How much processing power is needed?

[Cerb]

1. 2 or more cores. More cores adds less utility with each added core. Qualcomm's current CPUs appear to be the best of the bunch, for now, but it all moves so quickly, that could change in less than a year.

2. Graphics. This is SOC-dependent. Qualcomm and PowerVR tend to have the best, but it depends on the final implementation that you are buying.

3. RAM. This is an area where mobile devices are getting better, but suck. Only Qualcomm and NVidia have good RAM performance, and both are still bandwidth-starved. Penny-wise, pound foolish. I suspect the future generations will fix that rather nicely.

4. Storage. Just as above. Narrow flash interfaces, like SD, can barely compete with hard drives, in practice. Major bottleneck, there. Also, it will probably have to do synchronous or blocking transfers to much flash, as a paranoia issue, which could cause system pauses.

5. Software platform. This is where it gets icky. Minor tuning of scripting languages, VM tweaks, new drivers, etc., can make every bit the difference new hardware can, so you can't just use specs.

Currently, none are fast enough, but they're getting closer at a high rate, these days, now that many people want to replace their PCs with phones and tablets. As it stands, they're probably 2-3 years away, IMO (~2GHz C2D performance, in general).

To put into perspective, in the pc world, normal usage for ppl and core i3 or i5 with build in graphics card would be enuf for most ppl who does not game.

More like a low-end Core 2 Duo of 2-2.5GHz, and a good enough GPU to offload most video formats. If you're spending the money, sure, get an i3, but that's more because the added cost over a Celeron or Pentium is so little, than it is due to most users needing it.

 

[bonku]

Actually, if you want to do any serious job (browsing and office works) then much CPU power is not needed. If you want to waste your time and fooling around (i.e. gaming) then you shall need unlimited amount of CPU power.

 

[soccerballtux]

I'm not really following the mobile phones news, and Im quite curious, how much processing power is actually needed for a normal usage, which means normal web browsing, texting and maybe some light movies, not for mobile gaming etc in a smartphone (not including tablet, for simplification).

To put into perspective, in the pc world, normal usage for ppl and core i3 or i5 with build in graphics card would be enuf for most ppl who does not game.

I know its not as simple in the mobile industry as different companies have their version of android ICS etc and sometimes no matter how much horsepower you put into a smartphone, there still some 'unsmoothness' caused by the software itself.

So generally or thumb of rule, how much core is needed? dual or quad core? Ghz? or which generation processor and company?

Much appreciated for the help, thanks.

dual core anything at 1Ghz with a decent GPU capable of rendering Android UI fluidly (so SGX530 is a no-no) and 1GB of RAM IMO. Huge difference between single and dual core.

Also a bit of tweaking never hurts (Smooth Scroll patch for android which arrests the hyperactive garbage collector does WONDERS for scrolling performance)

 

[soccerballtux]

Just something as simple as surfing the web the Nexus S runs out of RAM because when I go to the home screen, it takes a second or two to load up the home screen. Games? Takes a while to load up the home screen as well. The minimum of RAM I'd get is 1GB. Also trying to watch anything higher than low quality videos lags because it's not powerful enough.

use superchargerV6 script to both change when it pushes apps out of memory and when it pushes launcher out of mem (IE makes it last).
I multitasked on my OGDroid on gingerbread by txt messaging, listening to music, and loading a webpage all at once.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Just something as simple as surfing the web the Nexus S runs out of RAM because when I go to the home screen, it takes a second or two to load up the home screen. Games? Takes a while to load up the home screen as well. The minimum of RAM I'd get is 1GB. Also trying to watch anything higher than low quality videos lags because it's not powerful enough.

See that is something WRONG with Google's team. I don't know why it takes a supercharger script to fix memory groupings and why the launcher is flushed out of memory so often.

If you optimize your 512mb device ok, it should be fine. The fact that HTC couldn't get their minfree settings working well on the One X initially with apps closing too soon shows that there's a genuine problem across the platform.

Google could've hired a team to figure out optimal minfree settings and to fix their OOM groupings. But no. Instead everyone's left to figure this out. While the V6 supercharger works great, that was Google's job.

 

[ITHURTSWHENIP]

If you optimize your 512mb device ok, it should be fine. The fact that HTC couldn't get their minfree settings working well on the One X initially with apps closing too soon shows that there's a genuine problem across the platform..

The reason the US version One X had limited multitasking is because the Adreno 225 GPU does not have dedicated RAM wich meant it was eating upwards of 600 MB RAM for the GPU alone. Thats why Samsung shipped their US S3 with 2 GB of RAM to make up for the potential RAM hogging by Adreno 225