Intel Demonstrates Moorestown Smartphones and Tablet Running Moblin, Including LG
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 7, 2010 5:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Moorestown is Intel's Atom based SoC that's designed for smartphones. The chip will be out in Q2 2010, with phones and devices available in the second half of 2010. Today Intel showed us three devices based on Moorestown, two phones and one tablet.
All three platforms are running Moblin 2.1 and all were very quick. I'd say faster than anything ARM based I've seen thus far. I asked Intel about how Moorestown will compare to a SoC with dual ARM Cortex A9 processors. Intel was very firm in its response saying that it expects to deliver better performance on both single and multi-threaded code at smartphone power levels than an SoC with two Cortex A9 cores. It'll be a while before we can confirm for ourselves, but it's a bold statement from Intel.
The first device was an OpenPeak tablet:
The Moorestown silicon went into this tablet two weeks ago, so not all applications were functional. Those that worked, seemed to work well. The OS lacks the left/right swipe functionality of an iPhone. You need to use previous/next buttons to navigate the home screen.
The UI looks very clean and the tablet itself was a decent form factor. I wouldn't say that it's perfect, but clearly a step in the right direction. The platform never felt slow in my limited time with it.
Next up we have an LG smartphone based on Moorestown with Moblin 2.1. It's a bit longer, thicker and heavier than an iPhone:
Apps launched quickly and multitasking is obviously supported but I'd say that overall the interface isn't all that clean or intuitive. Ultimately what I'm interested in is Moorestown itself. LG is a start, but hopefully we'll see more devices that implement it better.
Finally we have a smartphone that is actually iPhone sized. It's made by Aava and is a bit thicker, but lighter than an iPhone 3GS:
The UI on this phone is more like the traditional Moblin UI.
This is a huge step forward to see working devices that can make phone calls based on Moorestown. Cortex A9 vs. Moorestown this year? I'm excited.
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vol7ron - Friday, January 8, 2010 - link
Agreed. But I also believe the future of computing (games and applications) may be cloud-driven. Therefore, gpu, cpu, and RAM are no longer needed to purchase. You plug in your HD (if you want to) and you use an internet computer for processing/playing.strikeback03 - Friday, January 8, 2010 - link
I'd say we are a long way away from connection speeds being able to handle that. If gamers are already picky over the latency of wired vs wireless mice, imagine if frame rendering was being done somewhere else.vol7ron - Saturday, January 9, 2010 - link
There are ways around that and a lot of untapped technology out there (lots of theoretical). It'll be a long while before that's possible, but if so, response times might be negligible.There are many reasons why you wouldn't have just an internet computer, though. The most important one being power failures, etc. Though the day will come when you can have 1TB on your keychain and be able to plug into a socket at the mall, or starbucks and do whatever you like. Maybe it could even be done wirelessly (if that technology improves).
The ideas are endless.
vol7ron - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
"Besides"x2 -- ewww. So much for proof reading.quiksilvr - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
But now it seems that there are literally over a dozen alternatives, which is a good thing.These past three years have been "iPhone" this and "iPhone" that. Maybe this will be the year when we will hear "iPhone what?" amongst these really superior competitors.
vol7ron - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - link
I have an iPhone and I have to say, if it wasn't jailbroken, I probably would have turned my phone in after I bought it.I don't use the jailbreak to install apps illegally, instead I use it to gain control of features that Apple should have gotten off their ass to introduce (eg, multi-tasking, text messaging from w/in an app, password protecting certain apps, app organization, custom backgrounds/icons, the ability to turn off background processes, controlling sound on/off from an app). There are so many useful things that just make the iPhone inept.
sprockkets - Friday, January 8, 2010 - link
Still don't understand that Apple is about the "experience", not the features?CloudX - Sunday, January 17, 2010 - link
iphone owners should have full control..... bottom linetaltamir - Friday, January 8, 2010 - link
the experience being the lack of featurespcfxer - Friday, January 8, 2010 - link
...I dunno? I can see why they want to have control over certain aspects of the iPhone but I don't quite think that we have all of the information here.I like it when companies just come out and say what is up. "We f#$$@ up!" or "The idiots at AT&T, Verizon, Rogers, etc. won't let us give users the freedom because their management is afraid of 'security' issues."
I'm thinking a bit of both on this part.