Dual-Core CPU Opens Door To 1080p On Smartphones

An anonymous reader writes "Following Qualcomm, Samsung is also close to launching a new smartphone processor with two cores. Based on ARM architecture, the new Orion processor promises five times the graphics performance of current chips and to enable 1080p video recording and playback. Next year, it seems, dual-core smart phones will be all the rage. Apple, which is generally believed to have the most capable processor in the market today, may be under pressure to roll out a dual-core iPhone next year as well."

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Not dual core. More RAM!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can watch amazing 1080p on a 4.5" screen. My cinema experience is now complete.

Smart phones don't need dual core. They need more RAM.

App designers are guaranteed certain resources when the application runs on a phone. This is why a single-tasking paradigm was popular, because it simply guaranteed these resources. Multitasking requires sharing of memory. Without swap space enabled, memory may run out quickly. Android has mechanisms for saving a program's state and killing off the least-recently-used application. Recalling the application reloads the saved state information within a fresh process. The iPhone just added multitasking, but not all apps can work with it.

Killer feature.

[RightSaidFred99]

And by killer, I mean battery killer.

I think smartphones need to go back to basics. I'd take a smartphone that lasted 4 days of normal use on a single charge anytime over a new one that does shit I don't really need anyway 10% (or even 30%) faster.

Once they've got battery life back under control, get back on performance.

Obligatory XKCD

[CrazyJim1]

1080p [xkcd.com]

Re:Enlighten me please

[jrumney]

A crap cellphone lens is still just as crappy at 1080p as at 720p, in fact the higher resolution is more likely to enhance the flaws than at a lower resolution. 1080p on a cellphone is nothing more than a sales gimmick, just as 20Mpx on a compact camera is (or 5Mpx on a cellphone camera).

Re:Apple?

[Nursie]

Who needs multiple cores when multi-tasking has been decreed irrelevant?

Or did I miss an update where multitasking was invented and gifted to the world by Apple?

Re:Apple?

[iamhassi]

"Since when have iPhone been about following the trend?"

True, seems like they've been setting the pace. Touchscreen phones were pretty much non-existent outside of the Palm and a few Windows Mobile 6 phones until the iPhone came out, and even those phones were highly dependent on a stylus, iPhone was the first touchscreen without a stylus. Ever since the original iPhone everyone's been playing catch-up, and while others offer faster cpus and more megapixels, no one offers the 200,000+ apps or the huge fan based and the chance to be a millionaire app developer. [techradar.com] In fact some of the largest Android game developers have boycott the Android Market. [androidandme.com] Do I care if the camera is 3mp or 5mp? No. Do I care if the phone offers the apps I want? Of course, these aren't just phones anymore, they're pocket PCs

Re:The most capable mobile processor

[gl4ss]

heheheh.

distortion field - the gpu isn't apples, neither are any part on the soc they call A4. it's just a marketing diversion. a more truthful way would be to say that it's apples codename for the chip they're currently buying. much like g4 was a marketing term attached to some cpu's apple bought from elsewhere earlier, it didn't make them apple designed cpu's.

there's other "but"'s that could be attached to it, but none of them really change the fact that anyone with cash could order chips pretty much exactly like apples batch of a4's, straight from sammy.

fabbing is the hard part anyways.

Re:Enlighten me please

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

How does lossless digital zoom compensate for lens quality? As for noise reduction, wouldn't a lower resolution sensor of the same physical size be better than an algorithm?

Re:Apple?

[darthdavid]

So what you're saying is that you want to pay your hard earned money for a PC that the developers will actively seek to prevent you from gaining root access on, who's apps can only come from one place (if those android game devs were deveoping on apple's platform they'd be SOL. On android they're free to set up their own market, distribute without a marketplace app or use one of the other marketplaces that already exists). And I've certainly heard enough horror stories about the review process to turn me off from ever trying to sell anything on the iphone.

Cortex A9

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this anything more than ARM's Cortex A9 [arm.com] making it into chipsets?

Don't get me wrong, it's an extraordinary amount of progress, but it's not like the chip makers are doing all the innovation and competing here; ARM's done the real smarts and licensed the CPU IP to a number of chip makers who then have to integrate, verify and make a system out of it.

So it's no surprise that all the chip makers are coming out with multicore A9's at roughly the same time.

Re:Enlighten me please

[Lumpy]

As an owner of 1080p recording equipment, let me say that any phone that records 1080p will be a giant turd.

when you record at 1080p your lens quality becomes very important. even at 720p you can get away with the crappy NTSC lenses, but 1080p will show off bad glass right away.

1080p in a phone is a ragingly stupid thing. It's stupid in all the consumer camcorders t hat are under $1800.00 right now as well. (Nasty purple fringing and plain old awful lenses on these things coupled with really low recording bit-rates.

It's a marketing gimmick unless they have made HUGE advances in lens technology from just a week ago.

1080p on a flashlight

[maroberts]

1080p on a tiny cellphone screen? Tell me when they have that on a flashlight. Imagine all the detail you won't be able to see in the tiny beam!

..would be quite good as you could shine it on a wall, vastly enlarged.

Wait a minute, I've thought of a name for that.... a projector!