I've also preferred a hardware keyboard, and my understanding was that this was something I'd have to give up for my new smartphone. I'd dismissed rumors of the Samsung Galaxy S Pro, as there was no visual proof and it seemed far-fetched.
But the Samsung Galaxy S Pro has been outed as a reality, and the idea of getting a Galaxy S with a keyboard has been an exciting possibility, however the recent info on the Droid X has been enough to make me ponder my other smartphone options, as it sports a 4.3 inch display and supposedly a 45 nm 1 GHz TI OMAP 3640 SoC (no, not a 3630, Engadget got it wrong, that's the 720 MHz version).
Two game-changers have been dropped on me to make me change my mind, and both hit me with 1 spy shot of the new Galaxy S Pro.
The very first thing I noticed is an LED flash. Awesome! Now no more worries about taking pictures in low light. But what's that above, next to the Sprint logo... 4G?! Sweet! Wait... doesn't Sprint have a tiny 4G network? Yes. But wait... my home city of Rochester is on Sprint's 4G launch list for July?!
... Yeah, I know what my next phone is going to be. This thing is the dream device I've been waiting for since last year. Amazing processor and graphics hardware, 4 inch Super-AMOLED display, 5 MP camera with flash, front-facing camera, slide-out physical keyboard, and 4G connection (with 4G available!)
Knowing my luck, something even more amazing will show up a week before it launches... no, let's not even imagine that!
Source: http://androidcommunity.com/exclusive-first-picture-of-the-galaxy-s-pro-20100614/ and http://androidcommunity.com/exclusive-more-pictures-of-the-galaxy-s-pro-20100614/
Posts
Why you're not waiting for the Droid 2 ?
ReplyDeleteHe got a keyboard plus dual LED flash (beause you know that single flash like on the x10 and Desire)
is unuseful
Plus your article on SoC means that you're know a lot on SOC so you must be aware that TI is comming with a smaller version of the OMAP3 platform ( the 3640 that perfoms 1gig + TI own Image System Processor for the camera )
When the droid X which got a slower version of the OMAP(the 3630) got benchmarked by quadrant it overpasses the Galaxy S ( while being also on android 2.1)
Personally i got the same aims as you and i will wait for droid 2, because i don't know how samsung will manage for further android updates...
I want a Hummingbird SoC and a 4 inch Super-AMOLED, that's why I don't want a Droid 2. Those criteria are actually much more important to me than the camera flash and the hardware keyboard; it's just that the ability to have both of these via a Samsung Galaxy S Pro is just icing on the cake.
ReplyDeleteAs for updates, Samsung has said that they WILL release 2.2, and while that might be something to be taken with a grain of salt (as Behold II owners are aware of) I've also heard that Samsung is releasing most of the necessary files that would be necessary for a group like XDA Developers to craft a custom Android build for the Galaxy S. Hopefully they've learned from their mistakes with the Behold II users.
Additionally, I believe you're incorrect, from what I've heard the Droid X will receive the OMAP 3640 at 1 GHz while the Droid 2 will receive the OMAP 3630 at 720 MHz (assuming it isn't downclocked at all).
And the 36xx series doesn't boast much over the 34xx series aside from the reduced feature size of the chip, resulting in better power efficiency. The 3430 in the current Droid also includes a separate image processor.
From what I've seen (and any engineers with inside knowledge please feel free to step in here) TI primarily uses hard-copy Cortex architecture, adds a DSP for handling repetitive instructions, makes a few minor tweaks, and leaves it at that. I doubt the 3640 will outperform the Snapdragon, as the Hummingbird has recently been shown to do (by a very small margin).
I'll wait until the Cortex A9 OMAP 4000 series hits the market before I lust after a TI SoC.
That all said, I can't help but feel like the screen on the pictured Galaxy S Pro looks smaller than the promised 4 inches.
ReplyDeleteI'm really hoping this isn't just another Samsung device photoshopped with the Galaxy S logo. You would have thought it would have included a "Pro" on the back as well...
(Why don't I get an edit button on my own posts I wonder?)
ReplyDeleteBut I see you were referring to this article: http://androidandme.com/2010/05/news/high-end-android-phones-benchmarked-with-quadrant/
Nowhere does it say that the Shadow is running 2.1...
I would be interested in seeing how they all perform under 2.2 however. As you can see, the Samsung Galaxy S GPU still destroys the competition: http://androidandme.com/2010/06/news/high-end-android-gpu-showdown/
I search through all day ^^ ( i'm happy to find you man it's a pleasure to discuss with you )
ReplyDeleteAccording to the recent NASA basecamp leak and some guys at Howardforums and anandtech the droid is running at 1GHZ ( still with an PowerVR 530 )
And the Shadow is really running 2.1 it was confirmed by the engadget review.
And samsung confirms via an official presentation in asia(via mobile01) that the Galaxy S got the S5PC111 which got the PowerVR SGX 540 graphic engine their also maintain the 90 M triangles per second
http://www.mobile01.com/newsdetail.php?id=9373
The tester also made a neocore benchmark and it goes at 55fps totally awesome !
some beta testers at the howards forums said that the droidX 'only' perfomrs 42fps!
Even if the droidX overpasses Hummingbird chip on quadrant it seems that in pure graphics the S5PC111 chip is still leading
sorry english isn't my native language i'm still leaning it
ReplyDeleteAWE !!!
ReplyDeleteU get an invite to the Verizon Event ? That's so cool man ( could we hope to see some live coverage ? )
However, i got a question for you i was really interested into the memory performance on the SoC
because if samsung claims that the chip performs 90M triangles per second could the Hummingbird chipset handle all that raw power with an LPDDR2 single channel ?
I mean the example of the quadrant benchmark on the droid 2 ( by androidandme ) is clear when you upgrade the bus you upgrade the overall performance...
Something isn't right because Quadrant shows aggregate scores based upon CPU *and* GPU performance together. In order for the Shadow to outperform the Galaxy S when we know it has an inferior GPU, it would need to produce some absolutely insane CPU scores. Since it is still just a Cortex A8 (regardless of whatever tweaks have been made to it) as is the Hummingbird, something else is at play here.
ReplyDeleteThink i found some answer do you know that TI implemented on the OMAP platform a chip named
ReplyDelete"IVA 2+" that chip seems to control the hardware acceleretion ( normally in charge of the ARM core itself )
it could be that "plus" that boost the DROIDS performance ?
(Sorry about throwing my replies out of order, I'm OCD about spelling so when I see a mistake I have to delete and repost!)
ReplyDeleteNo, I didn't get an invite. I know someone who is going though, and trust me, you'll see his coverage :)
You make an excellent question about the memory in the Hummingbird SoC and the answer is I don't know; it's a question I've been wondering myself for some time now. My only guess is that they provided the GPU with a separate cache of high-speed GPU memory to aid in performance to hit those high speeds.
And I also think you are correct regarding the Quadrant benchmark... I'm wondering if perhaps the Droid 2 has higher speed memory than the Galaxy S. It's possible that if Samsung has a high-speed GPU cache, they decided to save power by running the memory at a lower clock speed, thus hampering CPU performance. If the Droid 2 relies instead upon higher quality RAM that is shared between the GPU and the CPU, it may not have as high GPU performance, but the CPU would have more bandwidth to work with
"Think i found some answer do you know that TI implemented on the OMAP platform a chip named
ReplyDelete"IVA 2+" that chip seems to control the hardware acceleretion ( normally in charge of the ARM core itself )
it could be that "plus" that boost the DROIDS performance ?"
No, the IVA stands for Image and Video Accelerator and is primarily used for video encoding / decoding. AFAIK it isn't involved in application GPU processing.