Orange San Diego Intel-based Android phone
If you own a smartphone then you are almost certainly using an ARM CPU. That’s good for ARM and its licensees but bad for Intel, as it wants a piece of the vast mobile chip market. Cue the San Diego, a retail version of Intel’s own Gigabyte-built smartphone reference platform built around a hyper-threading 1.6GHz Z2460 Atom …
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Re: Epic fails on 3 fronts gets 85%?!
"Epic fail #2: Can shoot video in 1080p and the reviewer benchmarked with a 720p looping video and yet the screen only has 600 pixels vertically and cannot view 720p+ videos without dropping whole chunks of lines. Scooby says huh?"
The reviews says...
I tested the battery life looping a 720p video as I do with all smartphones that land on my desk. As a "benchmark" it was purely to demonstrate battery life, nothing more.
Why 720p? Simple. My entire video collection is encoded 720p MP4 because they play on most Android phones, don't take up too much space and look OK on a HD telly when played back over HDMI.
As for "whole chunks of lines" missing, that simply was not the case. Yes the image was down-scaled from true 720p but it was still pin sharp and to the naked eye near indistinguishable from the image you see on a handset with a 1280 x 720 display. Even down-scaled 1080p looked good.
Re: Epic fails on 3 fronts gets 85%?!
#3, SD... in the real world the vast majority of users do not give one tiny little jot. Hence this cannot be an EPIC fail, only an annoyance.
Also, I don't get the fuss over ICS... 2.x is only one generation behind.
A lot of negativity here because of the 85% score.
Surely its an 85% for its price point and what it tries to be, rather than being on a par with the Galaxy S III. Nobody is going to think "right all these phones got 85% i will pick this one because its much cheaper but scores just as highly".
All this fail here, fail there talk is just silly. If it doesnt have the features you need, you pick another phone. There's enough choice out there for everyone. This phone will fit the bill for someone if it doesnt suit you, because the person next to you is not you, and they have their own set of requirements.
@Andrew James "Surely its an 85% for its price point "
That indeed is the issue and I have to say that given the net balance of plusses and minuses the phone is a very good piece of kit for 200 spons. I honestly do not know what some people expect for the given price point. If it had cost £300 I could understand some of the criticisms - that would immediately have made the lack of flash card support a deal-breaker for me. However, the overall package is very decent indeed for the price and if Intel are accepting that they cannot get away with their usual usury and extortion chip prices in this market - all the better.
Does AnTuTu use JNI/NDK?
I'm curious about the difference between the AnTuTu benchmark and Sunspider. Obviously they're very different tests but while AnTuTu suggests middling performance the Sunspider result suggests a chip that can keep up with the quad-core chip in the SIII.
So I'm wondering is AnTuTu running via the Binary Translator and taking a performance hit or is AnTuTu multi-threaded and showing up limitations of the Intel chip when trying to run several threads at once?
Re: Does AnTuTu use JNI/NDK?
Yes. And this is the crux of the problem for Intel: in order to get into the market it has to come with emulation so that people can run existing apps at reasonable speeds but this itself is a disincentive for developers to port any ARM code to x86.
x86 is considerably better at rendering websites than ARM but it also uses more power to do so. The move in ICS to GPU for this significantly reduces this advantage, though I don't know how the power comparison shapes up.
All in all, the phone sounds like an impressive achievement and is competitively priced enough to get the kind of sales needed for more. But, without any real USP for manufacturers to switch from ARM to x86, it does beg the question as to how long Intel will be prepared to subsidise the market with development and marketing support and sweeteners.
Re: x86 considerably better at rendering websites?!?
I guess you have been seeing too many Intel bunny commercials. In terms of performance Medfield can't keep up with modern ARMs despite running at a higher frequency. Tegra3 and Krait based phones beat it in Browsermark (which measures how good a CPU is at rendering websites). Also Android 4.1 has software optimizations for ARM which significantly improve the scores. So x86 has no magic that somehow make it better for surfing the web.
Missing the point
The big question is, can one install another operating system onto the device? Can I install Debian? How hard is it to do?
There is no reason for running Android on an ARM emulator on x86. The big advantage is that virtually every Linux distribution supports x86 PCs.
Re: Missing the point
"There is no reason for running Android on an ARM emulator on x86."
Yeah, well, the SD doesn't run Android on an ARM emulator on x86. The Android it runs is native x86 and the ARM emulation is just for apps which are ARM binaries.
"The big advantage is that virtually every Linux distribution supports x86 PCs."
Yes, but virtually every Linux distribution makes for a sh***y smartphone OS.
Re: Missing the point
I'm pretty sure some kind of hardware similar to this (but with a better camera and screen) was deep in Nokia's labs as the first true MeeGo phone. Now imagine the SwipeUI of the N9 with this kind of horsepower under it, running a pure Linux kernel directly based on RedHat and running all apps in native code. That was the MeeGo that Elop killed because of Intel's delays, this phone is being launched almost a year behind schedule.
Re: Yes, but virtually every Linux distribution makes for a sh***y smartphone OS.
But I don't want a smartphone - I want a PDA.
Come to think of it, will these things run OK w/o a sim card in them?
Not 100% of apps running?
Deary me. This is what happens when you have such a fragmented OS. Why should be locked out of 20% of the apps because it's different CPU framework?
Anyway, iPhone 3GS is free on T-Mobile UK for £21/month and you get 100% apps (barring a few that need the extra power such as games) without compromise. Just handing out the fandroid bait ;-).
Re: Not 100% of apps running?
"iPhone 3GS is free on T-Mobile UK for £21/month ..."
Sure, on a two year contract whith laughable small download limits, amounting to a whooping £504 over two years for a 2009 phone with a lowly 3MP camera.
"...and you get 100% apps"
Really? So when does the 3GS get Siri or 3D Maps?
Re: Not 100% of apps running?
Err, you don't seem to understand what free means and that you're just paying for it by monthly installments.
21 x 24 is 500 quid for the number of minutes and texts you could get for what a fiver per month?
Re: Not 100% of apps running?
Wow. Take those fandroid glasses off for a sec. Read the other response as I'm going to regurgitate about the monthly contract (however, I must add; you're not paying anything upfront to subsidise the phone).
Also, reread my disclaimer - "(barring a few that need the extra power such as games)". Again, this is phone's were talking about; not computers or tablets. Why should it matter that the 3GS is so 2009? Still works in 2012 and the phone app never stopped working. I see the 3GS as a stepping stone into the walled garden without splashing the cash.
Re: Not 100% of apps running?
3.5in 320 x 480 v 4in 1024 x 600?
3mp camera & no web cam v 8mp camera and 1.2mp webcam?
No NFC v NFC?
To hell with the operating system and what games are available, I'd take the Intel blower every time just on those spec comparisons. I imagine most sane consumer would too.
Re: Not 100% of apps running?
"Again, this is phone's were talking about; not computers or tablets"
You are flat wrong about that, these are pocket computers that also happen to be able to make phone calls.
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/06/29/phones_no_longer_made_for_talking/
Re: Not 100% of apps running?
Eh? They're labelled and sold as mobile phones surely not? A small survey doesn't change the terminology here. Nor does the usage. As long as a device has a pre-programmed number-dialing device, then it's still a phone. Also, On your basis, I best call trading standards as well and make sure they all get all these new fangled devices labelled as pocket computers in future.
Talk about moving the goal posts here. You typical fandroids =).
Re: Not 100% of apps running?
"They're labelled and sold as mobile phones surely not?"
It could be argued that they are labelled and sold as smartphones so technically it's "not".
Either way it doesn't take a survey of any sort to prove that most smartphone users are now using their devices more for browsing the web, social networking, e-mailing, gaming and e-reading than good old-fashioned talking. Common sense and first-hand experience suggests that to be the case.
Re: Not 100% of apps running?
From Wikipedia:
There have been a few reports of users having lag on the 3GS running iOS 5. However, general consensus has shown that the performance on the 3GS has not been hit with iOS 5
Anecdotally. a friend of mine confirmed this and complained bitterly at the speed of app updates being released that required IOS 5.
Re: Not 100% of apps running?
£21 a month for an ancient phone? (And it's not free, as you're paying for it in the price of the contract.)
And I'd like a source for being able to run 100% of software.
Re: Not 100% of apps running?
Okay, but if all someone wants is a cheap smartphone, there are still cheaper and more modern ones on pay monthly contracts.
Re: Not 100% of apps running?
These devices are called "smartphones" because they're usually sold by telecom companies. Period. They long ago stopped being actual phones. Or PDAs for that matter. I mean, think about it -- most of the market (eg, Android + Apple == Most of the market) is based on some descendant of UNIX. You don't need UNIX just to run a telephone. The main reason for the telecommunications on these things is the persistent network connection. And if it weren't still terribly profitable, voice-mode service would have been removed long ago, replaced by VoIP. And in fact, neither LTE nor the mostly-US CDMA2000/EvDO data protocols even have a voice mode.
Seriously, the actual "phone" part in these is less than 1/8th of the silicon area a $10 wireless chip, plus a $0.50 silicon microphone, and a bit of extra baseband software. That's hardly enough to realistically claim the remaining $300-$500 of the device is still a phone
"lumbered with Android 2.3 "
"Sadly it’s also lumbered with Android 2.3 but Orange tells me an Ice Cream Sandwich update is due “shortly”.
Funny. When I got my San Francisco, the sales guy at Orange promised updates would also be out shortly. If it wasn't for the sterling work of the guys on Modaco and XDA forums I'd still be on 2.1.
up-to-date fail
Automatic docking of 30% for failing to release phone with a version of Android that's been out for 9 months...
Do Microsoft talk to Intel?
Does this hardware mean that WinRT was a complete waste of time?
Re: Do Microsoft talk to Intel?
Intel has always been involved, if not strictly aggressive, in alternate operating systems. They worked on the BeOS port back in the 80s, they've been involved in numerous Linux projects, including at least some involvement in any number of Linux-based smartphone projects.
I don't suspect they actually need to talk to Microsoft all that much -- it's not as if the x86 is going anywhere in Windows land. And in fact, it's quite possible that Microsoft strong-arming (sic) the ARM with all the things they're forbidden doing on the x86 will only hurt ARM in the long run.
WinRT is certainly Microsoft's plan for phones and tablets, x86 or ARM, so "probably not" (WinRT being the API, Windows RT being the ARM-only product that still includes full WIn32 and WInRT APIs, but only allows Microsoft signed binaries access to the Win32 APIs). In fact, in MS's original plan, all Metro apps had to be WinRT only. They did ultimately ceed some ground here and allow developers on x86 to use both APIs, but they're still pushing for WinRT + Metro, since that's the only combination they're supporting on ARM.
The question about whether Windows Phone is a waste of time will probably not be answered soon. Microsoft took over ten years to become profitable in the gaming world, and they were willing to lose money longer than most companies in order to claim that established piece of a lucrative market (for Microsoft, it wasn't simply the gaming machine, but like many, they saw the games console as the basis for the "livingroom computer").
Intel doesn't get aggressive about these things... pretty much everything they do is just designed to sell chips. As it should be. Unless they radically depart from the past, they'll work to enable their stuff in these markets, and expect that the various phone or tablet companies will fall in line and use their chips. This will be the only time since maybe the peak of the RISC Workstation days, though, that Intel's entering a market (smartphones) as an underdog. That is, if the largest chip company on the planet can really be thought of as an underdog. But when you consider that most of the rest of the top 20 chip companies (Samsung, TI, Qualcomm, ST, nVidia, Freescale, NXP, etc) are aggressively using ARM, maybe it can.
Useful review, thanks.
My HTC desire will get replaced at the end of the year. I'd like any new phone to not be too large, have great call quality, work well with GPS (to stop Endomondo glitching) not run out of memory all the time and have a decent screen for viewing data and contacts. This *sounds* like it will manage all those things much better than the current and many similarly priced phones out there. Maybe they just designed a phone for me and people like me?
It's all about the apps
I installed Android on an x86 O2 Joggler and I was very surprised at the significant number of apps which would not install or run. Similarly my import (Rockchip) tablet which I reflashed with ICS 4.0.3 and again locked out of things I would otherwise give a try, most recent example Amazon UK's app. Remember it is not only about what your hardware can't run it is about what Play Store *thinks* you can't run and won't let you have. Hunting for the APK gets tedious really quick.
tl;dr ? Unless you are a bleeding edge geek with time on your hands stick with 2.3 on ARM
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