Nokia: Multi-core phones hurt customers, are seldom useful

[Bateluer]

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=24460

He comments [translated], "Dual-core, quad-core mobile phones are just a waste of battery, and are seldom useful."

Unless, you know, you wanted to play a high polygon game or a high bitrate video, or multi-task . . . .

With the lack of movement of WP7 phones, and Nokia's sales dropping like a stone, will the Nokia death clock start soon? Or is he just saying this because WP7 doesn't support multi core CPUs yet?

 

[zerocool84]

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=24460



Unless, you know, you wanted to play a high polygon game or a high bitrate video, or multi-task . . . .

With the lack of movement of WP7 phones, and Nokia's sales dropping like a stone, will the Nokia death clock start soon? Or is he just saying this because WP7 doesn't support multi core CPUs yet?

Of course they're saying it because they don't have it yet. Even Apple knows that the more advanced a phone/tablet is, it's going to need dual core to handle more intensive things like you mentioned.

 

[shortylickens]

Bitter grapes?

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Considering multiple dual core phones completely dominate the Lumia 900 when it comes to battery life that is a pretty stupid statement.

If I'm not mistaken the Galaxy Note outsold Nokia's entire WP7 lineup by more than 2:1 which is absolutely hilarious.

 

[Mopetar]

Unless, you know, you wanted to play a high polygon game or a high bitrate video, or multi-task . . .

Not sure how CPU-bound mobile games are since I don't play many, but it may make a difference for some. I don't know if it's a big deal since the majority of the best selling mobile games tend not to be graphically intensive to begin with.

Video playback should be handled by dedicated hardware on the SoC and shouldn't even touch the CPU cores. Most SoCs have a decent variety in terms of codec support so unless it's something non-standard it shouldn't be an issue.

Also, AFAIK multitasking doesn't exist in WP7 phones, so the additional core wouldn't really be all that valuable.

They do actually have a bit of a point. WP7 right now may not have much use for an extra core and for an OS that doesn't allow multi-tasking, having a faster, single core would provide more benefit than more cores. Honestly, anything beyond 2 is fairly pointless for 99% of users.

 

[Eug]

Single-core smartphone solutions released up to now are too slow IMO. General OS usage really suffers.

As for > 2 cores, I could see the big.LITTLE config being beneficial. 2 ultra low power cores, and 2 high performance cores. You get the benefit of super quick speed when needed, but very low power usage when you don't need the speed.

 

[Bateluer]

Not sure how CPU-bound mobile games are since I don't play many, but it may make a difference for some. I don't know if it's a big deal since the majority of the best selling mobile games tend not to be graphically intensive to begin with.

Video playback should be handled by dedicated hardware on the SoC and shouldn't even touch the CPU cores. Most SoCs have a decent variety in terms of codec support so unless it's something non-standard it shouldn't be an issue.

The Adreno 205 isn't a powerful or even mediocre GPU by today's standards. It makes a difference, codec support isn't enough. Reference, Tegra 2.

Also, AFAIK multitasking doesn't exist in WP7 phones, so the additional core wouldn't really be all that valuable.

They do actually have a bit of a point. WP7 right now may not have much use for an extra core and for an OS that doesn't allow multi-tasking, having a faster, single core would provide more benefit than more cores. Honestly, anything beyond 2 is fairly pointless for 99% of users.

Interesting point. They lack an important feature, so in their eyes, they don't need multi cores. But thats very different than multi cores hurting the customer.

On quad cores, software support is limited now because there's only 1 device with a quad core CPU out there, the Prime. And its only sold ~90K units so far. As the Tegra 3 powered HTC Ones hit the market in more mass, and Samsung's quad Exynos chips, we'll begin seeing much more in the way of support.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Video playback should be handled by dedicated hardware on the SoC and shouldn't even touch the CPU cores. Most SoCs have a decent variety in terms of codec support so unless it's something non-standard it shouldn't be an issue.

Snapdragon S2 is woefully inadequate when it comes to video hardware acceleration which combined with the weak cpu puts most 720p content and all 1080p content beyond the devices abilities. If Microsoft had been smart they could have used Hummingbird if they only wanted singles cores and that way they could have been fairly competitive with the lower end dual cores on gpu performance and media playback.

 

[PhoKingGuy]

I played with my friends Lumia today, TBH. It blows gingerbread out of the water.

I'd pick one up as a stopgap till the IP5, but it would only do Edge on Tmobile.

 

[badb0y]

WP7 is very fluid and smooth, it does well even on single core processors. I can't wait to see what they bring out next update(WP8?).

 

[Blueychan]

WP7 > Android

 

[dagamer34]

Honestly, we all know that dual core support is coming in WP8 and Nokia will be tauting performance when that happens.

 

[Daemas]

Single-core smartphone solutions released up to now are too slow IMO. General OS usage really suffers.

In android? Yes
in iOS? Yes
in WP7? holy mother of god you couldn't be more wrong

 

[tfinch2]

I love Android and everything, but I got my wife an HD7 for Straight Talk, and it is pretty awesome. The UI is very fluid and I think Metro looks great. I am very impressed with the overall user experience.

 

[QueBert]

I played with my friends Lumia today, TBH. It blows gingerbread out of the water.

I'd pick one up as a stopgap till the IP5, but it would only do Edge on Tmobile.

QFT I played with 1 today and was super impressed with it. I'm sad that the app I use the most on Android doesn't have a WP7 version, and the developers have said they have zero plans of ever making one 🙁 If it wasn't for that I'd be on a Lumia 900 in a heat beat. It blows GB, and imho even ICS away.

 

[pandemonium]

I personally agree with Elop when it comes to multi-core processing being a gimmick. If Nokia phones can do it without duals and quads and blasting their frequencies to the heavens, then why can't everyone else? Oh, that's right: because their software is "sub-par".

Nokia's have long been known for maximizing the potential of the hardware, not putting in too much because the OS and apps can't be contained. Less is more, and all that.

 

[Bateluer]

In android? Yes
in iOS? Yes
in WP7? holy mother of god you couldn't be more wrong

With minimal animations, images, no widgets, no live things, etc, combined with a highly optimized hardware/software platform, do you wonder? There's more to a phone than just a fluid user interface, if thats all user's wanted, people would only buy WP7 devices or iOS devices. WP7's hardware is heavily lacking.

The $99 Lumina 900s are a step in the right direction, but they need to get the price down even further to move volume.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Considering multiple dual core phones completely dominate the Lumia 900 when it comes to battery life that is a pretty stupid statement.

If I'm not mistaken the Galaxy Note outsold Nokia's entire WP7 lineup by more than 2:1 which is absolutely hilarious.

But you're comparing battery life of an Android dual core phone versus a single core Lumia 900.

Perhaps one way to check battery life would be to take an SGS2 and disable 1 core and compare it.

Or better yet hack WP7 and support dual cores and then test battery life.

You'll get different results with the SGS2 and a dual core WP7 phone simply because of the way the OS manages tasks and memory. In Android I wouldn't be surprised if the dual core had better battery life, although I still think a fast single core should be able to take the win in battery life. Maybe if you used the phone more rigorously, the dual core would win as it will start speeding up multitasking dramatically.

The Adreno 205 isn't a powerful or even mediocre GPU by today's standards. It makes a difference, codec support isn't enough. Reference, Tegra 2.

True, but honestly on my SGS2 how many 3D games do I play? Angry Birds and Draw Something certainly don't task my GPU. If you're all into the shooters, I suppose this is good, but I'm not asking for 16xAA and jaw dropping graphics on my 4.3" phone anyway, so I'm pretty sure most 3D games even if they're designed for lower end GPUs, will entertain me just as much. Heck iOS games on my iPod Touch are usually more fun, and when I'm playing on a smartphone, I'd pick gameplay over graphics. With that said I don't want some MS DOS graphics, but I think you can create some pretty decent games that run on the Adreno 205.

Smartphone gaming is a lot like Facebook games and casual Flash games. This is like the Wii also. You don't need impressive hardware to have a huge audience. What about PS3 and XBox? They lag far behind PC games now, and I'm pretty sure "graphics" isn't the main reason why people are gaming on PC over game consoles. For shooters its likely the fact that a keyboard and mouse is 10x better to use and that a PC gamer can install the game twice before a console gamer does a 180 (lol jk). Even if you flipped hardware capabilities around where the console had the better graphics, I don't think that's likely to have much of an effect on whether people pick console or PC.

I see this argument used over and over again when comparing phones. Oh no the SGX540 on the GNex is shit. Ok, so does it really matter? Is it going to drive people to the SGS2 that much more? Graphics are a selling point, but given that games on the Market are designed for a broad range of phones, it's not going to be a huge issue to have some non top-of-the-line GPU. And this is where fragmentation is an issue. For example when the iPad 2 came out, developers easily made a version of the game that could take advantage of iPad 2 graphics. If you had an iPhone 4 or iPad 1 or other hardware, you got shittier graphics. How many games did developers suddenly upgrade when the SGS2 hit the shelves? And again when Tegra 3 came out?

 

[IntelUser2000]

Strictly talking about battery life, Nokia might be right.

In an ideal world, 2 cores offer 2x the performance of 1 core. You could also do frequency/voltage scaling and offer better battery life, at similar performance.

That's not always the case.

1. Voltage scaling with more advanced processes have slowed down significantly. While what marketing says in respect to frequency/voltage scaling and multi cores are somewhat true, reality isn't so simple. Remember when we used to have processors using 2V? Every new process generation used to offer significant voltage reductions. That has stopped for the most part.

2. Double the amount of cores mean even at idle, there will be transistors that's leaking current. Multi core uncore subsystems are also more complicated than single core versions.

3. Even multi-threaded applications fail to get 100% performance gain by doubling cores. Inefficient coding, shoddy multi-core architecture, Amdahl's Law, all add to that.

It's really all about what marketing wants us to believe. For ideal power efficiency you can't go all out clock speed, or get dozens of cores. It must be balanced out depending on the situation.

It's the same with having mini-cores AKA Tegra 3 or big.LITTLE. Qualcomm says its not needed, so not all ARM vendors believe the idea either.

 

[WelshBloke]

Ideally with multiple cores you wouldn't need the fastest, most power hungry cores though. You could use a few with lower power draw. With single core you need to use the fastest core you can to increase performance and the fastest clocked cores are not normally the most efficient.

 

[OS]

i think at the present the statement is more true than not.

Plus if multi cpu is not being utilized, then money is being wasted and you can kind of see it in the low prices of the lumia 900.

 

[IntelUser2000]

WelshBloke: I think what you said is true with dual core, above and beyond that might not be the case.

The mobile market is basically going through what the PC market went through 7-8 years ago. Dual cores gave big benefits, Quad cores took far longer, and we're not sure if we should go beyond that.

Dual core gains were big enough that basically not even the next generation single core could be justified. Quad cores, there's clearly big tradeoffs and next generation dual cores often can beat last generation quad cores.

 

[joshhedge]

After using a Lumia 800 and comparing that to my dual core powerhouse Android super phone it is so much smoother at scrolling and the WP7 OS is a lot slicker than ICS in my opinion.

The only downside to MS's restrictions are single core multitasking alongside rubbish screen resolutions. I don't understand how dual core phones can hurt customers though... Seems like Nokia is sticking to its feature phone ways.

 

[joshhedge]

Ideally with multiple cores you wouldn't need the fastest, most power hungry cores though. You could use a few with lower power draw. With single core you need to use the fastest core you can to increase performance and the fastest clocked cores are not normally the most efficient.

Isn't that what Tegra 3 is doing with it's 5th companion core? The battery life on the HTC One X which uses it doesn't seem to be great when compared to the A15 Krait cores in the One S.

Snapdragon S2 is woefully inadequate when it comes to video hardware acceleration which combined with the weak cpu puts most 720p content and all 1080p content beyond the devices abilities. If Microsoft had been smart they could have used Hummingbird if they only wanted singles cores and that way they could have been fairly competitive with the lower end dual cores on gpu performance and media playback.

You are aware that each Snapdragon core is faster and can overclock better than each Hummingbird core right? Hense why early on, before dual core phones because populated S2 was winning the benchmark wars right?

The Adreno 205 can easily play 720p content, I was watching some earlier on my friends HTC Sensation XL. Furthermore when paired with two Snapdragon cores I'm sure it'd be able to play 1080p content. Where are you getting these facts from?

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I personally agree with Elop when it comes to multi-core processing being a gimmick. If Nokia phones can do it without duals and quads and blasting their frequencies to the heavens, then why can't everyone else? Oh, that's right: because their software is "sub-par".

Nokia's have long been known for maximizing the potential of the hardware, not putting in too much because the OS and apps can't be contained. Less is more, and all that.

They real question is if we can have them then what good reason is there to do without it. Nokia may be content with mediocrity but Samsung and Apple are not, they both had no problem fitting dual core processors and powerful gpus into a smartphone and getting as good or better battery life than Nokias single core phones while doing it.

On Android and iOS there are plenty of apps and games that can take advantage of powerful hardware. Since WP7 dosn't have any of them I guess running a stripped down launcher smoothly is all the hardware really needs to be capable of.