That would be a useful application of the cameras (increasing the depth of focus), but how much do you want to bet they are just going to take bad quality 3d images instead?
The ultra-mobile computing sector is being driven like cattle. It makes no sense for so much money to be spent in this space. Millions of spiritually devoid yuppies are spending over $100 a month (amortized) on this crap, and it serves no real purpose above and beyond what they could be getting for $20 a month. I think the phrase "spiritually devoid" is the key. These people who feel this compulsion to blow in excess of $100 a month are attempting to fill a void that will only grow larger once they become tethered to one of these things. A cheap mobile phone, a good paperback novel, and an extra $80 a month in your pocket will make anyone happier than having one of these stupid things. But I know no form of logic or rationality will stop this.
Umm, I spend $23 a month for my data plan, and the phone was $200 spread over the 20 months I have been using it. The basic plan costs far more than that.
"Umm, I spend $23 a month for my data plan, and the phone was $200 spread over the 20 months I have been using it. The basic plan costs far more than that. "
So if the "basic" plan costs more than that, what is YOUR plan? What's your total bill, not just the data plan? What country are you in?
Your post doesn't carry any weight when it lacks any specifics.
My basic plan includes myself, my wife, and my grandmother, 700 minutes, unlimited sms/mms, and data on my line. With taxes and all it costs $135 a month. We would go lower minutes if we could but this is the lowest available. The point was that having the cheapest, least capable cellphones possible would still be ~$110 a month, so the additional cost of a smartphone is not nearly the $100 a month suggested. Maybe if I bought the newest phone at full retail price every few months and then sold it for a loss to do the same thing over again it could hit $100 a month.
Seriously? I'm always dumbfounded by comments such as yours, 'phones cost too much... blah blah blah.'
50 years ago, did people spend $100 a month on cable? $50 a month on internet access? $17k for a new compact car? Prices rise, new services are established, and the world changes. Get over it. I spend far less money on film development than my parents did, as in, no money. My typewriter budget is also minimal compared to my grandmother, hovering at around $0 for quite some time.
Who are you people? Are you a member of an older generation? Bitter, perhaps, that technology has progressed so far, but you no longer have a reason to stay up to date now that you are retired and on a fixed income?
Seriously, tell me who you are, I am really curious. First off, I pay $45 a month for my unlimited smartphone plan. It's my home phone, portable phone, internet on the go, camera, GPS unit, fax machine, portable game system, e-book reader, calendar, note system, document holder, and general work tool. I don't bring a good paperback novel with me, I bring 213 books with me, want to guess what that would cost in checked bag fees?
So, Mr., "serves no real purpose above and beyond what they could be getting for $20 a month," where can I get all that functionality for $20 a month? I can guarantee you, that I am far more frugal than you are... I own my home, I am working on buying my first rental property, and I live off of about $1,000 a month. Did I mention that I'm 26? I have an awesome job, where I travel non-stop that pays well above $1,000 a month, but guess what? I wouldn't have that job if it wasn't for my smartphone, it literally enables me to do my job.
Ohh, and did I forget to mention that my company pays for my smartphone? Actually, they pay a little more than I pay, so I make money on my smartphone plan.
Last but not least, this "spiritually devoid" techie used his smartphone as a bible in church on Sunday. Seriously, it's nice to have my bible with me while I travel without having to lug a large book around the country.
Hey! Easy with your stereotypes about older generations there sonny! ;-)
Luddites come in all ages and flavours, as do techies.
Me, I'm still awestruck at the computing power I have in my pocket, available for my use at any time. It makes my work easier and more effective, helps to stay in touch with friends and family, brings me information from all over the world, holds a big chunk of my music...and even lets me read Anandtech.
When i was a kid this was the stuff of sci-fi and Dick Tracy comic strips (the famous "wrist radio").
Not that I don't periodically get the sensation of being bent over by my cell company, but fundamentally it's worth every penny.
"50 years ago, did people spend $100 a month on cable?"
They didn't do that 20 years ago. You're just being complacent because you feel helpless. We are now burdened with so many such people that companies are free to ream consumers almost without bounds.
Fifty years ago, nobody would've predicted that customers would not only endure, but make excuses for the kind of treatment they get today.
"Sir, you can buy this record, but you can only play it in your living room and not your bedroom. You also can't take it to your friend's house or give it to your kids. And it doesn't come with a cover. And if you play it loud enough for the neighbors to hear, we will sue you."
"Yes sir, this car is the latest model. See the bumpers, the part that's supposed to sustain occasional contact with other cars or objects? We've covered them with glossy paint!"
"Sir, you must pay us for this band saw, but you're not actually buying it. You're only paying for a license to use it. If you try to sell it at a garage sale, we will sue you."
Thank you. That is exactly what I think. I don't care about the next thingy with touchable icons.
I want real productive stuff, in order to read, write, create....
For example last month I bought a basic phone and a large 27" monitor with LED lighting and better colors. The present focus on little gadgets is boring.
Your phrase "spiritually devoid" is excellent and insightful.
I don't know about the estimates of A15 at 28nm. The micro-architecture is huge. I would seriously doubt -- even if 28nm offered a 50% power reduction, it'd maintain the same power envelope as an equivalent frequency A9.
If you compared a power optimized A9 vs A15 on the same process then yes, the A15 would use a lot more power as it is more complex.
However the 2GHz A9 is a highly optimized part and uses almost twice as much power as a standard A9. The A15 has a much deeper pipeline and scales well beyond 2GHz. Therefore it doesn't need to be as optimized and thus lose as much power efficiency as the A9 to reach 2GHz. So it's more than just process scaling.
I believe there will be a power optimized A15 as well running "up to" 1.5GHz from ARM (other vendors will do the backend work themselves of course).
I expect even that to be more power hungry at similar frequencies to, say, a 1.5GHz A9. Now, the performance increase may merit that extra power draw, but the overall power usage would likely be higher.
In the tablet space, it seems like an incredibly suited device. In a phone....not so much.
If all else is equal, the A15 will use more power than the A9 at the same frequency. But it can power down sooner when performing the same tasks as it is much faster. How much this affects overall power use depends on how often you actually need the extra performance.
The only info I've seen from ARM claims that for a given task, a dual core 32nm A15 uses less than half the energy of a single core 65nm A8. Assuming 30% power reduction per process step means the A15 is as efficient as an A8. So I think it is too soon to say the A15 is unsuitable for a mobile.
System power consumption seems like the big unknown. The 28nm process should help, but it would be interesting to know what sort of of processor throttling can be applied to non-critical tasks. And it won't help to be able to render a web page in an eye-blink if you're still waiting for its content to download over the cellular network.
I'm as interested in potential 2 x 2GHz speed as the next user, but not if it sucks my battery dry.
Please don't do that...Equate ZOMG Ghz with power. It is exactly that mentality that allowed Intel to sell the scourge that was NetBurst. Brazos will (in all likelyhood) not be "slower" as you claim there is far more to speed than Ghz.
Brazos would need at least 25% better IPC for a 1.6GHz Brazos to beat a 2GHz A15. Since Brazos is 2-way OoO, and A15 is 3-way OoO, I doubt that. Brazos will likely have an advantage on DP FP but I expect the A15 will win on integer code.
While the A15 has twice as many pipeline stages as the A9, we're not talking about anything approaching NetBurst. Brazos actually has a similar pipeline (also 15 stages). When comparing similar micro architectures clockspeed matters a lot.
You can bet they evaluated faster options, but probably choose LPDDR2 due to cost (including package size & pin count) and power consumption reasons. The doubled L2 cache was probably more power efficient than going for faster RAM.
Does LPDDR3 even exist as a standard? A bit of googling appears to only have false hits (rambus posturing, ddr3 gpus, low power dimms). Standard ram is too power intensive for mobile devices (in addition to having more pins to connect); so until LPDDR3 is available LPDDR2 is the best that can be used.
"there’s still a lot that can be done in hardware to improve the quality of what’s captured."
Yeah, for starters, stop the stupid Megapixel race and start optimizing quality, by valuing pixel size versus count, and considering that above 4MP is probably pointless on digital displays since 24" is only 1.9MP.
Well when you have no optical zoom the best you can do is crop out the part of the image you are actually interested in, which is where more MP helps. As mentioned though settling on something smaller and with better noise characteristics would be nice.
Given that we have something for a relatively niche market in the HTC Surround (a phone with pretensions of being a boombox) I'm surprised we haven't yet (in the US at least) seen a phone with a camera system to challenge a P&S. Folded optics systems already allow for some cameras that are similar thickness to smartphones, and as procssor/screen/battery already exist in the phone design it would seem at most another 3/4"-1" in length would be needed.
More megapixels also gives them the wiggle room necessary for digital image stabilization; rather than moving lens elements or the sensor, they shift which pixels on the actual imager correspond to pixels in the resultant picture.
But, of course, we all know that the "bigger number" syndrome will always net them a few extra sales.
There was a blog post, it may have been linked in the review comments here, comparing the n8 to a dslr, and in some shots it was arguable which came out on top. Anecdotally, i've seen some great shots taken with it. So yeah, want a decent camera phone - there you have it.
I never said they couldn't be decent at a single focal length, but for me at least to replace a P&S it is going to have to have optical zoom capability in at least the 28-100mm (equivalent) neighborhood. Now given that this type of thing seems to be more popular in other parts of the world something like what I described might be available in Korea or something, but has not been launched in any major way in the US at least.
Actually it's possible that we may see tegra 4 devices before omap 5 ones.
Tegra 2 = now (LG Optimus 2X, Motorola Atrix, etc.) Tegra 2 3D = spring 2011(LG Optimus 3D ?) Tegra 3 = fall 2011 Tegra 4 (ARM Cortex-A15 ?) = first half of 2012?
"the gap between smartphone camera quality and high-end point-and-shoot and DSLR cameras" is because of sensor size. its matter of physics, not technology. OMAP5 like things can only good for those consumer-brain-washer-features you mentioned in article.
The thing that stands out in this SoC is that addition of a USB 3.0 and SATA port. USB 3.0 can arguably be useful on a smart phone I'm struggling to see where SATA would come into play. I have a feeling that TI is broadening the range of devices this SoC can be placed into.
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Meaker10 - Monday, February 7, 2011 - link
That would be a useful application of the cameras (increasing the depth of focus), but how much do you want to bet they are just going to take bad quality 3d images instead?SPOOFE - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
With support of up to four cameras, you can take Extra-DOF bad quality 3D images!sabot00 - Monday, February 7, 2011 - link
So, even when OMAP 4 isn't finished, we have specs of OMAP 5?I don't remember such forwardness with either AMD or Intel, or with nVidia or ATi.
Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
The ultra-mobile computing sector is being driven like cattle. It makes no sense for so much money to be spent in this space. Millions of spiritually devoid yuppies are spending over $100 a month (amortized) on this crap, and it serves no real purpose above and beyond what they could be getting for $20 a month. I think the phrase "spiritually devoid" is the key. These people who feel this compulsion to blow in excess of $100 a month are attempting to fill a void that will only grow larger once they become tethered to one of these things. A cheap mobile phone, a good paperback novel, and an extra $80 a month in your pocket will make anyone happier than having one of these stupid things. But I know no form of logic or rationality will stop this.strikeback03 - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
Umm, I spend $23 a month for my data plan, and the phone was $200 spread over the 20 months I have been using it. The basic plan costs far more than that.MobiusStrip - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
"Umm, I spend $23 a month for my data plan, and the phone was $200 spread over the 20 months I have been using it. The basic plan costs far more than that. "So if the "basic" plan costs more than that, what is YOUR plan? What's your total bill, not just the data plan? What country are you in?
Your post doesn't carry any weight when it lacks any specifics.
strikeback03 - Thursday, February 10, 2011 - link
My basic plan includes myself, my wife, and my grandmother, 700 minutes, unlimited sms/mms, and data on my line. With taxes and all it costs $135 a month. We would go lower minutes if we could but this is the lowest available. The point was that having the cheapest, least capable cellphones possible would still be ~$110 a month, so the additional cost of a smartphone is not nearly the $100 a month suggested. Maybe if I bought the newest phone at full retail price every few months and then sold it for a loss to do the same thing over again it could hit $100 a month.Western NY, USA
jharper12 - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
Seriously? I'm always dumbfounded by comments such as yours, 'phones cost too much... blah blah blah.'50 years ago, did people spend $100 a month on cable? $50 a month on internet access? $17k for a new compact car? Prices rise, new services are established, and the world changes. Get over it. I spend far less money on film development than my parents did, as in, no money. My typewriter budget is also minimal compared to my grandmother, hovering at around $0 for quite some time.
Who are you people? Are you a member of an older generation? Bitter, perhaps, that technology has progressed so far, but you no longer have a reason to stay up to date now that you are retired and on a fixed income?
Seriously, tell me who you are, I am really curious. First off, I pay $45 a month for my unlimited smartphone plan. It's my home phone, portable phone, internet on the go, camera, GPS unit, fax machine, portable game system, e-book reader, calendar, note system, document holder, and general work tool. I don't bring a good paperback novel with me, I bring 213 books with me, want to guess what that would cost in checked bag fees?
So, Mr., "serves no real purpose above and beyond what they could be getting for $20 a month," where can I get all that functionality for $20 a month? I can guarantee you, that I am far more frugal than you are... I own my home, I am working on buying my first rental property, and I live off of about $1,000 a month. Did I mention that I'm 26? I have an awesome job, where I travel non-stop that pays well above $1,000 a month, but guess what? I wouldn't have that job if it wasn't for my smartphone, it literally enables me to do my job.
Ohh, and did I forget to mention that my company pays for my smartphone? Actually, they pay a little more than I pay, so I make money on my smartphone plan.
Last but not least, this "spiritually devoid" techie used his smartphone as a bible in church on Sunday. Seriously, it's nice to have my bible with me while I travel without having to lug a large book around the country.
NCM - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
Hey! Easy with your stereotypes about older generations there sonny! ;-)Luddites come in all ages and flavours, as do techies.
Me, I'm still awestruck at the computing power I have in my pocket, available for my use at any time. It makes my work easier and more effective, helps to stay in touch with friends and family, brings me information from all over the world, holds a big chunk of my music...and even lets me read Anandtech.
When i was a kid this was the stuff of sci-fi and Dick Tracy comic strips (the famous "wrist radio").
Not that I don't periodically get the sensation of being bent over by my cell company, but fundamentally it's worth every penny.
synaesthetic - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
I'm glad that T-Mobile hasn't tried to ream me in the posterior just yet...I feel the same way, sometimes, playing with my smartphone, it's like living a William Gibson novel. :D
MobiusStrip - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
"50 years ago, did people spend $100 a month on cable?"They didn't do that 20 years ago. You're just being complacent because you feel helpless. We are now burdened with so many such people that companies are free to ream consumers almost without bounds.
Fifty years ago, nobody would've predicted that customers would not only endure, but make excuses for the kind of treatment they get today.
"Sir, you can buy this record, but you can only play it in your living room and not your bedroom. You also can't take it to your friend's house or give it to your kids. And it doesn't come with a cover. And if you play it loud enough for the neighbors to hear, we will sue you."
"Yes sir, this car is the latest model. See the bumpers, the part that's supposed to sustain occasional contact with other cars or objects? We've covered them with glossy paint!"
"Sir, you must pay us for this band saw, but you're not actually buying it. You're only paying for a license to use it. If you try to sell it at a garage sale, we will sue you."
Yeah, things are just hunky dory now.
Alexvrb - Wednesday, February 9, 2011 - link
After reading Shadow's comments, and then yours, I have come to an inescapable conclusion:You both enjoy preaching from soapboxes, but yours is taller than Shadow's.
synaesthetic - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
u madU MAD
sup troll?
Akv - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
Thank you. That is exactly what I think. I don't care about the next thingy with touchable icons.I want real productive stuff, in order to read, write, create....
For example last month I bought a basic phone and a large 27" monitor with LED lighting and better colors. The present focus on little gadgets is boring.
Your phrase "spiritually devoid" is excellent and insightful.
vol7ron - Monday, February 7, 2011 - link
I'm more worried about the power consumption. 2GHz is up there, this sounds more like a competition for Brazos.Wilco1 - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
A 2GHz Cortex-A9 uses ~1W on 40nm. At 28nm, Cortex-A15 should be similar. Brazos is slower and still uses ~10x more power. Competition? Not really...metafor - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
I don't know about the estimates of A15 at 28nm. The micro-architecture is huge. I would seriously doubt -- even if 28nm offered a 50% power reduction, it'd maintain the same power envelope as an equivalent frequency A9.Wilco1 - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
If you compared a power optimized A9 vs A15 on the same process then yes, the A15 would use a lot more power as it is more complex.However the 2GHz A9 is a highly optimized part and uses almost twice as much power as a standard A9. The A15 has a much deeper pipeline and scales well beyond 2GHz. Therefore it doesn't need to be as optimized and thus lose as much power efficiency as the A9 to reach 2GHz. So it's more than just process scaling.
metafor - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
I believe there will be a power optimized A15 as well running "up to" 1.5GHz from ARM (other vendors will do the backend work themselves of course).I expect even that to be more power hungry at similar frequencies to, say, a 1.5GHz A9. Now, the performance increase may merit that extra power draw, but the overall power usage would likely be higher.
In the tablet space, it seems like an incredibly suited device. In a phone....not so much.
Wilco1 - Wednesday, February 9, 2011 - link
If all else is equal, the A15 will use more power than the A9 at the same frequency. But it can power down sooner when performing the same tasks as it is much faster. How much this affects overall power use depends on how often you actually need the extra performance.The only info I've seen from ARM claims that for a given task, a dual core 32nm A15 uses less than half the energy of a single core 65nm A8. Assuming 30% power reduction per process step means the A15 is as efficient as an A8. So I think it is too soon to say the A15 is unsuitable for a mobile.
metafor - Wednesday, February 9, 2011 - link
I've seen those numbers too and the reason the A15 wins out in those cases is that its idle leakage numbers are about 4x lower than the 65nm A8.Based on the numbers for 28LPG, unless they have seriously drastic micro-architected power gating, this is not true.
It may be too soon to count A15 out for mobile, I agree. But judging by the micro-architecture, it's going to push it. At least at 28LPG.
NCM - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
System power consumption seems like the big unknown. The 28nm process should help, but it would be interesting to know what sort of of processor throttling can be applied to non-critical tasks. And it won't help to be able to render a web page in an eye-blink if you're still waiting for its content to download over the cellular network.I'm as interested in potential 2 x 2GHz speed as the next user, but not if it sucks my battery dry.
bah12 - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
Please don't do that...Equate ZOMG Ghz with power. It is exactly that mentality that allowed Intel to sell the scourge that was NetBurst. Brazos will (in all likelyhood) not be "slower" as you claim there is far more to speed than Ghz.Wilco1 - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
Brazos would need at least 25% better IPC for a 1.6GHz Brazos to beat a 2GHz A15. Since Brazos is 2-way OoO, and A15 is 3-way OoO, I doubt that. Brazos will likely have an advantage on DP FP but I expect the A15 will win on integer code.While the A15 has twice as many pipeline stages as the A9, we're not talking about anything approaching NetBurst. Brazos actually has a similar pipeline (also 15 stages). When comparing similar micro architectures clockspeed matters a lot.
iwod - Monday, February 7, 2011 - link
We are still stuck with LPDDR2, which is slow. One would expect an upgraded GPU plus CPU requires a much higher amount of bandwidth.PowerVR had enough of their PowerVR 6 series PR, and we are still not seeing it.
Hopefully Qualcomm and Nvidia would bring in some healthy competition.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
You can bet they evaluated faster options, but probably choose LPDDR2 due to cost (including package size & pin count) and power consumption reasons. The doubled L2 cache was probably more power efficient than going for faster RAM.MrS
DanNeely - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
Does LPDDR3 even exist as a standard? A bit of googling appears to only have false hits (rambus posturing, ddr3 gpus, low power dimms). Standard ram is too power intensive for mobile devices (in addition to having more pins to connect); so until LPDDR3 is available LPDDR2 is the best that can be used.AnnonymousCoward - Monday, February 7, 2011 - link
"there’s still a lot that can be done in hardware to improve the quality of what’s captured."Yeah, for starters, stop the stupid Megapixel race and start optimizing quality, by valuing pixel size versus count, and considering that above 4MP is probably pointless on digital displays since 24" is only 1.9MP.
beginner99 - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
yeah agreed and higher MP can actually lead to worse quality depending on how it is implemented. And it sure is bad on smartphones. Noise...strikeback03 - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
Well when you have no optical zoom the best you can do is crop out the part of the image you are actually interested in, which is where more MP helps. As mentioned though settling on something smaller and with better noise characteristics would be nice.Given that we have something for a relatively niche market in the HTC Surround (a phone with pretensions of being a boombox) I'm surprised we haven't yet (in the US at least) seen a phone with a camera system to challenge a P&S. Folded optics systems already allow for some cameras that are similar thickness to smartphones, and as procssor/screen/battery already exist in the phone design it would seem at most another 3/4"-1" in length would be needed.
SPOOFE - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
More megapixels also gives them the wiggle room necessary for digital image stabilization; rather than moving lens elements or the sensor, they shift which pixels on the actual imager correspond to pixels in the resultant picture.But, of course, we all know that the "bigger number" syndrome will always net them a few extra sales.
AnnonymousCoward - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
A negligible percent of people crop images from their compact digital camera.Sufo - Wednesday, February 9, 2011 - link
There was a blog post, it may have been linked in the review comments here, comparing the n8 to a dslr, and in some shots it was arguable which came out on top. Anecdotally, i've seen some great shots taken with it. So yeah, want a decent camera phone - there you have it.strikeback03 - Thursday, February 10, 2011 - link
I never said they couldn't be decent at a single focal length, but for me at least to replace a P&S it is going to have to have optical zoom capability in at least the 28-100mm (equivalent) neighborhood. Now given that this type of thing seems to be more popular in other parts of the world something like what I described might be available in Korea or something, but has not been launched in any major way in the US at least.Wilco1 - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
There is a lot of detail available on the Cortex-A15 - here is a link:http://www.arm.com/files/pdf/AT-Exploring_the_Desi...
- 3-way OoO, window size ~50 instructions
- 15-24 pipeline stages
- 128-bit I-fetch (4-8 instructions)
- 8 execution pipelines with separate issue queues
- 1 load + 1 store per cycle (stores are in-order until address is resolved)
- fully OoO VFP and Neon, quad FMAC per cycle
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
!Thank you for this, I had no idea ARM released all this - digesting now. Looks like I'll have some things to talk to ARM about at MWC next week :)
Take care,
Anand
eddman - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link
Actually it's possible that we may see tegra 4 devices before omap 5 ones.Tegra 2 = now (LG Optimus 2X, Motorola Atrix, etc.)
Tegra 2 3D = spring 2011(LG Optimus 3D ?)
Tegra 3 = fall 2011
Tegra 4 (ARM Cortex-A15 ?) = first half of 2012?
@Anand
Do you have any information on tegra 4?
Calabros - Wednesday, February 9, 2011 - link
"the gap between smartphone camera quality and high-end point-and-shoot and DSLR cameras" is because of sensor size. its matter of physics, not technology. OMAP5 like things can only good for those consumer-brain-washer-features you mentioned in article.Kevin G - Friday, February 11, 2011 - link
The thing that stands out in this SoC is that addition of a USB 3.0 and SATA port. USB 3.0 can arguably be useful on a smart phone I'm struggling to see where SATA would come into play. I have a feeling that TI is broadening the range of devices this SoC can be placed into.