Posted on 07/21/2010 12:22:30 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
You have to hand it to Motorola; as little as a year ago their future looked bleak. Android was still in its infancy and lacking polish, mainstream devices running it were few, and there werent public or visible signs of any forthcoming devices which would challenge the dominance of BlackBerry or iOS, especially from Motorola.
A few months later, they launched the Motorola Droid, and a few months after the floodgates opened up - out has poured a steady stream of relatively polished devices running Android 2.x.
Its been breakneck almost, with new flagships every 3 months on average - the latest is Motorolas Droid X on Verizon - henceforth just 'X.'
You also have to hand it to Verizon for getting its act together. Previously, they were infamous for crippling device hardware and OSes - the Touch Pro notoriously lacked an entire row of keys, and half the RAM. Their smartphone lineup also used to consist entirely of BlackBerries and Windows Mobile devices. Thats all changed.
Since the first Motorola Droid, theyve been probably the single most vocal proponent of Android, embracing and billing their lineup of Droids as serious iPhone alternatives. The unique combination of being the largest carrier and the largest 3G footprint (and the perception of having above average coverage) has resulted in massive growth of the Android platform. Thats definitely a turnaround for two giants.
Eight months after launch, the Motorola Droid is now a relatively old piece of kit. Its amazing how fast the market is moving - the fact that an 8 month old handset is now obsolete is a testament to just how breakneck this pace is.
(Excerpt) Read more at anandtech.com ...
Both run at 1 GHz. For the exact GPUs, now you're making me do research. It's kind of fun, a learning experience here. Found it. The Hummingbird has a PowerVR SGX540 vs. the A4 PowerVR SGX535. Don't let the small number difference fool you, since 540 pushes twice the polygons per second. However, the A4 adds a PowerVR VXD375, which is apparently a dedicated hardware video encoder/decoder. This would probably be why iMovie can edit HD video with only a 1 GHz ARM processor.
So, for games the Hummingbird probably easily beats an iPhone. But for video the iPhone probably wins, especially when you take battery life into account.
I have read that there will be a big difference between android 2.1 and 2.2.
Memory and storage use will go up, and initial app start times will go up, but app performance should also go up quite a bit (to varying degrees, depending on the app). Also, apps will have to be modified in order to take full advantage of JIT, so don't expect immediate improvement for everything.
The increased memory and storage requirements are likely why many phones sold up until only a few months ago will not be officially upgraded to 2.2. And people complained about iOS 4 not being supported on the original iPhone that was discontinued two years ago.
Tmobile has announced an upgrade for the original Mytouch 3G to Android 2.2. I think it is the second oldest Android phone on the market. I have one of those, I’m curious if it will help or hurt performance.
I like Tmobile, I wouldn’t change service for a specific phone but yesterday Engadget reported “inside sources” claiming that there is an 80% chance of the iPhone coming to Tmobile this fall. I’m not sure what that means but it would make things interesting.
I don’t have a “burr” up my butt. You asked “really?” and I explained why.
Ping you? I was responding to you in that reply.
But, just in case, here's a courtesy ping:
Ping!
Is that better?
Ah, I think I see now. Your post was directly after mine talking about seeing my wife’s new phone. You did not reply to me, you replied to Ernest.
My bad. I couldn’t figure out what you had against me. I guess you have this now.
Sorry.
No harm no foul, I thought it was sort of funny actually.
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