# Smartphones getting ahead of themselves.



## ADF (Jan 5, 2012)

The Samsung Galaxy S2 launched April last year. It was a 4.3", 1.2Ghz dual core Cortex A9, 1GB ram, 16GB-32GB of on board storage and had a 1080p camera.

Nothing takes advantage of its performance.

It's believed that the Samsung Galaxy S3 will be announced this February during the Mobile World Congress event. It's believed it will have a quad core Cortex A9 or a dual core Exynos 4212 (claimed to be 30% more power efficient and substantially faster performing).

Let me again remind you, nothing takes advantage of dual core performance available since April last year. Nvidia's Tegra zone apps are arguably the only games to use dual cores, but they are mostly normal mobile games upgraded for the Tegra GPU, not designed dual core native.

I have the ZTE Blade, a de-branded Orange San Francisco. A Â£90, 512mb DDR2 and 600Mhz Android phone. The processor is probably the worse today's smartphone market has to offer, yet the phone does everything I could possibly need. It runs most Android games with a few exceptions, has full speed Internet that only lacks flash support, has a app to run YouTube videos, I even have some Blu-ray movies that were converted and downscaled to 800x400 for high quality portable viewing. Sure it lacks the quality of a high end phone, but I cannot think of anything it cannot do that I'd want on the go. 

So as you can imagine, the performance offered by higher end phones is quite frankly mind boggling to me. Nothing needs this sort of performance, never mind what they are planning to release this year. This isn't necessarily a criticism, I'm just curious where on Earth the smartphone market is going? The hardware is moving way WAY ahead of software and accelerating even faster, I have no idea where all that performance is going to go; or how they'd market the need for it. I imagine most of 2012 will be spent trying to take advantage of the performance offered by *last years phones*, as dual core Cortex A9s trickle down into more affordable price ranges. But why someone would need a phone that can run film resolutions greater than what your HDTV can support, I'm not sure where that market is.

If it wasn't for the touch screen limitation, I'd argue smartphones are a serious threat to the handheld gaming market. Playstation/Nintendo handhelds have nowhere near the install base of smartphones, and smartphones can come free with a contract; were Playstation/Nintendo handhelds have the full pricetag of the unit. I think that's a big advantage towards the smartphone. On top of being something people already use on a near daily basis, they don't have a hefty up front price tag. When your contract expires, sign up for another and get the latest phone bundled with it.

Smartphones are rapidly evolving into something, we're just not seeing it too clearly because software is still in the 300mb ram/800mhz single core days.


----------



## Aden (Jan 5, 2012)

I dunno, Infinity Blade II pushes my phone pretty good, along with the other Unreal 3 games. And I really appreciate the power when I'm using painting apps (smudge tool, paint simulation) and image processing apps.

And I know this isn't a very common use, but the A5 really makes my high-res spectrum analyzer snappy~


----------



## AshleyAshes (Jan 5, 2012)

So software is lagging behind the power of the hardware?  This is true in every element of the tech indistry.  Hell, PC games are all 32bit so they can only utalize up to 4GB of memory, meanwhile most gaming PC's start at 8GB these days.  Hell, I'm running 16GB and it'll be 32GB come summer time.

I just don't your point, the hardware always has to be ahead of the software, it gives the software the room it needs to grow.  You can't really do it the other way around because you just produce unfunctional software that's waiting for hardware to make it not suck.  So how is any of this remarkable?


----------



## shteev (Jan 5, 2012)

Nvidia's working on their upcoming Tegra 3 mobile processor, code-named Kal-El.
It's a quad core chip, capable of heavy multitasking and playing detailed games.
They had a demo of one, it was rendering dynamic light in a game. It was _really_ pretty.
But where are they going with this? Are they attempting to take over the mobile gaming market?
Maybe so. Although, I won't care as long as I have my gaming rig. I don't care how advanced these devices get. They won't be able to trump the real pixel-pushing machines some people have.


----------



## Runefox (Jan 5, 2012)

Pre-Ice Cream Sandwich Android phones very much have their hardware taken advantage of - The UI and everything is rendered in software, pegging the CPU to do simple things like scrolling, rather than using the more energy-efficient GPU for that stuff. In addition, in terms of gaming, with Chainfire 3D, you can enable up to 16x anti-aliasing in games (Galaxy S2 does 4x with no performance loss), which definitely makes a difference on displays like the Galaxy S2's, which is decidedly not high-resolution enough to comfortably run 3D without anti-aliasing. The operating system itself also has a lot to handle - Running apps in the background, keeping track of sensors and notifications, and more, all while doing whatever you're doing at the time. They're becoming more and more like full mobile computers than simply phones.

For Apple, the A5 isn't entirely needed versus the A4 just yet, but definitely helps with overall system responsiveness, with things like the notification drawer being particularly smooth while other things are happening by comparison to Android offerings. In addition, the more cores are present, the less energy is needed to perform any given task - Tasks can be distributed among the cores at lower clock frequencies, which generally requires less energy overall than running a single processor at a high frequency to handle those tasks. The ASUS Transformer Prime tablet, for example, is a quad-core tablet, with another core assigned specifically for low-intensity tasks (like sensor reading, notifications, background tasks, etc), leaving the four main cores to sleep or perform other tasks more efficiently.

TL;DR: High performance also = High efficiency, which = less power required, which = smaller footprint, which = thinner and lighter devices.


----------



## Commiecomrade (Jan 6, 2012)

I'll just stick to my desktop. I have the unfortunate condition of walking into things while using a phone and not calling.

You think that's bad? Game companies' ports of games to the PC means we're playing with outdated graphics. I have a gaming computer and it's pretty nice, but nothing you'd utter a "wow" over. I play at a capped 60 FPS on Skyrim at all times. Before the patch, Skyrim didn't even use the full 4 GB RAM allocation 32bit applications get; it was capped at 2. Even with performance smashing graphics mods, I still never dip below 50.

I remember the good days of Crysis in 2007 when the ultra settings were unplayable on anything for YEARS. It still looks astonishing.

Not trying to say graphics > gameplay. I just like a little tech demo now and then to keep me amazed.


----------



## Elim Garak (Jan 6, 2012)

I can see why a faster device can be useful for games, and for faster UI.
I am sad that my HTC Wildfire doesn't have a GPU and won't be able to run Android 4.0/CM9 due NON-GPU support not being present.


----------



## ADF (Jan 6, 2012)

AshleyAshes said:


> So software is lagging behind the power of the hardware?  This is true in every element of the tech indistry.  Hell, PC games are all 32bit so they can only utalize up to 4GB of memory, meanwhile most gaming PC's start at 8GB these days.  Hell, I'm running 16GB and it'll be 32GB come summer time.
> 
> I just don't your point, the hardware always has to be ahead of the software, it gives the software the room it needs to grow.  You can't really do it the other way around because you just produce unfunctional software that's waiting for hardware to make it not suck.  So how is any of this remarkable?



This may be the case, but I feel the extent that phone hardware is getting ahead of software; is significantly greater than what we are seeing on PC. Android hardware is going to see octo cores next year, it is seeing advances per year that took PC years.


----------



## Aden (Jan 6, 2012)

ADF said:


> This may be the case, but I feel the extent that phone hardware is getting ahead of software; is significantly greater than what we are seeing on PC. Android hardware is going to see octo cores next year, it is seeing advances per year that took PC years.



That's because the advances have already been made in the desktop market; now they're just putting them in a smaller package because they can


----------



## ADF (Jan 6, 2012)

Aden said:


> That's because the advances have already been made in the desktop market; now they're just putting them in a smaller package because they can



It's not simply a matter of sticking what is in our desktops in a smaller package. A ARM processor is different from a AMD & Intel processor, they're designed to be power efficient from the ground up, with performance as a secondary priority, and work with a different instruction set. The Cortex A15 was being advertised in 2010 and has yet to appear in phones, it still takes years for this technology to develop in time to hit mobile phones but is being developed in such a manner that improvements appear year after year.

Consider the time it took desktops to go from dual to quad cores, then from quad to six core. Top tier phones did it in one year. Mobile phone processors are working on a totally different scale and with different priorities, so you cannot necessarily just apply desktop technology.


----------



## AshleyAshes (Jan 6, 2012)

I'm still not seeing what the *problem* here is.


----------



## ADF (Jan 6, 2012)

AshleyAshes said:


> I'm still not seeing what the *problem* here is.





> This isn't necessarily a criticism, I'm just curious where on Earth the smartphone market is going?



I'm basically prompting discussion on where all this performance is going to take smartphones. It cannot all be for gaming considering the diversity of the users, that and HDTVs cannot support the sort of resolutions that the next generation of phones will be able to output.

If a dual core phone will run the Internet with all the bells and whistles, as well as output 1080p video via mini hdmi, then what is a quad core going to be used for?


----------



## AshleyAshes (Jan 6, 2012)

ADF said:


> I'm basically prompting discussion on where all this performance is going to take smartphones. It cannot all be for gaming considering the diversity of the users, that and HDTVs cannot support the sort of resolutions that the next generation of phones will be able to output.
> 
> If a dual core phone will run the Internet with all the bells and whistles, as well as output 1080p video via mini hdmi, then what is a quad core going to be used for?



More bells and whistles, duh.  It's not as if software on a cellphone has reached some climax and it won't go beyond that.  The information systems in our world are always becoming more complex.  You're pretty nieve if you think we've already reached the top.

Graphics, more efficent but demanding video codecs, advances in machine vision, and that's just to name a few realms of improvement.


----------



## ADF (Jan 6, 2012)

AshleyAshes said:


> More bells and whistles, duh.  It's not as if software on a cellphone has reached some climax and it won't go beyond that.  The information systems in our world are always becoming more complex.  You're pretty nieve if you think we've already reached the top.
> 
> Graphics, more efficent but demanding video codecs, advances in machine vision, and that's just to name a few realms of improvement.



I have not claimed we have reached some sort of peak. What I am saying is a dual core phone from April 2010 will run everything the Internet has to offer today, that we have barely taken advantage of these dual cores, so the quad cores arriving early this year are getting way ahead of themselves don't you think? Nvidia's Tegra plan is expecting octo core phone CPUs by the end of this year at the earliest, offering ten times the power of the Tegra 2. 

Now I am not claiming this performance will never be taken advantage of in the future, but phone hardware is improving at a substantially faster rate than software can ever hope to take advantage of. Faster than we normally see in consumer hardware. This isn't a bad thing, but I'm curious in speculating with others where all this horsepower is going to be directed in the future, because the Internet's system requirements for the typical smartphone user aren't increasing this fast.


----------



## Elim Garak (Jan 6, 2012)

They should focus more on the batteries though, they drain fast in most cases, either put in bigger batteries or work on new battery types.


----------



## ADF (Jan 6, 2012)

Caroline Dax said:


> They should focus more on the batteries though, they drain fast in most cases, either put in bigger batteries or work on new battery types.



I consider this to be a far greater issue than the need for more horsepower. Granted this next generation of CPUs are much more power efficient, but I suspect it will be pumped into higher performance.

If the Android Booster app is to be believed, I get around 3.8hrs of net out of mine. Crank that up to 8hrs on a dual core and we can talk about more horsepower.


----------



## audiocanine (Jan 24, 2012)

> They're becoming more and more like full mobile computers than simply phones.



I suspect that this may be the destination they are trying to reach with all the hoarse power. Making this kind of mobile computing power cheap and affordable would allow for some fantastical applications we have yet to see. Quite possible the attaching of a computer to everything ever.


----------



## grimtotem (Jan 24, 2012)

correct me if i am wrong but if they make something that u know processes things faster wont it in turn use less power to processor said thing therefore makeing it more power efficient?


----------



## AGNOSCO (Jan 30, 2012)

ive got a desire hd running cyanogenmod 7. its an awesome phone but it runs GTA 3 like shit. still tho i know where your comming from, but it is also awesome becuase with the power anyone who wants to create a program or a game for the portible devices has all that potencial to utilize.


----------



## Sar (Jan 30, 2012)

ADF said:


> Smartphones are rapidly evolving into something, we're just not seeing it too clearly because software is still in the 300mb ram/800mhz single core days.


It is normal for software to lag behind hardware beause newer technology is tended to be future proof.


----------

