gdgt

As amazing as the DROID looks, and in my opinion it does look quite good, I am going to wait at least until CES to see what else rolls out. The DROID is just the beginning of what I am perceiving as the true birth of the android platform. The main fix I want to see is in the keyboard. Unfortunately, batteries are not developing at an even pace with the rest of our technology and present one of the biggest hurdles in creating truly fast portable devices with great specs. Due to this apparent lack in battery progression I am not expecting remarkably faster devices to appear for at least a year or two. However, a more functional keyboard is something that could come out with any new phone. Hopefully CES will be chalk full of a number of new android device roll outs, and if it is, I am going to be looking closely at those phones to improve upon the already great leap that the DROID has made for the android platform. Maybe in a couple of years we will see faster processors and dedicated GPU's in our portable devices that will allow us to do most of what we can do on our desktops/laptops (i.e. flash video, gaming) with at least adequate battery lives. That is the day I am really waiting for, but in the mean time, if no great phones come out at CES I will definitely be getting a DROID, especially since that is the same month I am up for a new phone on Verizon.

The issue of someone who has been with Verizon for a long time is that I would bet you anything that this will be the best phone they will offer for a long time. Doesn't matter what comes out at CES... if you want to be with Verizon the Droid is it.

@Warai
oh man, i seriously hope we dont have to wait for CES to see the HTC Dragon. rumors are saying Q4 and i sincerely hope thats accurate.

@deinf
that is a very logical argument about the keyboard. you really dont need to use it. but at this point im mostly favoring the HTC Dragon b/c i suspect it will have a 1GHz processor and a much larger screen and Sense UI (which i know you're not a huge fan of, but i love it... and i hate stock android). i know there are a lot of reasons to not take the rumors at face value, but there are a fairly good number of reasons to be hopeful. for one, we've seen some hardware images... of something.

@icant
about not seeing another good phone in a while... yeah, but a lot of people also predicted the crippling of this phone and it didnt pan out. i trust corporations about as far as i can throw their ceo, but they seem to be doing a lot of things right. from getting android, to not locking the phone down, to not forcing their service apps onto the phone, to pricing it at $199 after carrier subsidy, to making a joint statement w/ google about net neutrality ( news.cnet.com­/8301­-30684­_3­-10380709­-265.... )

eh. i went back on my opinion. after seeing all the reviews that came out earlier in the week, i decided to wait for the HTC dragon. if that one doesnt pan out, i will buy the droid. its not as bad as i originally speculated.

The thing with the keyboard is that it isn't horrible and it isn't great. But no one is saying you have to use it. Its still thin not as big as thin as the iphone but thin and from watching ATOS it looks like it takesd a bit of force to open so you don't have to worry about it just opening. And after doing some other research as it was looks like obi was right the power gpu is part of the omap cpu but the videos showing off the droid make it look fantastic. Not to mention android 2.0 has multitouch. Not pinch to zoom but I could care less about that apple crap. If they want to patened it let em. Double tap is just as good and I am sure android will see something even better with the multitouch api's. This is still the best android out there. Only one running 2.0 ATM and until we get concrete evidence that the passion even has a snapdragon in it its going to the best one statesise for at least a few monthss

Looked at the 4 reviews that are already posted for the droid and they all mention the physical keyboard not being that great. I gotta say, it's not making me want to run out and pre-order a droid. Hopefully they have it in store to play with in order to make my own judgement. May have to wait for the next Android phone to have a decent keyboard phone.

It's the same as a computer - you can have the fastest processor around but if your graphics chip stinks it will run slow.

Having a dedicated top notch graphics chip is killer especially on a phone. This should run incredibly fast.

I'm already decided on ordering it the second I can.

It seems to me that the one critical factor was overlooked that this phone also has a dedicated GPU and not one that is shared with the CPU. Even though it is clocked 50 points below the 3GS and Pre it also has a 430mhz GPU which means all graphics and video is done on that while the main CPU handles only applications and other functions. This actually makes this phone comparable IMO to the snapdragon chipsets because they as far as I know don't have a dedicated GPU.

Hey, Deinfinityx, anyone ever told you that you're F-ing brilliant? I totally forgot about that. Something I heard a million years ago, it seems. However, I also heard a another tech wiz say that you can't simply add CPUs & GPUs to get any kind of a comparable figure, but yeah, it would make sense for this phone to run better than your average 600MHz phone. But really, I know next to nothing about chipsets.

Ok, thanx deinfinityx, I may not write this phone off just yet :)

I know you can't add up the CPU and GPU to get a number but the combo will preform better then anything else out their. And if you look at the speeds, it will get close to the 3GS speeds but slower because it multitasks, then when you add the GPU everything that it handles will be sped up since its running on a dedicated chip instead of the main CPU.

The other thing to look at is its Android. The CPU is surely underclocked but as soon as the phone gets rooted you will be able turn that up to the factory standard which is probably around 700 or 800 I am not sure what it is.

I think a big part of the speed perception with these phones is the UI. WIth most of that work offloaded to the GPU and the CPU handling most of the background app work, I think the speed will seem the same as the 3GS. I noticed a difference in speed switching from running the Hero theme with Open Home back to the the regular home screen. Since the UI is snappier, the phone seems faster, and I just have a myTouch.

Basically the same idea as the iPhone OS. A GPU accelerated UI should go a long way to speeding up Android.


BTW Deinfinityx, where did you read this business about a dedicated GPU? That makes no sense on a SOC designed for a smartphone.

@Obi

use: "ctrl + f", then type in "gpu" its actually kinda easy to miss.

phonedog.com­/cell­-phone­-research­/blog­/le...

www.boygeniusreport.com­/2009­/10­/23­/motor...


&

androidandme.com­/2009­/08­/news­/motorola­-s...

Man you definitely should not let the processor speed get you down. The thing is under clocked it is capable of running at 600mhz and one thing you must remember is depending on what type of processor you have it may determine which is better. For instance the snapdragon windows mobile device the toshiba tg01 performs worse than some devices with 800 mhz or 600mhz processors. Why? The type of processor it is. Look at it like this. A digital camera can have the same mp as another but may be better based on other things. That's how the processors work. And remember this thing has a dedicated graphics chip in it so it will only be dedicated to the software. One other thing to bring up is the keyboard. Any physical keyboard is better than none and if you don't wanna use it the boy genius clarified in his article that their is a software keyboard that works in both portrait and landscape modes. This device is going to smoke the competition and I odon't think anyone should miss out on it.

Hey Steve, I'm aware that the OMAP3430 has an on-die GPU. Deinfinityx mentioned a dedicated chip and seemed to indicate that it was faster overall than the iPhone. The 3GS has a faster version of the SGX (SGX535 vs the OMAP3430's SGX530) and a slightly faster CPU. On the whole, between the CPU and GPU, the iPhone has the faster hardware.

That said, Android seems like it's a lighter OS than OS X mobile, so the Droid should be just as responsive. Since Apple's starting to annoy me I suspect my next phone will be a Cortex powered Android or whatever the successor to the Nokia N900 ends up being. I don't like resistive screens so this version of the N900 is a no go.

I was just commenting on speculation, all mobile cpu's have gpu's built in but the rumors are that it will contain a PowerVR SGX 530 GPU, so i don't know if it is on the CPU or if it truley is seperate.

And after some research if the rumor is correct then it is a seperate GPU chip and not part of the CPU.

Oh great. I guess just don't know my stuff. So it doesn't have a dedicated GPU.... hmmm.... is there anywhere on this site where we can talk about the HTC Dragon?

lol. i'm such a flake.

"And after some research if the rumor is correct then it is a seperate GPU chip and not part of the CPU"

Do you have a link? This makes no sense. The OMAP3430 is a SOC (system on a chip) that's basically all the components of a motherboard and an integrated GPU on a single chip. Why add a second GPU on a second chip instead of specifying a different SOC design? The whole purpose of the SOC is integration (reduced component costs) and reduced power usage. A dedicated GPU goes against the whole design philosophy.

And Steve, don't discount the Droid yet. Pretty much all smartphone processors have integrated GPUs these days and the OMAP3 series is one of the most powerful available. Only the Nvidia Tegra GPUs are faster, but they're paired with slower CPUs. The Dragon seems like a powerhouse, but I'm more interested in the 4.1" screen on that model.

Yeah, I'm afraid this one is going down to the wire. I'm just going to have to wait to hear where the HTC Dragon is going to land (or any other high end Android Device). Moto Droid just wasn't "love" at first sight and I cant afford to buy phone b/c I'm too impatient to wait for one I'm going to be happy w/ for more than a year.... Man, I've been wanting an Android phone since BEFORE the G1 was announced. Before, it was contracts that got in the way, now its prudence.

If by december there is no word of what network the Dragon is going to, I'll get the Droid.

The links are the ones SteveoSaurusRex posted, the phone dog one has it and the android and me ones has it and when you google the GPU they say it takes you to a site about dedicated phone gpu's.

I checked all of those sites and they only mention the SGX 530 which is an integrated GPU as I mentioned above. It's built into the same die as the Cortex A8 CPU core as one single piece of silicon with a shared memory bus. Do you have a direct link to anything on this dedicated GPU? Telling me to google a GPU that I've already discussed doesn't really help clear up the confusion. People are making and deferring purchasing decisions based in part on specs & these rumours, so misinformation helps no-one.

For the record, the Qualcomm MSM7201A in the G1, Hero, & Magic also has an integrated GPU. It's just a weak one (~4M polygons/second). The real innovation of the OMAP isn't the GPU, it's that the GPU is worth the silicon it's made of.

Straight from wiki. The OMAP3430 (Confirmed by BGR in their preview) uses the PowerVR SGX 530, for comparison the iPhone 3GS uses the PowerVR SGX 535

SGX530/1 (14 MPolys/s) for the handheld mobile market
SGX535 / SGX540 (28 MPolys/s) for handheld high end mobiles and portables

I was a little disappointed with the look of the keyboard as well. The keys don't look raised and it doesn't look like there's much separating them. I'd have to physically try to type on it to see how I like it.

I got rid of the iPhone so I could go for a QWERTY keyboard, but if the keyboard's going to feel flat, I might as well be typing on a screen. If they skimped on the keyboard because they were trying to make the phone flatter, like BGR states, I may have to pass on the Droid.

I'm not at all concerned. If you read the BGR review they said after a short time they got used to the keyboard.

What we have is a slim phone which everyone wants, with a slide out keyboard - another thing we want and the fastest android phone out there.

Sure it does look rather ugly but my Blackberry isn't exactly pretty.

I'm not prepared to ditch this phone soley due to its keyboard, but it doesnt help if you have other problems w. the phone. 3 strikes is 3 strikes.

I agree ...this phone is the same size as the iPhone and yet they've figured a way to get a full QWERTY slide out keyboard in there.

That of course had to come at the compromise of making the keys flat. I personally feel you shouldn't judge a keyboard till you've used it. I don't really care how the keyboard looks...I just want to know does it work.

I wouldn't worry about the processor speed. The Droid uses an ARM Cortex A8 based processor which is roughly 1.5-2x as fast as the ARM11 cores of previous Android handsets. So a 550MHz OMAP3430 is roughly equivalent to a G1 running @ 775MHz+, only with the lower power draw of the lower clock speed. You can't directly compare the clockspeeds of the two processors without considering their IPC (instructions per clock) performance. In short, the Droid should be plenty fast.

How the OMAP3 should compare to the Qualcomm Snapdragon @ 1GHz is anyone's guess. My suspicion is that the Snapdragon would be faster, but at the expense of battery life. Given that the Droid apparently gets quite good battery life and is fast, I think it may be a decent trade off. We'll have to wait to see them side by side to know for sure, but you won't be making a mistake in getting a phone with either Cortex A8 design.

If you're interested in learning more about the differences between the processor families check out the Anandtech 3GS overview article here: www.anandtech.com­/gadgets­/showdoc.aspx­?i...

That article is somewhat technical, but it's a pretty easy read if you are tech minded and should answer your questions and concerns about the processor in the Droid.

Thanks Obi, I will check it out.

I have to ask though. So you're saying that we can no longer look at a phones's specs and say "wow, that thing is going to fly"? If so, why are reviewers still panting over clock speeds every time a new 1GHz phone is announced.


As for the power-speed compromise, qualcomm, at least, would beg to differ. www.qctconnect.com­/products­/snapdragon.h...

They're swearing up and down that their chip is optimized for low power consumption. Now clearly this is qualcomm talking, but battery capacities have been climbing to meet these challenges.

The only 1GHz phone that I know of (Toshiba's) got poor reviews due to battery life issues. But that phone only had a 1000 mAh battery w/ a massive display. The samsung galaxy lite is rocking a 1500 mAh battery w/ a 800MHz processor, 3.2 inch AMOLED display (low power). If you ask me, Toshiba's phone deserved to suck.


I guess what I'm trying to say is that there need not be a compromise in battery life.

I did a little research and it turns out that the Snapdragon is a beast. Very fast chip, but very high power consumption. Snapdragon can do 2100 DMIPS @ 1GHz, using 500mW of power. That means that anything that pegs the processor (like a game) will kill a 1200mAh battery like the one in the HTC Touch HD2 in a little over 2 hours. Keep in mind that power figure doesn't include power for the 3G transceiver or the screen.

By comparison, the iPhone 3GSs CPU can do about 1200 DMIPS @ 600 MHz using ~350mW.

Seems like the only way to get decent battery life out of one of these is with a bigger battery, maybe even a bigger phone to hold it.

Snapdragon power consumption: www.edn.com­/info­/CA6631784.html­?industry...

Judging from the review at BGR, the phone is the fastest Android ever. I know that previous Android phones have been rather slow, but the reviewer seems genuinely impressed when stacked upon other phones.

In the word of keyboards, well, that's just preference, so there's no way to talk you down from that. There's the Droid Eris coming out from HTC, though, so you may want to stack that up with this one.

As i understand it, the Eris may be far less impressive than the moto Droid, not including Sense UI. Rumors has it that the phone is going straight to store shelves, w/ no announcement event. If so, wouldnt that be a LITTLE BIT like a movie going straight to DVD? In this case, Verizon wants to sell the phone as an alternative, but theyre trying to hype their fugly flagship phone above all others. Other rumors suggest (tho I don't yet understand why) that this phone is Hero version 3. If so, I can see why this phone would not receive yet another 15 minutes of fame.


Straight to Shelves? www.engadget.com­/2009­/10­/23­/verizons­-dro...

Hero on Verizon: www.engadget.com­/2009­/10­/06­/second­-veriz...