Believe the hype

Is it not true that the digital watches of today posses more processing power than the computer that sent man into space for the first time? It's all relative.
 
People get so exited about a 320x480 resolution screen.

Toshiba and HP PDA's had 800x600 3 years ago. just not the processors to display the image smoothly.
 
What about batteries & power consumption? - there's no point in having a super-dooper does-it-all phone if its battery goes flat after 30 minutes.
 
It's actually been around for a while now. A few years ago 25MHz was the hype. Now some PDAs are faster than that and true color too. :p In twenty years they would probably be running Celerons and Semprons.
skuzzy said:
Is it not true that the digital watches of today posses more processing power than the computer that sent man into space for the first time? It's all relative.
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Not so sure about that. It took a lot more processsing power than what even todays top watch can deliver to do all the calculations. More processing power per square cm definitely. The hubble telescope has 4 640x480 CCDs, the best technology of the time... until I got my camera. :D
 
Phones of the future? The N95 in my pocket already does all this stuff (ok not 14Mbps :p) and more.. and as ic pointed out it has a hug strain on battery use.
 
To be honest, I'm not all that excited about the current generation of smart phones, so I hope this next generation will solve some of the problems. I'm not that much of a techie, but these are some of the problems I currently experience (I use a Nokia N80 and E61).

1) cross platform incompatibilities and inconsistencies (too many OSes, too many platforms to develop for and support - hopefully Google's Android will help this out a bit).

2) Sluggishness and low processing power (I guess that current smartphones are hovering around the 250 mhz to 400 mhz range processing speed?) this is not actually enough to handle the quick responsiveness needed or the decoding of codecs and algorithms included in killer apps (That's why we still have no Skype on the Symbian OS). RAM is not as much of an issue.

3) Sacrificing actual Cellular Performance for "Features" - the actual performace of the Nokia N80 as a cellphone is not all that great. It loses it's signal frustratingly often and drops calls frequently. When the phone has been sitting on your desk for some time and you pick it up to make a call, the signal bar immediately drops to zero and only comes back after a minute or two as the phone "re-aligns" itself.

4) User Input Interfaces - do we go for a full Qwerty Keyboard ala the Nokia E61 and some of the blackberries (those keys are tiny and quirky) or do we go with the touch screen ala Apple iPhone (Smudgy keyboards and erratic input, spelling mistakes, etc.)... at present there is no really good input interface on any smartphone available.

that's all I can think of now... but it's a catch 22 situation, we need the portability and accessibility, but we put up with the little quirks and irritations to get those benefits. :)
 
It's what usually happens when you try to make something do what it was never designed to do. There's many different designs instead of the one set down by IBM so there's bound to be incompatibility and as much as we hate it manufacturers will exploit this to lock people in just as they did with digital cameras. External devices will also be lacking as nobody sees a market in making devices for smartphones other than the manufacturer and without facing this competition they'll only make one or two crappy ones. The best pc equipment is usually made by third parties. Until they can read our thoughts we'll just have to put up with it.

The processors are also RISC architecture. No matter how much hype they make of these new Cell processors being so many times faster than Pentiums those benchmarks are for custom chosen applications. In real world applications they simply can not handle the demands that require CISC architecture.
 
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as IC pointed out, there is no point if everything is faster and better BUT the battery life does not improve! my n90 is flat in less than two days if i take a few pictures during the day and make a few calls.
 
Battery life doesn't really seem an issue for me. My 6680 lasts at least a week. The interesting thing is that it only takes just over an hour to charge but all my old phones took nearly 4 hours. So even though it has an operating system, color screen, and a much faster processor it is also at least three times as efficient.
 
Prometheus said:
Battery life doesn't really seem an issue for me. My 6680 lasts at least a week. The interesting thing is that it only takes just over an hour to charge but all my old phones took nearly 4 hours. So even though it has an operating system, color screen, and a much faster processor it is also at least three times as efficient.
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I suspect your cellphone is underutilized.

Try having wifi and a few applications running at the same time on a cellphone, and battery lifelessness does become an issue.
 
Prometheus said:
Battery life doesn't really seem an issue for me. My 6680 lasts at least a week. The interesting thing is that it only takes just over an hour to charge but all my old phones took nearly 4 hours. So even though it has an operating system, color screen, and a much faster processor it is also at least three times as efficient.
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Were you testing the stand by time?:D
 
Prometheus said:
The processors are also RISK architecture. No matter how much hype they make of these new Cell processors being so many times faster than Pentiums those benchmarks are for custom chosen applications. In real world applications they simply can not handle the demands that require CISK architecture.
Click to expand...

I run the risk of being a spelling nazi, but just want to point out that it's RISC and CISC
 
ic said:
I suspect your cellphone is underutilized.

Try having wifi and a few applications running at the same time on a cellphone, and battery lifelessness does become an issue.
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Probably but it's the same with all my phones. Likely people are finding more uses for it now giving the impression that battery life is less. Considering they are also getting smaller why not just keep them the same size and extend their life. Using wifi/bluetooth and likely gprs/3G at the same time will severly eat into the battery life.
Saule said:
Were you testing the stand by time?:D
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Actually no. This is with occasional use, what phones were designed for. :p :D Using it all day and for business will severly shorted it but then I can't see that using any older model as much will not do the same.
The_Librarian said:
I run the risk of being a spelling nazi, but just want to point out that it's RISC and CISC
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My bad, wasn't thinking what the acronym stood for. It would just be my luck that a 'librarian' strolls by. :D
 
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