Intel Alleges Windows Phone 7 Not Optimized for High Performance, Won't Support It
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 5, 2010 12:42 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Intel
- Moorestown
- Windows Phone 7
- Mobile
For those of you who haven't read today's Moorestown Architecture article I'd highly recommend it. This is quite possibly one of the biggest introductions we've seen in the past couple of years. I'd say that by the end of 2011 we could be looking at a dramatically different smartphone landscape.
One gem I snuck into the article was the fact that Intel has no current plans to support Windows Phone 7 or even Windows Phone 8 after it. The allegation is that Microsoft's roadmap isn't aggressive enough on the performance side. Intel needs OSes that can demand much higher performance in order to showcase Moorestown. If a 1.5GHz Moorestown performs no different than a 1GHz Snapdragon, Intel loses one of its major advantages.
This is potentially very telling about the sort of market Microsoft is going after with Windows Phone 7. If it's not the high end smartphone user, then perhaps MS is implementing more of a sweet spot strategy and targeting the informed mainstream consumer? There's also the flipside. Perhaps this is all political and there are other reasons at play for not supporting Windows Phone 7.
Based on what I've seen thus far, not having Moorestown support appears to be a bad thing.
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CSMR - Wednesday, May 5, 2010 - link
What does this mean?SmCaudata - Wednesday, May 5, 2010 - link
With the current generation phones and operating systems I don't see anyone complaining that 1GHz is sluggish. In fact, for most of the stuff an 800MHz processor appears to be as fast as a 1GHz processor. Any OS can scale in the future. In designing Windows Phone 7 MS did something that they have never done, they picked minimum hardware specs that guaranteed would run the OS. As it is nearing the end of development now, they picked the 1GHz Snapdragon as the bottom end. For the end user this means less fragmentation, and peace of mind that all phone software will run on all phone hardware.I was reading another article and I am pretty sure that MS has said they are developing for the Qualcom processor at launch and may expand to other processors later. It seems to me that Intel is upset they weren't included in this development and they simply are attempting to help the sale of whatever OS they do get used in by effectively bashing MS.
MS isn't a perfect company, but I find it funny that when they make decisions that are actually good for the end user it seems to come back and bite them.
glugglug - Wednesday, May 5, 2010 - link
I mean clearly no phone application requires nearly as much power as Flash.damianrobertjones - Wednesday, May 5, 2010 - link
Looks like all of the big boys are no longer playing nice.cracklint - Wednesday, May 5, 2010 - link
then intel can charge what ever they want for their processors. That would clearly benefit everyone.SimKill - Wednesday, May 5, 2010 - link
If AMD goes out of Business then say farewell to competition and low price processors.You remember right when the Core i7 was introduced, it held its outrageous prices for a very
long time (and some models even today) simply because there is no competition at that point.
GatoRat - Wednesday, May 5, 2010 - link
The current crop of cell phones are using amazingly obsolete technology. The technology exists NOW to put the OS-X or Windows 7 kernel on a phone, but Apple/Microsoft won't do it because they are stuck in their crap, backward worlds.toyotabedzrock - Saturday, May 8, 2010 - link
They are hoping that Microsoft will read what they said and that combined with pressure from users and big bloggers that have reminisced over wanting an atom/ WinMobile will convince them to program an x86 version of Windows Phone 7 with the needed hooks to properly use the power gating.hertzsae - Saturday, May 8, 2010 - link
Sounds to me like Intel is trying to shame the OS vendors into making the wrong decision in regards to processors. I currently have an iPhone 3GS. My next phone will likely be some version of droid. I do not need any more power out of my phone. I need longer battery life. Charging every night is no fun. I would expect Moorestown to require charging a twice a day if anyone uses it to it's full potential, unless there is some quantum leap in battery technology that comes about soon, or the phones are huge. Moorestown will be great for all the iPad competitors that come out, but I doubt it'll be a good phone fit. Granted, it would be nice if I'm wrong and this thing uses lower power than I expect.