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Motorola Planning 2GHz Android Phone For Later This Year
rocket97 writes "On Wednesday, at the Executives Club of Chicago, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha reportedly decided to chat about the relatively near future of the mobile landscape as he sees it — which, in part, includes the ultimate demise of mobile computers in favor of highly-capable smartphones. This being his vision, Jha discussed Motorola's plans for a smartphone with a 2GHz processor — by the end of this year. While Jha did not want to divulge any further information, Conceivably Tech cites another anonymous Motorola executive who was a little more chatty, talking up a device intended to 'incorporate everything that is technologically possible in a smartphone today.'"
Haven't even the marketing types learned by now.that Ghz is a measure of frequency, not speed?
"Ow, my hand!"
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I'll be FIRST in line to get one of these.
Which ARM variant is it?
Ghz ain't everything.
I had the Razr and the Moto Q. It seems like Motorola has the crappiest and most confusing user interfaces ever. If they were loading pure Android, that'd be great. However, Moto customizes the OS with something called "MotoBlur." I assume that this would be a crap firmware/UI. This would prevent the latest Android OS from being used. Also, a two GHz processor sounds great but the impact on battery life will probably outweigh any benefits in a smart phone.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Hello, Call of Duty.
The main problems with this though will be carriers. Its becoming increasingly apparent you can't have 2 year carrier-paid phones and be remotely on the cutting edge. Someone who got the first Android phone released in the US on a 2 year contract still couldn't upgrade it at a lower price. With the iPhone releasing a new phone every year and Android improving by leaps and bounds every other month it seems like, there is just no way that this can't end up with hardware fragmentation because a 528 Mhz Backflip just can't run the same things a 1 Ghz Nexus One or the new Motorola phone at 2 Ghz and the trend for hardware still isn't getting faster and faster, AT&T still only has the Backflip which is really underpowered when compared to the rest of the high end phones which are not on AT&t.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
My friggin workstation, a large desktop-style Computer with tons of peripheals hooked up to it which I use for gaming, HD-video, flash, virtualization and other highly intensive computing tasks is equipped with a CPU I clocked down to 2GHz. And there's still tons of overhead. TONS.
And we're seriously talking about a cell with a CPU in this dimension.
But considering Android is Linux and we /really/ want flash...
So we're going to be carrying around phones the size of laptops? Personally I'd rather carry a phone that's just a phone, and a laptop when I need one... it's bad enough that you can barely find a phone without a camera anymore, for those who aren't allowed cameras where they work.
Obviously one day human/computer interfaces are going to reach the point where they're more efficient than a keyboard, a decently-sized LCD display and mouse, but I can't see that happening for a long time yet.
I wonder if this device will end up like the Milestone and pretty much all other Android-based Motorola devices, locked down via TrustZone to prevent the user from actually doing what they want with it.
But I suppose that's the price you pay when patronizing companies that treat the end-user as the enemy.
"Why is Moto using a shotgun?"
Recently, Google announced Android 2.2, the next version of their Linux-based mobile operating system targeted at phones and PDAs, at Google I/O 2010. Developers praised the update, calling it and its features a welcome addition to the platform.
Android 2.2 will bring the phone operating system closer to parity with its competitors. With 2.2r4 out now and a projected final release date of Summer '10, Android 2.2 is coming fast.
But stepping back from all of the commotion, what exactly is Google offering with this update? What are these new features and who will benefit from them? There are plenty of questions about Android 2.2and here are the answers.
Five Alive
Probably the most important update for Android for its end-users is HTML5. This changes very little about the platform itself, but it shows that Google is investing in the technology. It also means that users will have a seamless Web experience.
These two things are important for the future success of Android as a viable mobile platform, though Google's implementation might prove problematic.
On live devices, users will have to install Android 2.2 in its entirety to gain HTML5 support. An entire operating system upgrade for a browser? Get real and update the browser on its owndon't make your users go through the trouble of updating and installing a fundamental update just for some HTML5 support, Google. If this is how you run your phone operating system, I'd hate to see what you expect of Chrome OS users.
And there's also the fact that HTML5 is not novel. Every other industry player has already been including HTML5 support; Apple has long been a proponent of this, including HTML5 support in the developmental Webkit as well Safari since 2007. You're welcome to the party, Google, but don't announce it like you're the one throwing it. You can make catchup, but it's still catchup.
Flash Forward
Oh, Flash. Google and Adobe are performing a very calculated industry sixty-nine because both Apple and Google want the mobile-cum-portable market and Adobe wants the video portion of both.
Apple is pushing the open HTML5 standard; Adobe is pissed at Apple. Google, with the old the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend tactic, sees an opportunity and hooks up with Adobe. Sadly, revenge sex only seems clever at first.
The reality is that HTML5, being open and supported by hundreds of companies and standard bodies, will win in the end. Google and Adobe will look like assholes having lapped at such a bloated, poorly-coded, closed video platform that everyone else will zoom past using their browsers sans crashy plugin.
Who wins in the end? The entire industry, sharing in the HTML5 platform, and users, whose browsers don't crash or chew up excess cycles and memory. Sadly, though, not Android users, who are unwitting Adobe consumers.
Hotspotting et al
Android will also support hotspotting, or wifi sharing funneled into its 3G or 4G network, of up to eight other devices. I'm not sure if you've done any serious work on 3G yet, but it's slow.
The prospect of using one 3G account to support other Internet-hungry devices is like expecting a pygmy to carry weightlifters: backbreaking at best and otherwise i
...to boot it up and view the android splash screen before you have to shut it down again and charge it.
Specifications are useless without the design and the status. My equation is simple. If Apple makes it, it is worth buying. If anyone else does, no thanks.
Think Different.
Think Better.
Think Apple.
but 2 ghz! reference
in engineering. You can always have everything you want. I'm surprised the world hasn't been perfected yet. :-/ Come on, something has to give somewhere. This announcement is worse than vapor. It's vapor that can never exist. Lame.
I will only be interested in Android phones once carriers are willing to let me use one without forcing me into a data plan.
Tmobile is allowing this now, but I've heard rumors that they're going to change this in the future.
http://androidforums.com/t-mobile/89836-tmobile-forcing-change-data-android.html
2 GHz seems unlikely this year and smacks of desperation from Motorola. First they make a decent hit with the Droid, but then they get blown away by HTC and continuing innovation from Apple. As we move more toward multitasking, users can benefit far more from multiple cores instead of higher MHz/GHz.
Why does it have to be android? I read the summary, nowhere does it say android. Maybe moto already has a deal to license iOS.
Maybe the subject could read "Moto to make 2Ghz iOS phone by the end of the year" Someone's assuming it's android, aren't they?
Take "Android" out of title to be accurate. :p
Yeah I know... it's probably android. I'm just in a bad mood ;) And no way apple would license.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Sure, there will be niche, but I think we've just entered the penis measurement realm here. Personally, I'm going to be impressed when one of these devices can be charged once a week, not every night.* 2GHz will be nice at times - don't get me wrong - but I'm more interested in how little power it will take when in an active sleep state, and how well it will throttle back for background apps. This is no better than that stupid, non-standard 640x960, too-small-to-be-useful screen that Apple is putting on their new phone.
Perhaps Adobe should figure out how to make flash less processor intensive, rather than having to beef up every mobile processor and suck the battery dry to play video/games with poorly optimized code.
All apologies to the seventeen developers who plan on using their new android phones as their primary workstation.
*Yes, both my iPhone and my HTC Fuze can last more than a day, but two days is really pressing your luck if you find you really need them towards the end of the second day.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
T-mobile will allow if you buy the phone outright, they let you pay for it over 20 months though at 0% interest. If you buy it subsidized you will be forced to get a data plan. T-mobile unsubsidized is the way to go with them, you save the difference in the first year.
What could you possibly be doing on a 4" screen that requires multiple cores? Are you running a folding program? Massive game platform?
Hell, there are a total of three things I might be doing "at once" on a phone - listening to streaming (or onboard) music, browsing (whether it be web, contacts, reading, whatever) and sharing an internet connection with someone else. Everything else that's running in the background is essentially timer or interrupt based (alarms, calendar, notifications) and takes practically zero cycles (relative to the billion per second we currently have).
I'll be honest - I'm rarely doing more than two things at once on my desktop. I leave programs open so I can switch quickly, but even the non-multitasking iPhone saves the state of the program when it "exits" so you come back to right where you left off.
I'm missing where I would even want two processors eating at my battery life, at least until there's a really pressing reason for it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
WTF are you going to do with it? Email, web browsing (will Flash work? No.) Document editing? Not likely, on such a tiny screen. Games? No mention of 3D acceleration. Will it allow apps to run from external storage, or have any external storage at all? I'll save my money.
Personally, don't need a camera, but I would like:
1. The phone to be bigger. I'm thinking 50% bigger than a blackberry.
2. Be mostly touchscreen, but still have some actual buttons
3. Drop rated. I'm mean to phones.
4. BIG battery - part of the bigger size
5. Larger antenna - I hang out in low signal areas
6. Bluetooth - won't normally use the phone's microphone/speakers, but use a BT headset most of the time.
I don't read AC A human right
I mean, for a phone the least important spec is how fast the CPU runs. Since phone use is much more graphical, I am more interested in what the GPU is doing.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Keep in mind the process shink to >45nm is coming later this year; that will get us to these faster speeds as well as improved power consumption. Think Pentium 4 vs later procs for an example of this in action.
I'm wondering if Android and Android apps are ready for dual-core platforms. A 2gHz single core phone may be a better option than a dual 1gHz core, depending on that situation. If not, I'm sure next year's big Android release (2.4?) should be ready for it, since those dual-core Qualcomm SoCs are already shipping. Plenty of time for a big announcement at near year's Google I/O. Or maybe Gingerbread will do this later this year?
Good times...
Geez. That'll burn a hole in your pocket faster than your Apple iFund (the money with which you purchase iProducts).
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
They want their opinion back
I've got a friend who threatens to call his kids at school to make them look bad in front of the other kids....but contrary to your belief voice is not dead.
I'm a software developer that works remotely. The rest of my group is thousands of miles away.
I spend a fair bit of time reviewing or planning code. Email/texting is useful for many things, but sometimes you just need to call them up. The bandwidth for multi-way discussion of complicated ideas is far greater with voice than text.
I'm guessing they're going to take a 1st gen Droid, gut it, install a monster battery in the case, then attach that to the back of the new phone just to power it for more than 3 hours.
"I disagree with you" does not equal "flamebait."
I'm guessing this 2GHz processor is required to run all those bad flash games that have been ported using Adobe's dev tools.
I've never picked up a phone and thought "wow this phone is too slow", the network's 3G data connection is what always slows things down.
Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha reportedly decided to chat about the relatively near future of the mobile landscape as he sees it -- which, in part, includes the ultimate demise of mobile computers in favor of highly-capable smartphones.
This guy obviously doesn't do most of his own actual work, but rather has some flunkies standing by to translate his ideas and words into actual documents. Smartphones will never replace laptops, unless they get a larger screen - say around maybe 12 inches - and a closer to full-sized keyboard, and maybe a mouse pad. I know I can edit documents and spreadsheets on my smart phone, but I really don't want to.
Now, I'm interested in his ideas about flying cars...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Hey, tech dudes!!!
Get to work on batteries. Don't give a fuck about a phone that can do everything, since that means a couple hours battery life.
Give me phone that can do everything with a battery that lasts at least 8 hours with everything running.
Until then, stfu
Be seeing you...
the phone is expected to last 26 minutes between charges!
I have T-mobile and have unlimited data family plan for 2 phones and it ends up costing me an additional $30 total for both phones. (Don't know what they charge for single phone coverage, but don't care as I have 2 phones.) For 750 shared minutes, unlimited nights, weekends, and T-Mobile to T-mobile free, unlimited text and data for $109/month. I don't think it is too ridiculous. Especially considering if we both wanted iPhones it would cost well over $200/month.
While more GHz is nice because if offers more processing power what people really care about is what it can do. Having more power for the sake of more power is just dick measuring, features are what sell products.
Personally I would love to get my hands on an android phone that can play any multimedia I throw at it. I want to be able to download 1080p-720p video like I usually watch on the desktop, and be able to watch it on my smartphone without this transcoding nonsense (come on Dell put the Streak's 5" screen to work).
I know that the Archos 5 can do it, but it seems they dropped the ball on the rest of the system.
So, dumb question, hence AC. If a human can take 2 floating point numbers, ignore the decimal, multiply them, then move the decimal in the product, why can't a computer do that? I.E. 2.5*2.5= 6.25 I just multiplied 25 and 25 and moved the decimal 2 places to get 6.25. What's so hard about that?
This sounds more like it will be an Nvidia Tegra 2 based an an ARM Cortex A9. The A9 is basically a multi-core A8.
I predict this to be the same Tegra 2 that is working it's way into Android tablets.
If any processor were to run at 2GHz all the time, it would drain the battery within 10 mins. Modern embedded processors thrive on aggressive dynamic frequency scaling and I expect this situation to be no different (If it is, then something is horribly screwed up somewhere).
Most of the time, the processor would/should be running at a fraction of the maximum frequency.
That said, supporting such a high frequency makes the device vulnerable to crappy software (or even malware) which does nothing but hogs up lots of CPU cycles thus draining the battery.
I do however hardly need my home computer anymore.
Then you, like most people, were never doing anything actually useful with your home computer in the first place.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
He's probably talking about the upcoming dual-core Snapdragon processor, underclocked from 1.5GHz to 1GHz to save on battery. I really hope the industry doesn't start multiplying GHz by core counts.