[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Quad-Core Phones: What to Expect in 2012 here

[RayoLight]

No thanks, I prefer my 24 inch monitor over a 3 inch screen.

[snapple232]

"No thanks, I prefer my 24 inch monitor over a 3 inch screen."

That's narrow-minded. Ever consider the possibility of connecting a smartphone to a larger monitor? Motorola's Atrix is an early example of this, but it's certain to get more mainstream in the next few years as smartphones become powerful enough to handle the average consumer's computing needs.

[WilliamParry]

snapple232, on 11 December 2011 - 10:37 PM, said:

"No thanks, I prefer my 24 inch monitor over a 3 inch screen."

That's narrow-minded. Ever consider the possibility of connecting a smartphone to a larger monitor? Motorola's Atrix is an early example of this, but it's certain to get more mainstream in the next few years as smartphones become powerful enough to handle the average consumer's computing needs.

I would ask you this then, how would I do my Full HD video editing on a phone, do Active Directory, virtual machines ect. My servers and desktops wont be covered by a smart phone. Yes I can say that I use my smart phone lots, but to say that it will replace it is another thing all together.

[snapple232]

WilliamParry, on 11 December 2011 - 11:14 PM, said:

snapple232, on 11 December 2011 - 10:37 PM, said:

"No thanks, I prefer my 24 inch monitor over a 3 inch screen."

That's narrow-minded. Ever consider the possibility of connecting a smartphone to a larger monitor? Motorola's Atrix is an early example of this, but it's certain to get more mainstream in the next few years as smartphones become powerful enough to handle the average consumer's computing needs.

I would ask you this then, how would I do my Full HD video editing on a phone, do Active Directory, virtual machines ect. My servers and desktops wont be covered by a smart phone. Yes I can say that I use my smart phone lots, but to say that it will replace it is another thing all together.

Emphasis on "average consumer". The average consumer doesn't do any of what you just mentioned. Of course there will be professionals or hardcore gamers who still need the power of a full-scale desktop. But most people just use a computer to browse the web, check their email, or watch Youtube videos. A future quad-core smartphone is more than capable enough to handle those tasks.

[snapple232]

double post

This post has been edited by snapple232: 11 December 2011 - 11:25 PM

[AntonioGarrisonawgr]

I don't think the coined phrase of "Replace A Desktop" is very accurate. Though a normal user really only browses the internet, looks at pictures, IM's friends and family, listens to music among other thing. It's a GIANT step to say that a phone will replace a home computer. That's like saying a phone will replace a computer. Doubt it.

[Nuke61]

WilliamParry, on 11 December 2011 - 11:14 PM, said:

Yes I can say that I use my smart phone lots, but to say that it will replace it is another thing all together.

"People are going to consider their phones as their primary computer,” says Nick Stam, director of technical marketing at NVIDIA. “Phones with a quad-core processor are really full computers that can replace many functions of your laptop or computer. It is a level of performance that truly does rival a desktop processor.”

It's not an entire swap-out type of replace. Primary does not mean only. Replacing many functions doesn't mean all functions. What he's saying is that the next generation of phones will be able to be your primary computer (vs only computer) -- as my wife says, you can use it for "computery stuff" -- but that does not mean you could just toss your laptop/desktop out the window. For instance, I use my iPad more than my phone, laptop or desktop -- even though the desktop has a 27" and 23" display. For some things (video editing) I still use the desktop, but for most of my "computery" uses, I just pick up the iPad. The NVIDIA guy is just saying that the quad-core phones will be able to also take on the primary use role.

This post has been edited by Nuke61: 12 December 2011 - 06:47 AM

[QUADICON]

Even if people use a smartphone as a primary mobile computer, it just doesn't warrant this much power.

If dualcoe is pretty much nearly useless in a phone, then quadcore os 4x's as useless.

The low level apps that are ran on smartphones, simply don't need that much power, and what is the battery-life going to be like.

On most Android phones, since they already have small batteries, dualcore gets you 4-5 hours if you're lucky. So won't quadcore slice that in 1/2?

Even if you game, its pointless. All these games are just reskinned games from the 80's and 90's. Those games ran just fine on processors that were less than 150Mhz. Dropping techni-color paoint on them to make them look graphically more appealing, doesn't mean they need more power.

This is just another gimmick to get you to buy. Even in tablets quadcore is useless unless you're running a desktop-like OS. Running Windows, Linux or maybe OSX on a tablet where you are using real desktop applications that benefit from that power is one thing, but a phone is something else.

They obviously ran out of ideas for what they want a phone to do, so why not just increase the cores???!!!

As time goes by, the average smartphone screen will be 4". Even with a slightl;y larger display, what will all those cores be doing?

NOTHING. Juts wasting battery-life to run a few tasks that aren't CPU intensive. Those tasks always have been and are memory resident.

Why not do something we really need.

Why not drop 64GB or 128GB of storage instead? Why not increase the resolution just a bit? EWhy make the music sound better? Why not give us HD playback? Why not give us headphones/earbuds that don't sound like crap?

Why not giove us something we can actually use? Quadcore is a useless, battery draining gimmick.

[bajafish]

Now if they could just put a 4 core in a Directv box, maybe that would wake it up.

[Nuke61]

QUADICON, on 12 December 2011 - 08:10 AM, said:

Even if people use a smartphone as a primary mobile computer, it just doesn't warrant this much power.

If dualcoe is pretty much nearly useless in a phone, then quadcore os 4x's as useless.

Dual-core isn't pretty much useless. The original iPad uses a single core chip, while the iPad 2 uses a dual core chip. The iPad 2 is much faster in every respect than the iPad 1 AND it gets battery life that is the same or BETTER than the original. So much for that theory, eh?

For Android, the recent quad core tablets are the first Android tablets where the reviewers say that there is no lag, or it's almost completely gone. It's because Android needs more power to get to zero UI lag. I know that Windows Phone doesn't need it, but Android does. So your belief that there's no benefit to a dual-core or quad-core system is not backed by real world results.

Quote

The low level apps that are ran on smartphones, simply don't need that much power, and what is the battery-life going to be like.

On most Android phones, since they already have small batteries, dualcore gets you 4-5 hours if you're lucky. So won't quadcore slice that in 1/2?

Whether the app need it or not depends on the app. Did you know that there are apps that allow you to do video editing on the iPad? How about the touch version of Photoshop? How about music editing? Whether multiple cores mean lower battery life depends on the implementation. NVIDIA and Samsung both claim that the Transformer Prime will have BETTER battery life than dual core processors, because it has a low power 5th processor and that the high performance cores only kick in if required. Whether it actually works out that way still needs to be tested, but that's the claim.

[xyberviri]

You know with a 1GHZ+ processor or a duel core CPU the only issue most phones have is RAM, no one is increasing the amount of RAM these phones have.

They still have maybe 512 to 1 GB of system ram and then about 512mb of onboard storage. Some phones come out with 16 GB internal storage but still are crippled by 256 or 512 mb of usable RAM.

I don’t need a faster processor I need more RAM. This was a issue all the way back to the windows mobile 6.5

If ram is “so cheap” why the heck aren’t manufactures putting more of it in there phones.

[danstutzman]

I wished the author would have included a reference to the new Intel ultra mobility chips. With the new Intel-Google agreement it would have added perspective because when it comes to R&D, nobody does it better than Intel imho.

Also, I have multiple Tegra2 devices and the second processor has not been a battery draw whatsoever. I get about 24 hours of common use with data off when I'm not using it (minimum). These new Quad core devices shouldn't impact the battery as much as you would think in standby/lite mode operations. What makes Tegra3 and the like so appealing is that if you want to play a game like Infinity Blade 2, you can. If it happens to eat your battery in the process that's the trade off. My PSP and DS only last a couple of hours too and when you play these high-end games, that's what your turning your phone to.

[Overspeed]

xyberviri, on 12 December 2011 - 08:46 AM, said:

You know with a 1GHZ+ processor or a duel core CPU the only issue most phones have is RAM, no one is increasing the amount of RAM these phones have.

They still have maybe 512 to 1 GB of system ram and then about 512mb of onboard storage. Some phones come out with 16 GB internal storage but still are crippled by 256 or 512 mb of usable RAM.

I don’t need a faster processor I need more RAM. This was a issue all the way back to the windows mobile 6.5

If ram is “so cheap” why the heck aren’t manufactures putting more of it in there phones.

Profit margin! By omitting a $10 part, and considering a sales figure of about 10 million units (average sales figure for a high end, successful model), thats an extra $100,000,000 for the manufacturer and its investors.

[danstutzman]

QUADICON, on 12 December 2011 - 08:10 AM, said:

Even if people use a smartphone as a primary mobile computer, it just doesn't warrant this much power.

If dualcoe is pretty much nearly useless in a phone, then quadcore os 4x's as useless.

The low level apps that are ran on smartphones, simply don't need that much power, and what is the battery-life going to be like.

On most Android phones, since they already have small batteries, dualcore gets you 4-5 hours if you're lucky. So won't quadcore slice that in 1/2?

Even if you game, its pointless. All these games are just reskinned games from the 80's and 90's. Those games ran just fine on processors that were less than 150Mhz. Dropping techni-color paoint on them to make them look graphically more appealing, doesn't mean they need more power.

This is just another gimmick to get you to buy. Even in tablets quadcore is useless unless you're running a desktop-like OS. Running Windows, Linux or maybe OSX on a tablet where you are using real desktop applications that benefit from that power is one thing, but a phone is something else.

They obviously ran out of ideas for what they want a phone to do, so why not just increase the cores???!!!

As time goes by, the average smartphone screen will be 4". Even with a slightl;y larger display, what will all those cores be doing?

NOTHING. Juts wasting battery-life to run a few tasks that aren't CPU intensive. Those tasks always have been and are memory resident.

Why not do something we really need.

Why not drop 64GB or 128GB of storage instead? Why not increase the resolution just a bit? EWhy make the music sound better? Why not give us HD playback? Why not give us headphones/earbuds that don't sound like crap?

Why not giove us something we can actually use? Quadcore is a useless, battery draining gimmick.

Quad... I go away for a couple of months and I see you're still posting these short-sighted, rants that are usually more wrong than right.

[JoeQuanne]

QUADICON, on 12 December 2011 - 08:10 AM, said:

Even if people use a smartphone as a primary mobile computer, it just doesn't warrant this much power.

If dualcoe is pretty much nearly useless in a phone, then quadcore os 4x's as useless.

The low level apps that are ran on smartphones, simply don't need that much power, and what is the battery-life going to be like.

On most Android phones, since they already have small batteries, dualcore gets you 4-5 hours if you're lucky. So won't quadcore slice that in 1/2?

Even if you game, its pointless. All these games are just reskinned games from the 80's and 90's. Those games ran just fine on processors that were less than 150Mhz. Dropping techni-color paoint on them to make them look graphically more appealing, doesn't mean they need more power.

This is just another gimmick to get you to buy. Even in tablets quadcore is useless unless you're running a desktop-like OS. Running Windows, Linux or maybe OSX on a tablet where you are using real desktop applications that benefit from that power is one thing, but a phone is something else.

They obviously ran out of ideas for what they want a phone to do, so why not just increase the cores???!!!

As time goes by, the average smartphone screen will be 4". Even with a slightl;y larger display, what will all those cores be doing?

NOTHING. Juts wasting battery-life to run a few tasks that aren't CPU intensive. Those tasks always have been and are memory resident.

Why not do something we really need.

Why not drop 64GB or 128GB of storage instead? Why not increase the resolution just a bit? EWhy make the music sound better? Why not give us HD playback? Why not give us headphones/earbuds that don't sound like crap?

Why not giove us something we can actually use? Quadcore is a useless, battery draining gimmick.

The average smartphone screen is practically already 4 inches. iPhone's are falling behind in the Display department as far as size goes, at least that's what I am going to assume you were using to average.

Quadcore technology in a smartphone is the way that these companies are future proofing their phones. No, most of the apps that are out right now for the average smartphone DON'T need all that power, but eventually they will. Much the same way personal computers are always being introduced with newer and better technology for better and greater programs, cell phones will continue to be introduced with better hardware to meet the demands of the software being developed for them.

Besides, I'm sure out there there are about 100s of different people wishing they could install World of Warcraft or [insert any normal pc game here] on their phone so they could play it anywhere, and one day that will be a possibility.

If you are worried about power consumption, don't. As a computer enthusiast (and working in IT in general) I've watched power requirements for all the various sorts of hardware get lower and lower as technology improved. Cell phones will be no exception.

[Coercion69]

WilliamParry, on 11 December 2011 - 11:14 PM, said:

snapple232, on 11 December 2011 - 10:37 PM, said:

"No thanks, I prefer my 24 inch monitor over a 3 inch screen."

That's narrow-minded. Ever consider the possibility of connecting a smartphone to a larger monitor? Motorola's Atrix is an early example of this, but it's certain to get more mainstream in the next few years as smartphones become powerful enough to handle the average consumer's computing needs.

I would ask you this then, how would I do my Full HD video editing on a phone, do Active Directory, virtual machines ect. My servers and desktops wont be covered by a smart phone. Yes I can say that I use my smart phone lots, but to say that it will replace it is another thing all together.

VMWare is acutally coming out for smartphones soon so yeah pretty much getting there.......

[yibrushn]

xyberviri, on 12 December 2011 - 08:46 AM, said:

They still have maybe 512 to 1 GB of system ram and then about 512mb of onboard storage. Some phones come out with 16 GB internal storage but still are crippled by 256 or 512 mb of usable RAM.

I have 1 GB on my tablet and my phone and I've never felt constrained with ram on either one. I completely agree that 512 is not nearly enough though.

[QUADICON]

Nuke61, on 12 December 2011 - 08:23 AM, said:

QUADICON, on 12 December 2011 - 08:10 AM, said:

Even if people use a smartphone as a primary mobile computer, it just doesn't warrant this much power.

If dualcore is pretty much nearly useless in a phone, then quadcore os 4x's as useless.

Dual-core isn't pretty much useless. The original iPad uses a single core chip, while the iPad 2 uses a dual core chip. The iPad 2 is much faster in every respect than the iPad 1 AND it gets battery life that is the same or BETTER than the original. So much for that theory, eh?

For Android, the recent quad core tablets are the first Android tablets where the reviewers say that there is no lag, or it's almost completely gone. It's because Android needs more power to get to zero UI lag. I know that Windows Phone doesn't need it, but Android does. So your belief that there's no benefit to a dual-core or quad-core system is not backed by real world results.

Quote

The low level apps that are ran on smartphones, simply don't need that much power, and what is the battery-life going to be like.

On most Android phones, since they already have small batteries, dualcore gets you 4-5 hours if you're lucky. So won't quadcore slice that in 1/2?

Whether the app need it or not depends on the app. Did you know that there are apps that allow you to do video editing on the iPad? How about the touch version of Photoshop? How about music editing? Whether multiple cores mean lower battery life depends on the implementation. NVIDIA and Samsung both claim that the Transformer Prime will have BETTER battery life than dual core processors, because it has a low power 5th processor and that the high performance cores only kick in if required. Whether it actually works out that way still needs to be tested, but that's the claim.

First off, if you're not going to tell the "whole" story, then don't tell one at all.

Even tho the iPad 1 has a 1Ghz CPU, its underclocked at 800Mhz...and even tho the iPad 2 has a dualcore CPu, both cores are underclocked to 800Mhz each. So thus yes they could get similar battery life.

Also you aren't considering this fact. Android phones for example have a much smaller batter than the iPhone 4 ot 4S. So thus adding to more cores to run on a small battery leads to lest time to use it.

Right now, a single core Android device with 4G, will land you up to 5 hrs on a single charge based on "normal usage". The iPhone 4/4S will land you 7. However, the iPhone battery is 2x's the size of the vast majority of Android devices.

As far as tablets. Look at iPad. The battery is rough 80% the size of the tablet itself. And if you underclock the CPU's to 800Mhz, then of course you can get better life. However, most Android devices run the CPU at full clock speed. i don't know how big teh batteries are inside Android tablets.

Even "if" ist the same battery life, you just can't justify quadcore or dualcore for memory resident applications. These are not fullblown desktop apps.

It doesn't matter to be if you included all the features that a smartphone or tablet can do upfront or from the background.
You would better with a faster clocked CPU vs just adding cores.

If you look at any PC test. Many PC's with just a dualcore CPU will do nearly as good as a pC with quads even at the same clock speed. The only time Quad's offer a "significant benefit" is is the application was designed to take advantage of the extra power.

Even if you do so for phone or tablet apps, all of those apps are low level anyways and throwing more CPU power at them, just to get an app to open 1 millisecond faster is just dumb.

I don't care if the iPad 2 opens apps faster than they do on the original iPad. Because the benefit is so minimal, it isn't even worth mentioning. It like saying your dualcore 1.2Ghz CPU enabled PC, is faster than my dualcore 1Ghz CPU enabled PC. Your marginal benefit isn't even worth the extra $50 you paid to have it.

Its nothing more than a gimmick in my opinion. We are talking about a mobile device, that si meant to make calls.

As far as the claim that Android needs more power, it is simply untrue. There are many Android devices running Android 4.0 and are still using their original 1Ghz CPU's. The phones have the same issue as PC's. If you remove the carrier bloatware from the devices, they run perfect. Even with the bloatware, I don't recall seeing very much lag on my Android device.

I find it to be no more different than using my iPhone, that even with dualcore still shows some lag when loading webpages, even though I use Comcast.

If phone makers optimize the OS a bit more to run better on the hardware, you won't experience ANY lag. You can prove as much when and if you root an Android device and run a customized and optimized ROM image for your own device.

Dualcore or quadcore may reduce some lag, but you can still have it no matter which phone you used.

You have proved NOTHING. All you proved is that you have a different opinion than mine.

All quadcore is going to do, is cause the CPU to get hotter, which results in other chips getting hooter and thus leading to more battery drain and battery wear.

Throwing more CPU power at a task, doesn't overcome lag. This has been proven with PC's for decades. For applications that are MEMORY RESIDENT, a device or computer benefits more from more RAM vs more CPU or GPU power.

Which is why I said, I rather they bump up the RAm, bump up the storage. Give us something useful.
No matter how many times I have asked for someone to provide a reasonable explanation for why we need dualcore or now even quadcore on a smartphone, no one has given one. Likely because there simply isn't one. saying you want to open an application a few milliseconds faster where your eye can't even detect the difference without benchmarking software is not a true benefit. It's marginal. A marginal benefit is not a real benefit, especially if it is going to make the product cost significant more at retail.

[QUADICON]

JoeQuanne, on 12 December 2011 - 11:12 AM, said:

QUADICON, on 12 December 2011 - 08:10 AM, said:

Even if people use a smartphone as a primary mobile computer, it just doesn't warrant this much power.

If dualcoe is pretty much nearly useless in a phone, then quadcore os 4x's as useless.

The low level apps that are ran on smartphones, simply don't need that much power, and what is the battery-life going to be like.

On most Android phones, since they already have small batteries, dualcore gets you 4-5 hours if you're lucky. So won't quadcore slice that in 1/2?

Even if you game, its pointless. All these games are just reskinned games from the 80's and 90's. Those games ran just fine on processors that were less than 150Mhz. Dropping techni-color paoint on them to make them look graphically more appealing, doesn't mean they need more power.

This is just another gimmick to get you to buy. Even in tablets quadcore is useless unless you're running a desktop-like OS. Running Windows, Linux or maybe OSX on a tablet where you are using real desktop applications that benefit from that power is one thing, but a phone is something else.

They obviously ran out of ideas for what they want a phone to do, so why not just increase the cores???!!!

As time goes by, the average smartphone screen will be 4". Even with a slightl;y larger display, what will all those cores be doing?

NOTHING. Juts wasting battery-life to run a few tasks that aren't CPU intensive. Those tasks always have been and are memory resident.

Why not do something we really need.

Why not drop 64GB or 128GB of storage instead? Why not increase the resolution just a bit? EWhy make the music sound better? Why not give us HD playback? Why not give us headphones/earbuds that don't sound like crap?

Why not giove us something we can actually use? Quadcore is a useless, battery draining gimmick.

The average smartphone screen is practically already 4 inches. iPhone's are falling behind in the Display department as far as size goes, at least that's what I am going to assume you were using to average.

Quadcore technology in a smartphone is the way that these companies are future proofing their phones. No, most of the apps that are out right now for the average smartphone DON'T need all that power, but eventually they will. Much the same way personal computers are always being introduced with newer and better technology for better and greater programs, cell phones will continue to be introduced with better hardware to meet the demands of the software being developed for them.

Besides, I'm sure out there there are about 100s of different people wishing they could install World of Warcraft or [insert any normal pc game here] on their phone so they could play it anywhere, and one day that will be a possibility.

If you are worried about power consumption, don't. As a computer enthusiast (and working in IT in general) I've watched power requirements for all the various sorts of hardware get lower and lower as technology improved. Cell phones will be no exception.

I disagree. Adding more cores isn't future proofing the phone. Dualcore phones have been avail since mid-2009. How many apps are found in Android market that actually take advantage....? Hardly any.

danstutzman, on 12 December 2011 - 09:38 AM, said:

QUADICON, on 12 December 2011 - 08:10 AM, said:

Even if people use a smartphone as a primary mobile computer, it just doesn't warrant this much power.

If dualcoe is pretty much nearly useless in a phone, then quadcore os 4x's as useless.

The low level apps that are ran on smartphones, simply don't need that much power, and what is the battery-life going to be like.

On most Android phones, since they already have small batteries, dualcore gets you 4-5 hours if you're lucky. So won't quadcore slice that in 1/2?

Even if you game, its pointless. All these games are just reskinned games from the 80's and 90's. Those games ran just fine on processors that were less than 150Mhz. Dropping techni-color paoint on them to make them look graphically more appealing, doesn't mean they need more power.

This is just another gimmick to get you to buy. Even in tablets quadcore is useless unless you're running a desktop-like OS. Running Windows, Linux or maybe OSX on a tablet where you are using real desktop applications that benefit from that power is one thing, but a phone is something else.

They obviously ran out of ideas for what they want a phone to do, so why not just increase the cores???!!!

As time goes by, the average smartphone screen will be 4". Even with a slightl;y larger display, what will all those cores be doing?

NOTHING. Juts wasting battery-life to run a few tasks that aren't CPU intensive. Those tasks always have been and are memory resident.

Why not do something we really need.

Why not drop 64GB or 128GB of storage instead? Why not increase the resolution just a bit? EWhy make the music sound better? Why not give us HD playback? Why not give us headphones/earbuds that don't sound like crap?

Why not giove us something we can actually use? Quadcore is a useless, battery draining gimmick.

Quad... I go away for a couple of months and I see you're still posting these short-sighted, rants that are usually more wrong than right.

An opinion isn't wrong or right. It's how I see it. You are entitled to your own opinion as am I. You don't have to like my opinion.