Ok. First off, I understand that most everybody on AC has an S3, a One X/S, or some other brand new device. I may be using what's considered "old" hardware and so my question may have limited appeal and that's fine. Not everybody on AC has the same interests.
My question is this: am I the only one who finds Qualcomm's naming system a little disturbing, or, dare I say, deceptive? This question started out from wanting to know more about the exact hardware that's distributed in all the millions of Android devices out there. For someone who considers themselves a "lay" person, as myself, not active in the industry itself, it's already complicated enough, what with ARM being an intellectual property company and all. So they're licensing their technology to at least 10 different companies, all of whom have multiple generations and iterations. You thought Intel's lineup was confusing?
So that brings me to the issue of Qualcomm. Like I said, I'm on somewhat dated Android hardware. My current phone is the Sprint Optimus S. I wanted to research and compare hardware specs, to know exactly what I was paying for when I upgraded. That's how I learned about Snapdragon.
For people who may not know, Snapdragon is just the name for Qualcomm's SoCs. And that's about where the straightforward stuff ends - as I'm seeing it now. When I was looking at the specs listed on numerous websites for the S, it read "Snapdragon S1 800 mHz processor." Looking at the Evo 4G, I see it's listed as "Snapdragon S1 1000 mHz processor."
Taking those two specs at face value, wouldn't it be reasonable for a layman to assume that if they overclocked the CPU on their Optimus S by 200 +/- mHz on their phone, then they would essentially have the same processing power as the Evo 4G, without paying for an upgrade? Right?
WRONG! Here's where the idea of Qualcomm's naming convention comes into play as being a little "disturbing." Again, like I say, I'm not a journalist in the industry. I am not abreast of all the latest developments, and I may not have ALL the facts. But dang it, for a person who uses websites like Phonearena, Phonedog, and GSMArena, it IS disturbing.
Qualcomm uses this umbrella term "Snapdragon" to describe it's SoCs. But then the actual processing cores are all different. For example, the Snapdragon S1 has a SoC with an Arm11 core, a Cortex A5 core, and a modified Cortex A9. And wouldn't you know, there are two different ARM architectures as well, v6 and v7?
I'm not a computer scientist so I have no idea how different the architectures are in theory. They could be quite the same. I'm just saying, to me, it's very confusing and disturbing to have one SoC name, and use multiple and different processors in the same category. Why Qualcomm does that, I have no idea. But it's pretty lousy, if you ask me.
/rant
Sent from my LS670 using Android Central Forums
My question is this: am I the only one who finds Qualcomm's naming system a little disturbing, or, dare I say, deceptive? This question started out from wanting to know more about the exact hardware that's distributed in all the millions of Android devices out there. For someone who considers themselves a "lay" person, as myself, not active in the industry itself, it's already complicated enough, what with ARM being an intellectual property company and all. So they're licensing their technology to at least 10 different companies, all of whom have multiple generations and iterations. You thought Intel's lineup was confusing?
So that brings me to the issue of Qualcomm. Like I said, I'm on somewhat dated Android hardware. My current phone is the Sprint Optimus S. I wanted to research and compare hardware specs, to know exactly what I was paying for when I upgraded. That's how I learned about Snapdragon.
For people who may not know, Snapdragon is just the name for Qualcomm's SoCs. And that's about where the straightforward stuff ends - as I'm seeing it now. When I was looking at the specs listed on numerous websites for the S, it read "Snapdragon S1 800 mHz processor." Looking at the Evo 4G, I see it's listed as "Snapdragon S1 1000 mHz processor."
Taking those two specs at face value, wouldn't it be reasonable for a layman to assume that if they overclocked the CPU on their Optimus S by 200 +/- mHz on their phone, then they would essentially have the same processing power as the Evo 4G, without paying for an upgrade? Right?
WRONG! Here's where the idea of Qualcomm's naming convention comes into play as being a little "disturbing." Again, like I say, I'm not a journalist in the industry. I am not abreast of all the latest developments, and I may not have ALL the facts. But dang it, for a person who uses websites like Phonearena, Phonedog, and GSMArena, it IS disturbing.
Qualcomm uses this umbrella term "Snapdragon" to describe it's SoCs. But then the actual processing cores are all different. For example, the Snapdragon S1 has a SoC with an Arm11 core, a Cortex A5 core, and a modified Cortex A9. And wouldn't you know, there are two different ARM architectures as well, v6 and v7?
I'm not a computer scientist so I have no idea how different the architectures are in theory. They could be quite the same. I'm just saying, to me, it's very confusing and disturbing to have one SoC name, and use multiple and different processors in the same category. Why Qualcomm does that, I have no idea. But it's pretty lousy, if you ask me.
/rant
Sent from my LS670 using Android Central Forums
Last edited:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram