How much processing power is needed?

[perseides]

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.

 

[wirednuts]

right now i think its a good quality single core gigahert processor. depends on what one though... the one in my exhibit II is ok, but the one in the droidx is awesome. especially with a custom rom... my dx with vxl is virtually just as fast as my dx2 running what is basically a stock rom (there isnt really any great dx2 custom roms yet)

but if you get a dual core phone, i think youre set for 2 years easy. after that, im sure the software will demand more.

 

[Skurge]

I think you will need a dual core and 1GB of ram if you want to keep it for a while. The RAM is esspecially important. I kept running out of ram on my SGS so I never multitasked ever.

 

[BrightCandle]

Currently there is not a phone out there that can do the basics fast enough. All the small mobile devices are limited by their CPU in every activity. They are usable but could go much faster with a better CPU. 2x1.2ghz is enough for me to not be completely irritated by its slowness. But compared to a PC it leaves me disappointed.

Web page scrolling for example is only smooth when the page is rendered at a noticeable lower quality. Which takes about 2 seconds to return to normal when you stop. Web browsing in general seems to require 2+ seconds to render the page which dominates the browsing experience. So personally I don't any of it is fast enough yet, its all different shades of compromise with because its small and portable.

 

[shortylickens]

PSA: The industry and consumers in general it seems, eventually want portable computers to completely replace desktop versions. With speech to text and such that is entirely possible before I die.
Cranial mounted shit ala Shadowrun is not an impossibility.

So when you say "needed" keep in mind most people really dont need smartphones at all, we just find them terribly convenient and have a psychological addiction to such convenience.

To answer your question I could still get by with my Droid if I needed to, and thats only 600 mhz and a slow 600 mhz at that.

 

[vshah]

also remember that however fast a smartphone gets, a laptop will always be faster, and a desktop will always be faster than that.

so our perception of "minimum speed required" may increase with time. at least us techies.

 

[dagamer34]

Currently there is not a phone out there that can do the basics fast enough. All the small mobile devices are limited by their CPU in every activity. They are usable but could go much faster with a better CPU. 2x1.2ghz is enough for me to not be completely irritated by its slowness. But compared to a PC it leaves me disappointed.

Web page scrolling for example is only smooth when the page is rendered at a noticeable lower quality. Which takes about 2 seconds to return to normal when you stop. Web browsing in general seems to require 2+ seconds to render the page which dominates the browsing experience. So personally I don't any of it is fast enough yet, its all different shades of compromise with because its small and portable.

They aren't limited by CPU as much as they are by power consumption. No one wants a phone that is dead in 2 hours.

Considering the same SoC chips in phones are able to run Windows RT, a full-blown multi-tasking operating system should be a sign that we've reached the era of "good enough" computing on phones at least. The difficulty now is pushing performance without requiring a 4000mAh battery to get through the day. And I think at some point,we'll reach a level of smartphone performance where you can just hook your phone up to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and that will be your "computer".

 

[perseides]

Currently there is not a phone out there that can do the basics fast enough. All the small mobile devices are limited by their CPU in every activity.

right now i think its a good quality single core gigahert processor. depends on what one though... the one in my exhibit II is ok, but the one in the droidx is awesome.

I think you will need a dual core and 1GB of ram if you want to keep it for a while.

seems like theres different suggestion on how much is processing power is needed.

They aren't limited by CPU as much as they are by power consumption. No one wants a phone that is dead in 2 hours.

it always been the case of smartphones isnt it, most of them barely can hav 8 hours of continuous usage

Question, is the problem of 'not enough cpu power' or lagginess with basic usage of smartphone, a problem of its software (aka android), cpu or both? Seems to me iphone did a great job of avoiding the lagginess or just my misconception?

Well, im just inquiring, for a normal daily usage, a pc 3 or 4 years ago (eg. core2duo) will still perform quite well with current programs. Seems to me smartphones tech hav not reached that yet.

 

[wirednuts]

if someone thinks anything less then a dual core is too slow then they are running a shotty stock rom. most stock roms are clunky as all heck. phone carriers just want everything to work, they save costs by not forcing their dev teams to optimize the speed.

even the original droid is a good example. at stock, its sllllooooowww. but put a steeldroid rom on it, and its actually a bearable phone to use even with todays apps.

however, 512mb i do agree is minimum that you want to toy with. any sort of future proofing (if there is such thing) then i will also agree that 1gb ram is much more desirable. im not sure what people are running for apps though, because ive never ran out of ram with 512mb... my guess is theyre browsing the internet heavily. which is something i dont do because a laptop is always right by and that experience blows any phone out of the water- if for nothing else the screen size alone.

 

[wirednuts]

They aren't limited by CPU as much as they are by power consumption. No one wants a phone that is dead in 2 hours.

this

 

[dguy6789]

A smartphone needs ever increasing power for the same reason PCs have for years. I don't see it as having enough processing power for what we do on them already so we don't need more, I see it as the reason we don't do more on our phones is because they don't have more processing power.

 

[zerocool84]

if someone thinks anything less then a dual core is too slow then they are running a shotty stock rom. most stock roms are clunky as all heck. phone carriers just want everything to work, they save costs by not forcing their dev teams to optimize the speed.

even the original droid is a good example. at stock, its sllllooooowww. but put a steeldroid rom on it, and its actually a bearable phone to use even with todays apps.

however, 512mb i do agree is minimum that you want to toy with. any sort of future proofing (if there is such thing) then i will also agree that 1gb ram is much more desirable. im not sure what people are running for apps though, because ive never ran out of ram with 512mb... my guess is theyre browsing the internet heavily. which is something i dont do because a laptop is always right by and that experience blows any phone out of the water- if for nothing else the screen size alone.

Well a ROM is a ROM and most have things taken out or tweaked for speed at the expense of reliability. Plus 1GB ram is definitely needed. Even with good ROMs a phone like the Nexus S could in no way keep up with any new phone. I have one and no ROM can make it that fast. Faster compared to stock yes but it can't perform close to recent phones.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I think there's a minimum speed we'll be happy with, but the minimum target moves up.

I honestly think the smartphone world should be like the PC world. Yes we do care about specs, but honestly even you and I will get by with an i3 or i5 95% of the time. If all we do is argue on AT Gadgets, surf the web, watch some movies, check email, social network, that's fine.

Yes there are those who game, and I do game too, but not enough to justify a dual GTX 680 solution and a hexa core processor. You can get great framerates even on an i5. Remember smartphones don't fall into the same gaming category, and while the gaming population on the PC world is small, the gaming population for smartphones (gaming with the same level of intensity as BF3) is even smaller. People do casual gaming now, and it's like facebook games on PC or Angry Birds on a phone. You don't need state of the art GPUs to drive those.

I used to wait for the latest and greatest CPU, but after a while I learned that whatever's out and even mid range solutions will be fast enough for basic work. It's just the few times I want to play games that I can't because I don't have the latest and greatest.

I really get annoyed when people from the Android camp bash phones for not having the latest and greatest. A dual core exynos is faster than the iPhone 4S. My SGS2 has more horsepower than an iPad 2. GPU-wise it's limited, but that's only if I play some crazy crap like Infinity Blade. My phone is good enough to play Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies, etc. It should run all of those apps just fine and not even lose to the iPad because it can hit 60 fps.

Yet Android runs slower, so I feel like people bash devices for not having the latest and greatest so much. The fact that my Motorola Milestone runs out of memory playing angry birds is pathetic. The fact that scrolling in the Twitter app is choppy on a 1ghz device, and my dual core SGS2 is ridiculous. It takes a freaking SGS3 that my gf has to scroll smoothly in Twitter. This is NOT an issue on my iPod Touch 4G.

It's the fact that we can easily perceive the difference between single core, dual core, quad core on Android that results in this crowd DEMANDING quad core processors or else it's a crap device.

On platforms like iOS and Windows Phone, you don't emphasize raw power. It just needs to do what you want to do fine. And on those platforms, a 1ghz processor can smoothly scroll through the UI and apps. Sure we can cut down on load time with dual core processors, and quad, but what are you *really* buying going from dual to quad say with the SGS2 => SGS3? I really ask you this because the GNex FLIES on JellyBean.

The other reason I'm against just shooting for the fastest stuff is because we have forgotten that software is often bloated. Having faster hardware is an excuse for crappy software. You can increase requirements because you know raw processing power is there. It's like Windows Vista. Waste of system resources. XP runs insanely fast because its minimalistic and lacks all the glamour of Vista. Even after optimizing Vista with SP1 and SP2 and then 7, we saw a decrease in system resource usage.

It took Android 3 years since its debut to come out with a smooth OS. I don't even know if JellyBean is *that* smooth because it's not perfect on a single core device yet. I'm sure if they baked in full GPU rendering it'd be even smoother.

Anyways, I digress. The unsmoothness in Android is really just software and has created a huge hype about having crazy phone specs. We should be focusing on software enhancements rather than waiting for the latest craze.

 

[wirednuts]

Well a ROM is a ROM and most have things taken out or tweaked for speed at the expense of reliability. Plus 1GB ram is definitely needed. Even with good ROMs a phone like the Nexus S could in no way keep up with any new phone. I have one and no ROM can make it that fast. Faster compared to stock yes but it can't perform close to recent phones.

really though? what apps are you using, because for most android stuff a 1ghz processor on a 4" screen should be very snappy.

 

[wirednuts]

Anyways, I digress. The unsmoothness in Android is really just software and has created a huge hype about having crazy phone specs. We should be focusing on software enhancements rather than waiting for the latest craze.

it is so true. but you know they dont sell because of the software. faster hardware always sells.

 

[shortylickens]

also remember that however fast a smartphone gets, a laptop will always be faster, and a desktop will always be faster than that.

so our perception of "minimum speed required" may increase with time. at least us techies.

Well eventually with quantum computing or some other advancement we will eventually be able put all our computing needs in one tiny chip. No one will need the big computers except maybe starships and only then for redundancy.

 

[AstroManLuca]

My personal experiences, for what it's worth:

Samsung Epic - single core 1 GHz, great GPU for the time (SGX 540), 512 MB RAM
Blew away my previous phone, a shitty Samsung Moment, but any phone could have done that. Felt faster than my wife's Evo, which also had a single core 1 GHz with 512 MB of RAM but a much slower GPU. The Epic could run Android 4.0 but it was a bit laggy toward the end of when I owned it.

HTC One S - top-end dual core 1.5 GHz, great GPU, 1 GB RAM
Major step up from the Epic. Super fast and smooth at everything. Returned it for reasons related to the phone provider, not the phone itself.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus - dual core 1.2 GHz, same GPU as the Epic, 1 GB RAM
Theoretically should be slower than the One S, with an older GPU and a less advanced CPU. In practice I can't really tell the difference. Maybe in two years the One S will feel less outdated than the Nexus, but only time will tell.

My conclusion is that, for now at least, any dual core with 1 GB of RAM should do fine.

 

[zerocool84]

really though? what apps are you using, because for most android stuff a 1ghz processor on a 4" screen should be very snappy.

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.

 

[Eug]

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).

I'd say dual-core, with an integrated GPU capable of of 1080p movie playback in hardware. Dual A9 plus appropriate GPU is fine.

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'd say dual-core, with an integrated GPU capable of of 1080p movie playback in hardware. Core 2 Duo is fine.

That said, try running Senor GIF on ARM. Even on quad-core Tegra 3, it sucks.

 

[Ravynmagi]

I bought a Galaxy Nexus a while ago. This phone comes with a dual core A9 TI OMAP 4460 processor. And I used to cry in my pillow asking why didn't Google delay the phone a tad longer and just put a Tegra 3 in it or something.

Then Android 4.1 Jelly Bean comes out. And wow, this software update made me feel like I got a new phone. It's impressive with has done with what is kinda of an old processor now.

If I were buying a phone or tablet today, I would definitely want a quad core A9 or dual core A15 processor, maybe I wouldn't need all that power now if my device had Android 4.1, but things move fast in the mobile world and I'd like a SoC that can still hold up a year from now. So I just don't buy for what I need today, but for what I hope can hold up for the length of time I hope to keep the device, which isn't always easy of course.

 

[wirednuts]

I bought a Galaxy Nexus a while ago. This phone comes with a dual core A9 TI OMAP 4460 processor. And I used to cry in my pillow asking why didn't Google delay the phone a tad longer and just put a Tegra 3 in it or something.

i have a droid x2... and its instant on virtually anything i try. of course the slowest thing is web surfing, especially since i run it in desktop mode, but thats the only area i can see people wanting more right now. as for me, i dont like web surfing on anything less then a 10" screen... 13" preferably, so if my phone doesnt do that as fast as my laptop i am plenty ok with it

 

[Skurge]

Currently there is not a phone out there that can do the basics fast enough. All the small mobile devices are limited by their CPU in every activity. They are usable but could go much faster with a better CPU. 2x1.2ghz is enough for me to not be completely irritated by its slowness. But compared to a PC it leaves me disappointed.

Web page scrolling for example is only smooth when the page is rendered at a noticeable lower quality. Which takes about 2 seconds to return to normal when you stop. Web browsing in general seems to require 2+ seconds to render the page which dominates the browsing experience. So personally I don't any of it is fast enough yet, its all different shades of compromise with because its small and portable.

Actually IO performance is a major bottleneck when doing certain functions. I know on my phone and my nexus 7. When I'm transfering music to it and trying to use it, its terrible slow. When I'm using it and an app finished downloading and starts installing it just grindes to a halt for a second. I don't know if iOS has the same issue. I don't think it does.

 

[Necrolezbeast]

I'd like to argue that the smoothness we are seeing in the current mobile OS's and current hardware is actually more appealing than most computers without an SSD. My new One X is snappy as hell, it's the first android device I've used extensively that actually holds it's own in user experience with an iOS or Windows Mobile 7+ device. But, we go back to the i3 argument being 'enough' and when I come to work and hop on this computer I hate life when compared to my laptop with an SSD. It takes for freaking ever, a few seconds, to open a word document... I know that these mobile devices aren't anywhere near the same computational level that our PC's are, but in user experience they are more pleasant than any off the shelf budget laptop/pc.

Sure, as a tech geek I'll always get a stiffy when reading and playing with new hardware. But, to think that our budget i3 systems are more than enough for users while our mobile devices aren't there yet isn't accurate. We just quantify performance and user intuitiveness between the two devices differently.

 

[Skurge]

I think there's a minimum speed we'll be happy with, but the minimum target moves up.

I honestly think the smartphone world should be like the PC world. Yes we do care about specs, but honestly even you and I will get by with an i3 or i5 95% of the time. If all we do is argue on AT Gadgets, surf the web, watch some movies, check email, social network, that's fine.

Yes there are those who game, and I do game too, but not enough to justify a dual GTX 680 solution and a hexa core processor. You can get great framerates even on an i5. Remember smartphones don't fall into the same gaming category, and while the gaming population on the PC world is small, the gaming population for smartphones (gaming with the same level of intensity as BF3) is even smaller. People do casual gaming now, and it's like facebook games on PC or Angry Birds on a phone. You don't need state of the art GPUs to drive those.

I used to wait for the latest and greatest CPU, but after a while I learned that whatever's out and even mid range solutions will be fast enough for basic work. It's just the few times I want to play games that I can't because I don't have the latest and greatest.

I really get annoyed when people from the Android camp bash phones for not having the latest and greatest. A dual core exynos is faster than the iPhone 4S. My SGS2 has more horsepower than an iPad 2. GPU-wise it's limited, but that's only if I play some crazy crap like Infinity Blade. My phone is good enough to play Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies, etc. It should run all of those apps just fine and not even lose to the iPad because it can hit 60 fps.

Yet Android runs slower, so I feel like people bash devices for not having the latest and greatest so much. The fact that my Motorola Milestone runs out of memory playing angry birds is pathetic. The fact that scrolling in the Twitter app is choppy on a 1ghz device, and my dual core SGS2 is ridiculous. It takes a freaking SGS3 that my gf has to scroll smoothly in Twitter. This is NOT an issue on my iPod Touch 4G.

It's the fact that we can easily perceive the difference between single core, dual core, quad core on Android that results in this crowd DEMANDING quad core processors or else it's a crap device.

On platforms like iOS and Windows Phone, you don't emphasize raw power. It just needs to do what you want to do fine. And on those platforms, a 1ghz processor can smoothly scroll through the UI and apps. Sure we can cut down on load time with dual core processors, and quad, but what are you *really* buying going from dual to quad say with the SGS2 => SGS3? I really ask you this because the GNex FLIES on JellyBean.

The other reason I'm against just shooting for the fastest stuff is because we have forgotten that software is often bloated. Having faster hardware is an excuse for crappy software. You can increase requirements because you know raw processing power is there. It's like Windows Vista. Waste of system resources. XP runs insanely fast because its minimalistic and lacks all the glamour of Vista. Even after optimizing Vista with SP1 and SP2 and then 7, we saw a decrease in system resource usage.

It took Android 3 years since its debut to come out with a smooth OS. I don't even know if JellyBean is *that* smooth because it's not perfect on a single core device yet. I'm sure if they baked in full GPU rendering it'd be even smoother.

Anyways, I digress. The unsmoothness in Android is really just software and has created a huge hype about having crazy phone specs. We should be focusing on software enhancements rather than waiting for the latest craze.

I agree with most of what you say, but twitter scrolls just as smoothly on my Gnex as the 4s. Also it's not just Android. Android is smooth enough. Loading times on a 4 are noticebly slower than a 4s and a 3GS feels like a Gingerbread device and it's only slightly underclocked. Pleople go on about how smooth iOS, but it's on a device by device basis. The 4S is unbelieveble smooth. I think it maybe smoother than a desktop PC. The 4 feels like it has a slightly lower framerate and there is slight very slight stutter when scrolling some menus.

 

[Eug]

I'd like to argue that the smoothness we are seeing in the current mobile OS's and current hardware is actually more appealing than most computers without an SSD. My new One X is snappy as hell, it's the first android device I've used extensively that actually holds it's own in user experience with an iOS or Windows Mobile 7+ device. But, we go back to the i3 argument being 'enough' and when I come to work and hop on this computer I hate life when compared to my laptop with an SSD. It takes for freaking ever, a few seconds, to open a word document... I know that these mobile devices aren't anywhere near the same computational level that our PC's are, but in user experience they are more pleasant than any off the shelf budget laptop/pc.

Sure, as a tech geek I'll always get a stiffy when reading and playing with new hardware. But, to think that our budget i3 systems are more than enough for users while our mobile devices aren't there yet isn't accurate. We just quantify performance and user intuitiveness between the two devices differently.

I made the assumption that the PCs in question had SSDs. In that context, a Core 2 Duo should be fine for most non-gamers.