Sony Switches To Its Own Processor For Handhelds

Pointing to this Associated Press story carried by the Miami Herald, Jorkapp writes "Sony has announced that they will be using Processors manufactured by themselves in their next generation of CLIE handhelds, which are due to ship this Semptember. This is only the first step though, as Sony is planning to use its own line of processors for the next generation of Playstation systems. This new processor will give users 16 hours of battery life (impressive!) and the ability to play video at a smooth 30fps." And jake writes with a link to a story at mobilemag.com which also describes the new handhelds (the UX50 was mentioned the other day), and says "both the CLIE UX50 and UX40 handhelds will be available through American retailers in September for about $700 and $600, respectively, but can be pre-ordered now through Sony's website."

Comments

$700 price point

[marshac]

I still don't understand this. At this price, you are in direct competition with a laptop, and the laptop can do a lot more. I think that HP is moving in the right direction by offering sub $300 ipaq units that are actually quite nice.

Re:$700 price point

[james72]

This argument again?! PDA / Laptop's have totally different use patterns. I don't/can't carry a laptop in my pocket. Windows doesn't boot in less than a second (even with suspend/hibernate). A laptops hard drive probably wouldn't take the knocking about my PDA gets... etc, etc. Chalk/cheese. Thank you!

Price point

[The Tyro]

700$ seem expensive, but if you get the top-o-the-line zaurus and throw in a WLAN card, you get about the same price. However, this thing has a bigger screen, and it sounds like the sony may have much better battery life.

Marketing claims, however, aren't... we'll see when it gets independently reviewed.

Proprietary processor though... Hmmm... that might be a red flag.

Re:proprietary hardware

[AntiOrganic]

No, I've repeated this many more times than I care to, Beta was not better than VHS. Beta tapes, while technically superior in quality (and only marginally so), were only one hour long, whereas VHS tapes, clunky as they were, were two hours long, capable of recording an entire feature-length movie unattended. Eventually, the length of a Beta tape would be extended as the standard was revised and perfected, but by this time the damage had already been done and VHS had taken hold. It was this fundamental difference that led to Beta losing the video format war, not some silly "open standard."

Do you own a Playstation2? That's got all sorts of proprietary hardware in it. Can you run Linux on it? Yes, you can.

Re:proprietary hardware

[common_sence]

Proprietary doesn't equal non-standard. I would assume it would have to maintain compatibility with the current generation instruction sets because I can't see Sony doing away with the Palm OS.

Look at the PocketPC...3 different processor types and they all run Windows OS. Much the same way that Linux can run on PPC, Sun and Intel chips.

So long as compatibility is maintained and it supports the broadest range of instructions, more power to them.

As for MS or Linux on a handheld...WHY? Sure, I'm all for it for those who want that, bu honestly the Palm OS is one of the best handheld OS's on the market. The old PSION OS was great too. I haven't played with the Sharp Linux handheld, but every MS handheld I've used is power-hungry and a memory hog.

soapbox

One last thing. Just because you own the device, doesn't mean it HAS to support user changes. If you don't like the way it comes, dob't buy it! You don't buy a Ford and then complain that the engine is proprietary and that you should be able to put a Honda engine in it because of increased fuel efficiency. For crying out loud, now that there's a Linux powered handheld, BUY THAT if you really must have Linux on your handheld.

/soapbox