Intel and LG Team Up For x86 Smartphone 157
gbjbaanb writes "I love stories about new smartphones; it shows the IT market is doing something different than the usual same-old desktop apps. Maybe one day we'll all be using super smartphones as our primary computing platforms. And so, here's Intel's offering: the LG GW990. Running a Moorestown CPU, which gives 'considerably' better energy efficiency than the Atom, it runs Intel's Linux distro — Moblin. Quoting: 'In some respects, the GW990 — which has an impressive high-resolution 4.8-inch touchscreen display — seems more like a MID than a smartphone. It's possible that we won't see x86 phones with truly competitive all-day battery life until the emergence of Medfield, the Moorestown successor that is said to be coming in 2011. It is clear, however, that Intel aims to eventually compete squarely with ARM in the high-end smartphone market."
Intel and LG Team Up For x86 Smartphone (Score:4, Insightful)
How can they do that when producing an ARM processor cost only ARMs royalty + costs added on from many producers (Texas instruments qualcomm et al).
"than the Atom" (Score:2, Insightful)
uh Mooresville is the latest iteration of the Atom.
Advantages... (Score:2, Insightful)
x86: Runs most desktop PC applications.
For a desktop PC the ability to run most PC applications is extremely important. For a smartphone, who cares? I don't want to run Paintshop Pro, Word, or Call of Duty on my smartphone. The apps that I do want to run already work on ARM. I do want low power. The improvements Intel has made are barely significant next to ARM's huge advantage here.
Re:Intel and LG Team Up For x86 Smartphone (Score:3, Insightful)
Part of the plan would surely involve getting into the IP core business, like ARM. AMD are doing it [eetimes.com], and some Intel researchers already have a prototype [acm.org].
Needs to be open no APP store lock / sim locks as (Score:3, Insightful)
Needs to be open no APP store lock / sim locks as well.
Re:Intel (Score:3, Insightful)
You seem to be saying that Intel doesn't innovate. I beg to differ. I see a fair bit of innovation coming from Intel, even if not all of it ends up taking the market by storm.
Can we lose the can't do attitude? (Score:5, Insightful)
This solutions to this are simple. This took me about a minute, not counting proof reading.
1) The charging device also has a small hard drive built into it that always syncs the data - just like iTunes already does if you have an iPhone.
2) The unique data - contact, calendars, documents - are constantly backed up to a server over the internet connection. Program data can easily be preloaded or reloaded onto a new phone.
3) As far as monetary risks are concerned, there is something called insurance. You may want to look into it.
The line between what a cell phone and a laptop and a computer mean intrinsically will continue to blur. Soon it will be simply the size of the interface. You'll have a mobile. Maybe the mobile will dock into a laptop or tablet style chassis to provide extra power and a full keyboard and larger screen - just like Lenovo just demonstrated at CES. The mobile can also be docked to your desktop system if you really need some extra horsepower or a fiber connection to the net. Meanwhile, your data is always with you. Doesn't sound so bad.
Re:Needs to be open no APP store lock / sim locks (Score:3, Insightful)
No it doesn't.
You want it to be.
However, as the market has shown, it doesn't have to be and it can be very successful without being 'open' as you define it.
Most of the rest of the world doesn't have some ideological battle against the man to fight, they just want their phone to work.
If it needed to be open with no lockin, then it would be or they'd lose money.
You guys really need to wake up and smell reality. Learn the difference between 'It needs' and 'I want' at the very least.
Re:Intel and LG Team Up For x86 Smartphone (Score:5, Insightful)
...and order of magnitude less power usage for the same performance. Meaning less problems with heat, smaller battery, much smaller phone with comparable performance.
There is no benefit of x86 on smartphones that could drag Intel into this market, quite the contrary; ARM is established, and working very fine.
Re:Do Not Want (Score:3, Insightful)
Here we have a platform where there is no reason whatsoever to have an ass-backwards-compatible architecture in order to run legacy Windows apps.
There are tons and tons and tons of x86 apps that run on some (potential) over sized x86 phone with 800x600 resolution, 512MB RAM, 1GHz CPU, 8-16-32... GB flash. Yes, you can do MANY things with iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile or Maemo. However with a small x86 box no matter how underpowered you can do MOSTLY ANYTHING. And there's a big difference. Examples: flash is big news on iPhone and Android. Java (as in browser applets): no chance in Android (don't know about the other platforms). That means some banking sites and some remote access software don't work. Get different servers? Switch banks? Heck, they work fine even with Windows 95!
Tried to print directly from your phone directly to some dumb printer? Tried to scan something (no, I don't mean take a picture with the crappy camera)? Get some files from some NTFS USB drive? Connect a TV tuner? Connect to some strange nasty corporate VPN?
Yes, 90% of the usage is covered with a nice basic browser, some media player and maybe a voip client. But there's a lot in the 10% left and I don't have the patience to have it all ported to arm (not that it'll ever happen as the market is so divided).
Re:Needs to be open no APP store lock / sim locks (Score:3, Insightful)
People don't want open, they want easy. They want to be able to walk into a cell phone store, say "ooh! That looks pretty!" and they want a sales associate to come up to them and say "Yes, not only is it pretty, but look at all these widgets and e-doodads you can install on it with the touch of a finger! They will be useful and enhance your life in ways you can barely imagine!" and then the customer will say "Please sir, but it looks so expensive!" to which the associate will reply "But not as such! Thanks to this sim lock-in, you can pay $2000 over the course of 2 years to save $400!" and the customer will end the conversation with a triumphant reply of "Please, kind sir, relieve me of my hard earned currency!"
The end.
Re:Do Not Want (Score:4, Insightful)
If my phone had a USB host port, I could do all of the things you mentioned, and it runs Maemo + ARM Debian. Nasty corporate software excluded - and we'll all be better off if those guys are forced to modify their crap.
Might I also suggest that you don't switch to a bank with a website that wants to run binaries on your computer. For your own good.
What for ? (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, I now want a version of vmware that runs on that phone Linux. I know that there is a desktop Linux version of vmware, but does it run on phone Linux?
VMWare is closed source and is only supported on the platforms that its developpers choose to (so you would be restricted to Linux running on one of those x86 monstrosities). On the other hand, there are plenty of open-source emulators which are only a recompile away to be run on whatever platform you choose. QEMU is an exemple of such an emulator. And DOSBox is an exemple of emulator which HAD ALREADY been ported to esoteric platform, just to enable access to old games while on the move.
Now, just why would you need a full blown emulator in a smart phone ? Given the input/output and battery life limitation, VMWare on a smart phone sounds like a pointless overkill. Are you trying to play WoW on your phone ?!?
Also, OS is not a tape recorder - you can still use it the same as before even if blank tapes are no longer made.
On the contrary. Closed source OSes are much more quickly deprecated than anything else once the developers drop support : The reason being : DRIVERS. You could, in theory run Win 3.11 on a smartphone x86 compatible processor. In practice, the rest of the hardware will hardly ever look like anything remote to a PC. You just won't be able to use anything else : keypad, screen, GSM/UTMS chip, etc. Everything is hardware which came years after the latest Windows 3x and there's no way at all that a drivers was written back then that could be still useful today.
You would need not only a x86 compatible chip, but also dozens of other legacy devices (the keypad had to be communicating through PS/2 with the system, the GSM/UTMS chip should communicate serially over what is exactly an old era UART COM port, for the screen you would need something which behave exactly as a legagy VGA, etc.)
That's why open OS are much better in the longterm and are getting so popular in the embed world (pretty much all of modem/routers, multimedia players/disk enclosures, home NAS, etc.. seem to be running some variation of Linux+Busybox) : because their are much more customisable.