Android and Me summarizes Verizon's upcoming Android line up

[Bateluer]

Once I realized there wouldn't be any more high end phones with keyboards I started using the virtual keyboard on my droid to practice. It's only been a few weeks and I actually prefer the virtual keyboard now.

Some pictures of a slimmer Droid 3 model have surfaced.

http://www.droid-life.com/2011/03/15/droid3-poses-again-this-time-with-keyboard-showing/

A lot of of us were wondering how its keyboard would look under what appears to be a much thinner top piece. I think it’s safe to say that we now know. Five rows of fun, with an HDMI port just below it on the side

 

[SolidSnake42]

Some pictures of a slimmer Droid 3 model have surfaced.

http://www.droid-life.com/2011/03/15/droid3-poses-again-this-time-with-keyboard-showing/

With the thickness of the keyboard and mainboard portion, maybe there is room for a better feeling full sized keyboard? Looks great though.

Ive never had any problems with LG products.
They are like Panasonic for me.

LG seizing PS3's??? What's that about?

PS3's were seized during a whole court battle between Sony and LG. They were seized in the Netherlands (thousands of them) and then lost that part of the ruling, but not the whole case.

 

[gus6464]

It's as if I am looking at last year's phones with a 2 or 3 tacked on them or some fancy name. Nothing really stands out. So what happens when iphone 5 gets announced with same cpu and gpu as the ipad 2 and a 4in screen? At least bump the hardware a bit on these android phone. Android phone manufacturers are freaking lazy.

 

[mb]

I thought single core was lame, yet all these bar one are single core?

And only one Gingerbread. :/

Unless I missed something, both are soooo over-hyped.

Dual core drains battery and doesn't provide a significant increase in performance yet.

Changes in 2.2 -> 2.3 are minimal compared to any other upgrade in the past, and 2.3 will be offered on those phones after launch anyway.

 

[Bateluer]

Unless I missed something, both are soooo over-hyped.

Dual core drains battery and doesn't provide a significant increase in performance yet.

Wrong on both. Might want to reference the Tegra 2 benches at Anandtech. Tegra utterly dominates in the smartphone sector. And battery life is comparable to other high end phones.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Wrong on both. Might want to reference the Tegra 2 benches at Anandtech. Tegra utterly dominates in the smartphone sector. And battery life is comparable to other high end phones.

OMAP 44xx dominates, Tegra 2 is comparable. :sneaky:

TI's OMAP 4430, Samsung's Exynos 4210, NVIDIA's Tegra 2 AP20H and Qualcomm's upcoming MSM8660. Right now it looks like the OMAP 4430 may be the best performer out of them all,

 

[mb]

Wrong on both. Might want to reference the Tegra 2 benches at Anandtech. Tegra utterly dominates in the smartphone sector. And battery life is comparable to other high end phones.

You might want to look at them again! It does not sweep the benchmarks - it's far from "utterly dominating". And even in the ones it does come on top of, it doesn't make a difference. It's like getting 200fps in a video game instead of 175.
Mutli cores will have its place in smart phones, just not yet. Maybe next year, but for this years line up I don't see it really mattering.

And I've read the changes in 2.3. Miniscule. Certainly nothing worth getting so upset about over because a phone isn't going to ship with it.
Going from Eclair to Froyo was huge. Froyo to Gingerbread is a minor upgrade.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

You might want to look at them again! It does not sweep the benchmarks - it's far from "utterly dominating". And even in the ones it does come on top of, it doesn't make a difference. It's like getting 200fps in a video game instead of 175.
Mutli cores will have its place in smart phones, just not yet. Maybe next year, but for this years line up I don't see it really mattering.

And I've read the changes in 2.3. Miniscule. Certainly nothing worth getting so upset about over because a phone isn't going to ship with it.
Going from Eclair to Froyo was huge. Froyo to Gingerbread is a minor upgrade.

The difference is like 5% for all those processors. It's like comparing AMD and nVidia when they have roughly equal cards. It's really a split decision. Like GTX 560 vs Radeon 6950.

Wrong on both. Might want to reference the Tegra 2 benches at Anandtech. Tegra utterly dominates in the smartphone sector. And battery life is comparable to other high end phones.

Dominates in the sense that it dominates synthetic benchmarks. But when my Handcent SMS is going to still hiccup if opening or the boot time is longer than my Windows XP laptop, where's the SPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED?

 

[Bateluer]

Dominates in the sense that it dominates synthetic benchmarks. But when my Handcent SMS is going to still hiccup if opening or the boot time is longer than my Windows XP laptop, where's the SPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED?

. . . don't follow you on either of these. Handcent opens in a blink on a 600Mhz OMAP3. Boot time is about a minute, but why does it matter? I haven't rebooted my Droid since I flashed Project Elite's GB build a few weeks ago.

But here's some more real world numbers for you, from Anand's review of the Optimus 2X

I'd post the numbers from Quadrant and Neocore to show its gaming potential, but those are more synthetic tests.

 

[mb]

. . . don't follow you on either of these. Handcent opens in a blink on a 600Mhz OMAP3. Boot time is about a minute, but why does it matter? I haven't rebooted my Droid since I flashed Project Elite's GB build a few weeks ago.

But here's some more real world numbers for you, from Anand's review of the Optimus 2X

I'd post the numbers from Quadrant and Neocore to show its gaming potential, but those are more synthetic tests.

Wow so it wins some synthetic tests, big deal!
Look, it won this real test!

LOOK AT HOW MUCH THOSE CORES HELP!!111one

Oh, wait. What?

Maybe it's better for actual gaming?

Nope!

So really, there's absolutely no point to not get a phone you want just because it is single core! The performance difference just isn't there.

 

[Bateluer]

So really, there's absolutely no point to not get a phone you want just because it is single core! The performance difference just isn't there.

Even in the tests you linked, Tegra 2 still makes an extremely strong showing. And with comparable battery life, why wouldn't you prefer the dual core chip? We still have yet to see benchmarks from the dual core Snapdragons, though it looks like the iPad2 chip(OMAP4/SGX543?) handily dominates everything.

Note here, I'm not saying the upcoming VZW smart phone lineup is junk, it just feels like more of a slight refresh than a revolutionary jump. There's a few phones on the list I'm interested in, but nothing makes me want to run out and buy anything right now. With that line up, I don't have any reservations about waiting until after my current contract expires.

 

[mb]

Even in the tests you linked, Tegra 2 still makes an extremely strong showing. And with comparable battery life, why wouldn't you prefer the dual core chip? We still have yet to see benchmarks from the dual core Snapdragons, though it looks like the iPad2 chip(OMAP4/SGX543?) handily dominates everything.

Note here, I'm not saying the upcoming VZW smart phone lineup is junk, it just feels like more of a slight refresh than a revolutionary jump. There's a few phones on the list I'm interested in, but nothing makes me want to run out and buy anything right now. With that line up, I don't have any reservations about waiting until after my current contract expires.

Right.
Yeah I'm not trying to say they are slouches, just at the moment it's pointless to base a purchase decision solely on the # of cores a phone has. It's not going to make the user experience significantly better. As in, if you want a Thunderbolt, get it and don't wait for the Bionic just because it's dual core. But if you just aren't interested and you can wait, wait for the next gen of dual cores next year - they should prove to be much better than what you'd get with the Bionic or Droid X2.

 

[gus6464]

The A5 is an OMAP4 chip? I thought it was a custom design by Apple.

 

[Bateluer]

delete this, double post.

 

[Bateluer]

Right.
Yeah I'm not trying to say they are slouches, just at the moment it's pointless to base a purchase decision solely on the # of cores a phone has. It's not going to make the user experience significantly better. As in, if you want a Thunderbolt, get it and don't wait for the Bionic just because it's dual core. But if you just aren't interested and you can wait, wait for the next gen of dual cores next year - they should prove to be much better than what you'd get with the Bionic or Droid X2.

My top looking phones are all single core, but its more because they aren't any compelling dual core phones out yet. If the Bionic/X2 have encrypted bootloaders, then I'm not really interested. Depends whats out in July when its upgrade time.

The A5 is an OMAP4 chip? I thought it was a custom design by Apple.

Designing a full custom CPU/GPU takes a long time and is a very expensive process. Apple may want to do this route, but they aren't there yet. For the time being, they've been using chips from market leaders. iPad 1/Iphone 4 were Hummingbird, iPad 2 is an OMAP4430 and SGX543.

 

[gus6464]

Designing a full custom CPU/GPU takes a long time and is a very expensive process. Apple may want to do this route, but they aren't there yet. For the time being, they've been using chips from market leaders. iPad 1/Iphone 4 were Hummingbird, iPad 2 is an OMAP4430 and SGX543.

OMAP4 is a TI chip right? How come people were reporting that the A5 is being manufactured by Samsung? Now the original OMAP4430 is listed as coming with an SGX540 which means that the A5 could still be considered somewhat of a custom chip?

 

[jaydee]

How can so many of their upcoming phones, not have LTE support?

 

[mb]

How can so many of their upcoming phones, not have LTE support?

Nothing wrong with having a diverse line up. Plus 4G data plans are expected to change in the near future, so some people may still be content with 3G.

 

[Bateluer]

How can so many of their upcoming phones, not have LTE support?

Because 2/3rd of the country still doesn't have LTE service and doesn't want to pay the extra cost?

 

[Anubis]

How can so many of their upcoming phones, not have LTE support?

because LTE wont go nationwide for 2 more years

 

[Mopetar]

. . . don't follow you on either of these. Handcent opens in a blink on a 600Mhz OMAP3. Boot time is about a minute, but why does it matter? I haven't rebooted my Droid since I flashed Project Elite's GB build a few weeks ago.

But here's some more real world numbers for you, from Anand's review of the Optimus 2X

I'd post the numbers from Quadrant and Neocore to show its gaming potential, but those are more synthetic tests.

Of course comparing a two-core chip to one-core chips in synthetic benchmarks is going to make it look better. However, it's not quite as impressive when it's stacked up against the newest from TI, Samsung, and others.

Then again, as mb pointed out, it's not as though it makes much difference in terms of actual performance.

 

[tonygeor]

That battery looks awesome on the Bionic!