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Sony Switches To Its Own Processor For Handhelds

Posted by timothy on from the slick-as-clamshells dept.

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."

6 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. News: 10-15-2003 by qewl · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sony puts AMD and Intel out of business! Competition is always great..

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  2. Damn it by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was hoping we'd see the first dual-Xeon handhelds, or even a 2GHz quad-G5 palm computer. I mean, think of the advances these would force in battery and heat dissipation technologies alone!

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  3. $700 price point by marshac · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:$700 price point by james72 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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!

  4. Sigh by S.I.O. · · Score: 5, Funny

    > which are due to ship this Semptember

    Damn, I was hoping for an Awegust release.

  5. Re:proprietary hardware by common_sence · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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

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