Motorola Reinvents the RAZR 208
zacharye writes with news that Motorola has reinvented their popular RAZR clam-shell phone as an Android smartphone. The new device is 4G LTE-capable and 7.1mm thick, and it contains "a 1.2GHz dual-core TI OMAP processor, a 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED display, 1GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel camera with 1080p HD video capture, an LED flash, an HDMI-out port, noise cancellation capabilities, 16GB of built-in storage and a 16GB microSD card pre-installed." iFixit did a teardown of the phone, finding that the construction necessary for such thinness will make repairs problematic.
Re:One simple question... (Score:4, Interesting)
I know a few people who have done LCD/glass swaps, that's really the biggest thing you can easily do. And it certainly beats buying a new phone...
Re:One simple question... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd be more worried about heat generation than how to actually repair the thing. Sounds like it's very densely packed electronics, coupled with one of the fastest processors ever put into a phone. Even if the thing is 99% idle 99% of the time, that still runs the risk of the thing overheating at some point in its usable life.
Re:HDMI? (Score:4, Interesting)
However, if we look at raw flops... The TI in a RAZR is capable of 4.8Gflops, a little less than 1/2 a P4 at 3.0Ghz and around 4x that of a 1Ghz PIII (don't have exact numbers on me, but the PIII was first processor to break 1Gflop barrier). And if you consider power requirements, heat signature, and cost per unit, the disparity is far greater. Back ins 2000, 1Gflop cost about $1000 in computing hardware. As we approach the year 2012, 1Gflop cost is nearing $1 of hardware (and huge savings in power usage). That is pretty amazing to me.
So yeah. Comparing a TI OMAP processor to a PII is retarded. Good thing it was only an anonymous coward...
Re:One simple question... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not as thin as the summary (or article) would imply - there is a big-ass bulge at the top of the device that apparently holds the speakers and camera. I don't know how they get away with selling as 7.1mm thick. They also made the unit wider than other phones with the same size screen, presumably because they needed the space. I haven't used one, but unless you have large hands, one-handed operation is supposedly difficult because of the width.
Re:Repair a smartphone?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is it too much to ask... (Score:4, Interesting)
This.
http://thecoolgadgets.com/fujitsu-dual-screen-mobile-phone-shown-at-ceatec-2010/ [thecoolgadgets.com]
I want.
Re:HDMI? (Score:5, Interesting)
And to follow that post ... ARM announces its next-gen GPU, the snappily named Mali-T658.
The is the followup to the GPU that's used in the Galaxy S2, and is up to 10x the performance. The old chip supported 2 cores, this one supports 4, each core being twice the perf of the previous model, and as usual, can turn cores on or off depending on the power requirements.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15668347 [bbc.co.uk]
The firm claims the new technology will offer battery-powered mobile handsets roughly the same graphics performance as Sony's Playstation 3 console,
but the bit I liked best: "At the moment many of the speech recognition applications that are out there are solely relying on the CPU," said Mr Davies. "Very few are taking advantage of the acceleration of the GPU - and that's clearly an area of growth for us."