News - Dual core smartphones waste your battery says Intel

[aidanjt]

which I'm taking to mean that Mr Bell is claiming that it's mainly the core OS that's deficient (I'm assuming that thread scheduling is an OS task...

That's still vague to me, because the Linux kernel already has abstractions for multicore, SMP, and SMT thread scheduling and affinity. If it didn't, Linux wouldn't scale as it does on x86 and SPARC mainframes and supercomputers.

A thought that just occurred - if they're "fixing" the scheduler and threading then presumably they're doing this by rewriting/optimising parts of the Android OS. In which case, given that Android is open source, what's the chances that these improvements will be offered back to the main code base?

Gentoo's kernel developer, Greg Kroah-Hartman (GregKH), is one of the principle devs who's working to keep generally useful Android developments merged with the mainline Linux kernel.

[TheAnimus]

The thing is it has to be acknowledged we've seen an 'ARMs race' if you will of phone manafacturers putting more and more CPU in a phone.

Great if its going to be a dockable thingie.

Not so good otherwise. My friends Nexus Prime isn't noticably faster browsing the web on than my old Samsung Omnia7 (and 800mhz single core), granted the prime screen is a lot nicer and will take more rendering power, but really not *that* much.

The fact that the prime takes longer to say copy something out of a text message, and paste it in to a new message or an email, or find the place mentioned and get directions. That is a good example of maybe CPU isn't everything.

[mark22]

Great if its going to be a dockable thingie.

Isn't that a part of Jelly Bean or was that rumour? It would be great to see something like this come along, then we'd all probably need more ram though.

[3dcandy]

I thought the biggest bottleneck in Android was/is Dalvik and how it's coded...could be wrong though. I get almost zero lag with my SGS3 unless I turn on power save mode, when of course it's quite a lot slower...

[TheAnimus]

I thought the biggest bottleneck in Android was/is Dalvik and how it's coded...could be wrong though. I get almost zero lag with my SGS3 unless I turn on power save mode, when of course it's quite a lot slower...

But isn't that an issue? I remember running Windows 2000 happily at a 32bit colour depth 1280*1024 resolution, with 128+64mb of RAM on a 400mhz AMD. Now the main shell part never felt 'laggy', most of the lag was due to the spindle, and these phones are flash.

Somewhere we've excepted VERY bad programming on the phone.

Currently I'm using my old Omnia7 (WP7 launch device) as my local sim travel phone, its giving me 4/5 days of battery life for just calls and texts. Nothing really feels faster on the Lumia I'm also carrying with my UK SIM, but its got more storage space and the excellent nokia drive (offline maps work rather well in Vietnam, Thialand, Morocco which is kinda suprising!) so its the one I use as the 'smartphone'.

I honestly don't need any more CPU power, I'd hazard a guess the Omnia is spending most of its time at less than half clock anyway.

[crossy]

That's still vague to me, because the Linux kernel already has abstractions for multicore, SMP, and SMT thread scheduling and affinity. If it didn't, Linux wouldn't scale as it does on x86 and SPARC mainframes and supercomputers. Gentoo's kernel developer, Greg Kroah-Hartman (GregKH), is one of the principle devs who's working to keep generally useful Android developments merged with the mainline Linux kernel.

I'll try and explain myself a little better - what I thought Intel were getting at were that they were talking about some really low level tweaking. As you say, since Android is based on Linux, and Linux supports pretty much everything from an RPi up to an IBM zSeries, that there's maybe some scope for tuning in the thread allocator (and thread library generally)

However, now it kind of looks like I'd misunderstood (to a degree) and the Intel play was that they're going to hard-tune the OS for their processors - the implication being that it'll run better on their kit than the competing ARM designs. So of course we need to ditch our HTC One X's Galaxy SIII's and run out and get that "better" device with the "Intel Inside" sticker.

Oh, and when I said about Intels tweaks making it back into the "main code base", I was meaning Androids code base, not the (grand-)parent Linux one necessarily.

I thought the biggest bottleneck in Android was/is Dalvik and how it's coded...could be wrong though. I get almost zero lag with my SGS3 unless I turn on power save mode, when of course it's quite a lot slower...

Are you talking about in-use lag or screen wake up one? The latter is really noticable (painfully so at times), but the info I've got is that this is down to the "deep sleep" that it's implementing. In use though it's okay - probably comparable to a old single core 800MHz budget phone at worst.

On the upside, switching power-save off makes it really, really zippy...

PS, I was just looking back over some old posts and it appears what Intel's saying isn't new. Sony were also saying that a single core was a "better" design. But in their case they seemed to be claiming that a single fast core gave a superior "experience" to a dual core (but slower) equivalent.

[3dcandy]

I do believe that Android struggles a bit because it still supports so many configs, whilst a WP phone is almost set in stone along with iOS. However, the freedom to change is what helps drive the innovation in Android...
I don't believe that Intel are going to steamroller everybody this time round because ARM has such a headstart in every way, but I could be proved wrong
My SGS3 is pretty much perfect in my eyes so far and I like it much better than the alternatives

[aidanjt]

I'll try and explain myself a little better - what I thought Intel were getting at were that they were talking about some really low level tweaking. As you say, since Android is based on Linux, and Linux supports pretty much everything from an RPi up to an IBM zSeries, that there's maybe some scope for tuning in the thread allocator (and thread library generally)

However, now it kind of looks like I'd misunderstood (to a degree) and the Intel play was that they're going to hard-tune the OS for their processors - the implication being that it'll run better on their kit than the competing ARM designs. So of course we need to ditch our HTC One X's Galaxy SIII's and run out and get that "better" device with the "Intel Inside" sticker.

Oh, and when I said about Intels tweaks making it back into the "main code base", I was meaning Androids code base, not the (grand-)parent Linux one necessarily.

That hasn't improved upon the utter vagueness of Intel's assertions at all.

[pp05]

They are correct that single core will give better performance if software written is specifically for that specification.

The only problem with this is it would delay smartphone entry to the market as they would take longer to design and produce much like the old days. The old SE P900 took 18 months before consumers got it in their hand.

[crossy]

That hasn't improved upon the utter vagueness of Intel's assertions at all.

Hey, don't shoot the messenger. I don't work in Intel's PR department who, I suspect, had a lot more to do with this "announcement" than any technical reason.

I'll be more interested in Intel when they manage to get more than one device out there in the UK market. After all, if the Intel architecture is as superior as they seem to claim, then surely Asus, HTC, Samsung, etc would be running to adopt it rather than, for example, Snapdragon. The fact that this isn't happening does kind of cast a cloud on what's being said by Intel.

Another thought occurs to me (after some careful consideration). Given the number of folks (mainly lurking on xda-devs) looking in detail at the Android OS, I find it inconceivable that there are anything but minor tweaks possible. Remembering that, unlike iOS and WP7, the source code for Android is (readily?) available.

At the end of the day, we are the final jury - would anyone here buy a dual-core if it was head-to-head (same price, etc) with quad-core? Probably not.

The only problem with this is it would delay smartphone entry to the market as they would take longer to design and produce much like the old days. The old SE P900 took 18 months before consumers got it in their hand.

Spooky coincidence, this morning I came across my old SE P800i - which surprised me by claiming to be 2003 vintage. Put it down next to my (fairly new) Galaxy SIII and it's interesting to see how far things have moved in 10 years.