Was talking with the Apple engineers at WWDC which technical data sheets to look up concerning the GPU within the new iPhone. It's the PowerVR SGX 535.This chip is one up from the Palm Pre which is the PowerVR SGX 530.
The difference between these is more video based than anything else. 535 has hardware acceleration for H.264 encode/decode, MPEG 4 and JPEG. It also handles HD content to 720p in real time.
These specs seem to give a hint to what Apple are planning for future upgrades of the iPhone or other device. Suggesting, that if your developing for the 3GS then you're already developing for the next generation too.
jasaero - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
My guess is that the 535 was used more for optimizing the video option on the phone than for any future planned uses. Not required to do video, but is extremely useful in reducing file sizes of video output and may help with some of the video editing functionality it supossedly has. So far Apple hasn't really preplanned any added functionality so much as reacted to demand for certain features they seemed to have left out useablity and performance trade off. Copy, cut, paste being the most glaring example. Basically I am quite doubtful they have a handset like the Omnia HD that probably uses this same chip in their sights just yet.iwodo - Thursday, June 11, 2009 - link
I really hope anand do some detail article on Mobile Tech. MIPS, ARM, difference between ARMv6 and v7. SnapDragon and OMAP. I mean if iPhone uses a SOC that is 90% the same as TI's OMAP, why not just buy it from OMAP? Do different implementation of ARM matters? How does Tegra compare to SGX, what about Mani ( ARM ) 's graphics department?There are about 10 dozens more questions i hope anand could answer. The truth is, as a tech news reader, i haven't been as excited as this for a long time. PC are already way too powerful then 90%+ of our needs. That is why Netbook are so popular. They are cheap, and gets the job done.
The next battle, and most interesting development in the next decade will be on Mobile front. Where ARM and PowerVR dominate. PC tech are used to Intel and ATI/Nvidia so ARM and PowerVR's tech are Alien to us.
I really hope there will be more in depth article about Mobile Technology. The only thing that interest me in PC is development of SSD.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
I've been dabbling in it for a while but I think I agree with you. Such a comparison may be necessary. I'm going to start chasing some of these technologies and see where I end up. If I find something sufficiently interesting, I'll be sure to share :)Take care,
Anand
iwodo - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
Thanks. Hoping for more ARM info soon.Regards
AnnonymousCoward - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
I agree. Apple should be buying OMAP instead of the ASIC. I think digital camera companies will be going that route too.jasaero - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
I am guessing Apple gets a better deal with Samsung as I think most of the flash in iPods was from them prior to iPhone. TI may make flash memory, but pretty sure they don't touch Samsung volume. From what I can gather also the Samsung ASIC and OMAP are pretty much the same anyhow or atleast have pretty close ARM/IM SoC matched lines.jasaero - Thursday, June 11, 2009 - link
I am with you 100% on this. If you goto page 5 of these comments I linked to some good info on what is behind snapdragon and qualcomm's plans now that they own AMD/ATI handheld graphics IP. They also spent 100's of millions making their cortex core more powerful than the competition also. I am with you on Anand doing a more in depth look at the competing offerings here using his connections to get info tough to find for us. Its intersting stuff as this market is more IP oriented, but Qualcomm, intel and probably a lot of others add their own IP as they package these things in SoC's.iwodo - Friday, June 12, 2009 - link
Yes I read it. On paper Qualcomm seems to have an edge on everything. ATI powered Graphics, Better then Cortex A8 design, and expertise in Mobile Wireless Chipset.However it doesn't seems any Manufacture are using their chips. From the charts Mainly Japaneses and Korean ( LG ) based phone maker. Given LG recently switched side to Non Qualcomm based to due to cost issues. We will see even less QualComm chip in Global Market since Japaneses Handset are not exported and unusable outside Japan.
Barack Obama - Thursday, June 11, 2009 - link
Was waiting to see what the fuss about Iphone 3G S was about. If I wasn't already tied down to a 2 year contract I'd buy one.Do you think Apple will gain dominance over the phone market as they seemingly are or other companies will get their feet in the door? Apple is looking at a Windows-like monopoly of the mobile phone market at the moment!
anandtech02148 - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
these smartphones will eventually make PC, laptop, & netbook less rellevant, Apple already has 50,000 apps just for iphone, do they even have that much apps for their own macbook line?Intel,Amd & Nvidia is becoming a niche, with consoles and smartphone taking their customers away little by little.
the only weakness to smartphone is how badly these cartel cellular operate. Get your acts together At&T and get aggressive broadband roll out.
Mazik - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
"If Apple would just get their pre-ordering system working right I might not even have to camp out this year..."...you can pre-order on att.com
snookie - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
"Apple could be their own worst enemy with this faster hardware, and they have been seen to drop legacy support quite quickly already (Snow Leopard anyone?), things that other people can't get away with."Apple drop legacy support quite easily? No. You don't know anything about the history of Mac OS if you say that. Google Rosetta for one. Look at how long people are able to continue to install the latest Mac OS on old hardware for another. SL is a major rewrite of huge portions of the OS that Windows 7 could only dream about. It's the kind of rewrite that Microsoft doesn't have the skills, the will, or organization to do.
"Palm has the Pre, it has faster hardware."
Not anymore. Read the article.
"The problem here is that either Apple developers are going to have to develop for the (s)lowest common denominator (20million units), and either risk annoying customers by making them unable to use the stuff/forcing them to upgrade, or making applications which aren't as impressive as they could be."
Palm wishes they could have this "problem'". Palm has every little money in the bank and is in league with Sprint which is the most dubious cell company in existence right now. They make AT&T look good. They have terrible dev tools, have already pissed of a lot of developers, and you can only write web apps for the Pre. 8GB of ram and the terrible keyboard are showstoppers for me.
Developing for iPhone or Pre is a quite easy decision. iPhone has the mass of the marketplace and a real SDK. Palm has neither and may never have.
"While Leopard had nearly as shaky/buggy a start as Vista (though 99.9% of Mac users won't admit it), Leopard has reportedly morphed into a very stable and serviceable system."
You must have dreamed this. Leopard had nowhere near the shaky start of Vista. I used both Leopard and Vista pre-beta and RC for many months. Its really amazing the things people say with no idea what they are talking about.
"The greatest weakness of the iPhone is the controls."
Why, because it doesn't have the kind of controls you are used to? Developers have done amazing things with multi-touch and the accelerometer.
"The average phone user doesn't care much about games and game controls"
I don't know what you consider average. Apple does in fact care about games and the iPhone and plenty of iPhone users buy them. Enough for a very robust marketplace. Check the numbers.
I'm interested to hear about the radios and if we can expect better, stronger, clearer signals.
michaely - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
2 cents? All you gave was a penny. I laughed at your post so much. Could you be anymore of a fanboy? You purposely go out of your way to diss Microsoft and Palm, but completely ignore the points you quoted. Snow Leopard is Intel only (READ: no G4/G5). Where is the support? You are talking about the past, we are in the present and looking to the future.The sad thing is you probably don't even own a iPhone. You are a sad excuse of a fanboy. PERIOD.
jasaero - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Anand,You hint ARM and Imagination Tech own the mobile procesing space here, but wondering if you have any write ups in the works that compare the PowerVR based intgrated GPU offerings to th also popular Qualcomm ATI based cores? Also in January Qualcomm purchased the ATI handheld unit and got rights to all related IP along with some staff to keep said mobile ATI core competitive.
To me this could mean an advantage for qualcomm 's Snapdragon if PowerVR's cores aren't a lot better than Qualcomms ATI or PowerVR offering VERY affordable licencing? I know this goes outside the iPhone 3Gs review a bit, but it will have probably ALOT of snapdragon competitors soon! And some of these Snapdragon competitors could show up with even more mature Android.
jasaero - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Here is some good info on the unique ARMv7 ISA based Scorpion core used in snapdragon! I for the life of me can't find info on the ATI handheld core that Qualcomm uses and now owns?? They seem to have invested more in the ARMv7 ISA than their more or less standard Cortex competition. Of particular interest is the lower power and double width SIMD unit.Now who can find info on this ATI core?
jasaero - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Woops here's the link to the scorpion core info.http://www.insidedsp.com/Articles/tabid/64/article...">http://www.insidedsp.com/Articles/tabid...-Reveals...
jasaero - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
More interesting info on Qualcomm's offering and smartphone SoC plan in general.http://brew.qualcomm.com/brew_bnry/pdf/brew_2007/T...">http://brew.qualcomm.com/brew_bnry/pdf/brew_2007/T...
electricgrape - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Any word on the lowly ipod touch? I've got Sero and I'll be damned if I'm going to leave $30/month just to pick up an iphone....so I use a touch :-)poohbear - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
i liked this review, especially the comparisons to 486 & older gpus, u know your crowd well.;) i actually prefer computer reviews but this was'nt abd at all. thanks again.tonjohn - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
As an iPhone 3G owner, do I stick with what I have or do I upgrade?Will the 3GS really be worth the extra money for current 3G owners to upgrade?
rageguy34 - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
I wouldn't, I currentlt have an iPhone 3G and the new features even if 2x faster doesn't seem worth me spending $400 to upgrade. I'll just wait till next year when my contract expires and I will qualify for the new iPhonestuclark - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
..all very interesting, but what about other smartphone platforms, such as Symbian's S60, which have handsets which far out-perform the likes of the iPhone and Pre?Take for example Samsung's i8910 handset, which runs S60 and is technically superior to pretty much anything else on the market. Here's it's spec sheet: http://innovator.samsungmobile.com/prd/sym/product...">http://innovator.samsungmobile.com/prd/...1%26plat....
winterspan - Thursday, June 11, 2009 - link
So tell me, what are these S60 handsets that "far out-perform" the iPhone 3GS and Pre?The Samsung i8910/Omnia HD uses the exact same TI OMAP3430 chip as the PRE. The OMAP3430 has the same 600Mhz Cortex-A8 and PowerVR SGX as the iPhone, although the iPhone may be SGX520 where the OMAP3430 uses the SGX530.
Quit spreading BS!
rageguy34 - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Anand,Why doesn't apple use the tegra instead of the ARM processor, does tegra use up too much power?
psychobriggsy - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Tegra is ARM11, so it won't be as fast. No idea how the GPUs compare though. If Apple are designing an in-house product that uses A8 or A9 with NEON, they probably wanted to use the A8 earlier.Also there is the matter of support for Apple to use it, having to learn a new SoC (who knows - this SoC could be pin compatible with the old one) and so on. Otherwise they could have used the TI OMAP that the Pre uses...
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
In addition to the ARM11 core, I believe the GPU side of tegra does use too much power for something like the iPhone. I can't find detailed specs for NVIDIA's low end Tegra, but Wikipedia lists ~4W for the higher end model - that's simply too much. We need to see values in the mW range.Take care,
Anand
peccavi - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
From what I gathered, Apple is increasing support for iPhone peripherals. Could this allow for a controller / docking cradle for the iPhone? Imagine 4 buttons and a couple of directional pads on either end of the phone in landscape mode. Would make for a great little gaming unit.eburnette - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
One thing that wasn't clear from the article is how certain are you about the information? Is it just speculation at this point until somebody gets one and tears it down?Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
I'm very certain. The info comes from sources very close to the licensees for both the CPU and GPU. Without hardware in hand it's impossible to be 100% sure, but what Apple has implied lines up well with what I've been told.The ~2x gains in app performance would only come from a faster processor. Apple's options there are to either use a much higher clocked ARM11 or move to the Cortex A8. You can't get 2x out of a 200MHz speed boost to an ARM11 core, so that leaves the A8.
The graphics side I'm also very sure about, although I can't post why :)
Take care,
Anand
psychobriggsy - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Thanks for confirming the rumours.I think you should point out that the CPU and GPU are actually on the same die, indeed everything apart from the RAM will be on that die. Some parts of the article imply that the CPU and GPU simply share the package, but could be separate dies.
A little sad that the GPU is the SGX520 - the lowest end, but it's still so much better than the MBX it doesn't matter. Shame you can't snaffle a die shot from Samsung ;) maybe the graphics are by comparison quite large, even considering the A8 with L2 cache.
The crypto co-processor that's been added is certainly being used, as hardware crypto was mentioned in the keynote. That will aid iPhone SSL web browsing speed I'd hope.
Also the A9 is out-of-order, so comparable to a Nano, as the A8 is comparable to Atom and the ARM11 is comparable to a very fast 486.
Simon F - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
[quote]Paired with this CPU is a PowerVR MBX-Lite GPU core. This GPU, like the CPU, is built on a 90nm process and is quite simple. The GPU does support hardware transform and lighting but it’s fully fixed function, think of it as a DirectX 6/7 class GPU (Riva TNT2/GeForce 256).[/quote]This is not strictly correct. IIRC the MBX model in the iPhone has a programmable vertex shader that exceeds DX8. The pixel pipeline, though, is fixed function. Having said this, I'm not sure if the programmable aspects of the vertex shader are exposed in the iPhone interface.
faxon - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
i have by and large stayed away from apple my entire life, but given their recent innovation on the consumer devices front and their virtual monopoly on the high capacity music players market with the ipod, i have been keeping them on my radar none the less. when a family member picked up an iphone3G when we switched to AT&T for our wireless service, i was actually rather impressed at simply how much better it was than the blackjack 2 i picked up, at just about everything. the only complaint i had was in its texting performance, but with a cloned SIM card i could get around that simply by pulling out my blackjack 2 instead. I have been looking at getting an iphone since i use my phone for mobile browsing excessively, and even using opera the blackjack 2 doesnt come close in ease of use compared to the old iphone on edge. with the new 3Gs also supporting picture texting (a requirement of my GF) i may just look into this if i get the promotion im gaming for by the end of the summer.sxr7171 - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
I avoided the iPhone for so long and I even bought one to jailbreak and play with, but it wasn't until OS 3.0 that it became my daily phone. The Exchange support on it beats most other smartphones.strikeback03 - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
I'd say high capacity music players are the only segment of mp3 players where the Ipods are not dominant. The only high capacity models are the classic/video ones, which don't seem to be that popular and don't appear to have been upgraded nearly as recently as the touch and nano.Dennis Travis - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Anand, thanks so much for your preview. I can't wait for your review after you get a hold of the phone. I am really interested in battery life. During the keynote I thought they said something about a new battery and that was why more battery life. I guess we will soon know for sure.Thanks again!
sxr7171 - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
A Dreamcast in the palm of your hand. Please port some Dreamcast titles to this phone. I would order mine this minute.squngy - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
So how would these systems compare with the PSP or DS?If we're talking about games, then it would make sense to know where it stands compered to other popular gaming devices.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Compared to the DS, the iPhone 3G (and 3GS) are both way more powerful. That thing uses an ARM9E based processor and runs at no more than 133MHz I believe. The Cortex A8 should run circles around it. According to Wikipedia, the DS' "GPU" can reach a peak of 120K triangles per second...the first iPhone is capable of 1M per second. The iPhone is a superior hardware platform from a specs standpoint.The PSP is a bit more difficult of a comparison. It's got two MIPS cores plus a GPU. I haven't looked deeply into its architecture but I believe the 3GS should still be faster.
Memory size is a huge limiting factor. The PSP has 2MB of video memory, 32MB of application memory and 4MB of embedded DRAM? The DS is even worse, it only has 4MB of RAM and < 1MB of video memory!
The original iPhone had, what, 128MB? Everyone is expecting 256MB from the next-generation model.
It's only a matter of time before handheld consoles are replaced by something like the iPhone. Console makers have to subsidize the cost of their hardware across games, cellular providers already subsidize the hardware costs of smartphones. There's huge potential here.
Take care,
Anand
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, June 11, 2009 - link
Update - digging more into the PSP specs it's quite possible that the PSP is a faster gaming platform. It's difficult comparing CPUs since we're talking about a cross-architecture comparison, but on the GPU side the PSP appears to have more raw power. How that translates into real world performance compared to the PowerVR SGX in the 3GS remains to be seen. The 3GS most definitely has an efficient core.The memory comparison is still valid, especially with the 3GS at 256MB of RAM things get even more interesting.
Take care,
Anand
Jovec - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Wireless companies don't subsidize anything - they simply have an absolutely huge markup that then can then discount you $50 or $100 with a contract.ViRGE - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Depending on whether we're talking about the DS or the DSi, the main CPU is 66mhz or 133mhz respectively (always operating at 66mhz in DS mode). Both come with the ARM7 co-processor, which runs at 33mhz. The RAM value for the DS is right, meanwhile the DSi has 16MB. RAM's a bit iffy of course, the DS isn't running an operating system in the background and Slot-1 affords some in-place use of assets (albeit not true in-place execution like the GBA that let it get away with virtually no RAM). At any rate, the DS is still less powerful than the iPhone 3GS obviously.You're correct about the PSP, it has 2 MIPS processors (one for CPU use, one as a graphics processor) that can run between 22mhz and 333mhz. Most games for it are at 222mhz, a small number of titles push it to 333mhz. In raw CPU performance the 3GS is likely ahead, in GPU performance however it's entirely possible the PSP is still in the lead. When properly optimized the PSP is capable of near-PS2 graphics, which looking at the SGX's specs may be just a bit more than it can do. But we'll have to see what's done with it.
The more limiting factor however is power consumption. The DS Lite is a champ here - on the lower screen brightness settings it gets over 10 hours running at full tilt. That's Nintendo's tradeoff on performance and power. The PSP isn't nearly as good, but even when everything is cranked up it can do about 4-5 hours (I'm going to ignore the UMD here), more if it's a 222mhz game.
Both of these are well in excess of what the iPhone 3G got on its most demanding games. Even though the 3GS is faster, games aren't going to offer it much of an opportunity to drop to a lower power state since they're tasks that never end. For a 3G game I'd expect better battery life (50%, so 3 hours maybe?), but for a 3GS game it's likely going to be even worse.
As you note the 3GS can eat more power, so if devs try to max it out (and they will, there's 20 years of console history that says shiny sells) it's reasonable to expect that it'll crash harder than even the 3G. Unless the SBX eats significantly less power, the worst case battery life scenario for the 3GS is going to be far worse than any dedicated handheld on the market, and worse than the existing 3G and iPod Touch.
To that end, unless Apple can reign in on developers and make them NOT max out the hardware, I don't see handhelds going away any time soon. You'll get some convergence (e.g. solitaire) but the battery/hardware balance for a phone and a handheld are completely different. A gaming platform that only gets a couple of hours is a Sega Game Gear (or a Nomad, for the sadistic), and at least that had removable batteries.
psychobriggsy - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Confirmation of 600MHz and 256MB RAM: http://www.t-mobile.nl/iphone/specificaties.html?W...">http://www.t-mobile.nl/iphone/specificaties.html?W...sxr7171 - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
I GS must be faster than the N95's 3D acceleration as well, I know the 3G was slower, but this looks much faster. I've seen 3D demos on the N95 and wow they were impressive. At that 320x240 resolution it probably performed better than the PSP.fyleow - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
The greatest weakness of the iPhone is the controls. Developers can get pretty innovative with the touch screen and accelerometer but really they can only do so much. id did a great job with Wolfenstein on the iPhone but the controls are still not as precise as physical buttons, and the controls take up the already limited screen estate of the phone.Nintendo threw as many input methods as possible with the mic, touch screen, physical buttons, and now camera. They also put in dual screens. The result is that developers could get wildly creative and I think it has been key to the DS' success because it allowed for some pretty innovative games.
I've yet to see many "serious" games for the iPhone; most appear to be catered to very casual gaming. There's a huge market for that as evidenced by the Wii, but it's not ready to displace the dedicated hand held consoles yet.
Yeah we'll probably see convergence happen down the road, but not in this or the next generation.
mesiah - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
The average phone user doesn't care much about games and game controls, so I don't really see apple or palm incorporating these into their phones and cluttering up the interface. But all it would take is for a company to create a peripheral that, say, the iphone snaps into and docks with that has an analog stick, some buttons, and some hand grips. Could even make it so it folds up when not in use. Something like that could really open up possibilities for gaming on iphone or pre. Just thinking about it makes me a little giddy hehe. Nintendo hand helds have always been too cheesy for me, but I can't bring myself to spend big money on a psp. Now if I can justify it with "but, its a phone and so much more." maybe my conscience would say "hey, your right! Go ahead and buy it."HelToupee - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
There's been one in the works for more than a year. (http://www.icontrolpad.com/)">http://www.icontrolpad.com/) They've been stalling, though, and apple's releasing of new models every year is hurting, too. They originally were just aiming for jailbroken phones / ipods, but now want to enable full SDK support. I have cash set aside to buy one, if they'd just put them on sale...mesiah - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Glad to see someone is working on this. From the video on the sight it looks like the latency on the controls is kind of an issue, and it looked like it wouldn't accept multiple button presses at the same time i.e. forward and right simultaneously. Could just be an issue with the way the interface with the iphone works, although the multiple button thing could just be me :P also, would like to see an analog stick. The days of on/off style movement controls are long gone.Lonyo - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
They've had the iPhone, and the iPhone 3G.They've sold quite a lot of them, using the same hardware.
Now they are releasing a new product with faster hardware.
Palm has the Pre, it has faster hardware.
The problem here is that either Apple developers are going to have to develop for the (s)lowest common denominator (20million units), and either risk annoying customers by making them unable to use the stuff/forcing them to upgrade, or making applications which aren't sa impressive as they could be.
The Pre has the advantage of being out later, so everything has the same base point (although it has no install base or history yet).
While it's good Apple have improved their hardware, it will be interesting to see how the handle the software side (after all, they have been forcing programs to be forwards compatible with something which was unreleased at the time - OS3.0).
Apple could be their own worst enemy with this faster hardware, and they have been seen to drop legacy support quite quickly already (Snow Leopard anyone?), things that other people can't get away with.
str1f3 - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
The problem with the Pre is that it's not meant for gaming. The SDK is only HTML and Javascript. There won't be any serious gaming on it. In the mobile phone area Apple is pretty much to themselves.Shadowself - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Actually, I don't mind that Snow Leopard is going to be Intel only. With it coming out in September I would not suggest that anyone other than the bleeding edge crowd upgrade to Snow Leopard until October or November at the earliest. That makes the oldest Intel based Mac almost four years old.If I were still running G4s or G5s (PowerPC based) systems as of this coming November I clearly don't *need* the performance enhancements of a full 64-bit kernel and drivers, OpenCL or Grand Central Dispatch.
While Leopard had nearly as shaky/buggy a start as Vista (though 99.9% of Mac users won't admit it), Leopard has reportedly morphed into a very stable and serviceable system. If you're keeping your Mac for 5+ years, sticking with Leopard might be a great option.
sc3252 - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
I think I read somewhere that developers for the Ipod would put in options to enable for the faster models. So you just check the box if you have a faster cpu and you get the cooler looking graphics.Pirks - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
The day WoW comes to iPhone is the day when I gonna buy the little bastard. I guess this will happen next year or so. I can almost hear Blizzard devs steaming away, downloading iPhone SDK and buyng more and more Macs. This thing is gonna freakin ROCK.sc3252 - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Not now. The gpu and CPU are still way to slow to play anything like world of Warcraft, just look at some of the demos of the openpandora which uses the same CPU/GPU combo, it runs quake 3 around 22fps from what I can see and most of us now how much of a pushover that game is.I would expect that the next generation omap 4 might be able to run it being a dual core 1Ghz, but I would think it would still need a faster GPU. Also you have to imagine trying to play a game like world of warcraft with those controls, it would be terrible. You might see a game like eve do it since the game developers are very forward thinking, but not Activision blizzard.
Digitalhell - Wednesday, July 8, 2009 - link
I've never seen Quake3 compiled for CortexA8 and OGL 2.0ES. The best Q3 currently available is actually designed for TI Omap 2/Samsung 6400 which are based on Arm11 processor core and Ogl 1.1 ES.monomer - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
While I don't see Blizzard releasing a mobile version of WoW anytime soon, just imagine the amount of time you could waste if they simply released an Auction House app.Rindis - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Maybe Blizz could rework their Molten Core mini-game for the console to be on the iPhone?~_^
jelifah - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
In addition to an Auction House app, what about...Crafting app
In-game messaging app
Grind this monster app
Grind this daily quest app
...Okay, the last two were just me being silly
aeternitas - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
You make it sound like wow is a hard to play. Every class in that game can be played with 2 buttons.piroroadkill - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Ho ho ho, so incredibly wrong and unfunnysxr7171 - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 - link
Think resolution. Almost twice the pixels on the pandora.