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Review of some upcoming XScale-based MS Smartphone powered cell phones
Faster, faster!
While visiting "MDC 2003 Europe" - Microsoftīs conference for developers - we have visited stand of Intel to play around with new, upcoming, MS Smartphones powered by XScale processors. After this visit we concluded that big progress in MS Smartphone area takes place not only in software but also in hardware. Progress means mainly: VERY BIG SPEED IMPROVEMENT - phones with XScale work much faster than SPV not only thanks to bigger tact frequency - only 120 MHz in SPV and usually 200 MHz in XScale based designs, but also are faster because architecture of XScale processors is superior to ARM processor despite maintaining binary compatibility.
Here is one example of the progress:
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... where you can see that Intel integrates in one chip, this what by now required several chips.
Here comes another example of progress:
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where you can see good old Orange SPV placed on the smartphone reference design from Intel. Thanks to use of PXA262 processor in this design you can see that Intelīs phone is much much thinner than Orange SPV.
To check what processor given smartphone is running you need to go to menu "Program/Settings/About" where you can notice:
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... the line that says:
Processor: ARM XScale
... while in Orange SPV the same line says:
Processor: ARM ARM720
While some people prefer clamshell design (here: Mitac compared to SPV):
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... some other people like however regular design but thinner overall dimensions (here: Intelīs reference design compared to SPV:
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Apart from having faster processors the new XScale based phones all feature also built-in camera what makes phone usage experience, apart from rampant speed of execution of programs, yet more pleasant!
You can notice that phone with XScale PXA250 (Mitac) is thicker than Intelīs reference design (with XSscale PXA262):
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... but generally the Mitac is fast, has built-in camera and makes quite good and solid impression:
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... after taking the battery out of the Mitac it looks like this:
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On the other hand the Intelīs reference design phone, apart from very very thin (flat) dimensions (despite having built-in camera), impressed us with this roller thing:
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... which works very comfortably for scrolling in the menu, moving cursor in all directions and also serving the purpose of "action" key. It works similarly as rollers in mice for personal computers and it is very very comfortable to use!
Conclusion: XScale processors give so much more power to the MS Smartphone, that switching to XScale from ARM is like switching from bicycle to Porsche car.
