Qualcomm tries to distract from Snapdragon fail with Android

At this point we're pretty close to calling Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform vaporware -- sure, we've seen a lot of clunky prototypes, but the company's been promising a commercial launch forever, going so far as to say that it had lined up 30 reference designs by the likes of HTC, LG, Samsung, and ASUS. Sure, ok -- but all it's got at CES are the same old gigantor testing devices and lonely Linux convertible. Oh, but now there's Android. Very impressive, guys -- too bad Android was also running on the actually-interesting GiiNii Movit Mini parked next door. At least the whole thing wasn't faked liked last year, we suppose. Shots in the gallery, of course.

Gallery: Qualcomm Snapdragon prototypes

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[Level 5 @ Jan 8th 2009 7:46AM]

All it needs is a flux capacitor!

[sndmn23 @ Jan 8th 2009 10:37AM]

Yeah, it takes 1.21 gigawatts to power this thing, too.

[Baozer @ Jan 8th 2009 8:10AM]

Engadget is mean, but then again those are pretty bulky.

[sndmn23 @ Jan 8th 2009 10:30AM]

The writer's name is "Nilay". You'd be a tad surly too if you had to go through middle school with that burden. :)

[OK @ Jan 8th 2009 7:58AM]

The word is failure, not fail. Fail is a verb, not a noun.

Try to keep some professionalism to this site please. I understand there are a lot of new bloggers, and that spelling and grammatical mistakes will be made sometimes, but intentional misuse of words to sound cool makes you look like a teenager in high school, not a journalist.

[L @ Jan 8th 2009 8:01AM]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure#Internet_meme

One learns something new every day...

[Agent .25i @ Jan 8th 2009 9:28AM]

lol u phail.
Get a grip, what do you think ur reading here? The Times? Scientific Journal? National Geographic? CNN? This is a blog. Moron. It uses the language of which it was made upon.

[stecarey @ Jan 8th 2009 9:54AM]

Idiot ..

Fail for this post

[JSWinston @ Jan 8th 2009 10:36AM]

Obviously OK you are an English teacher or something and extremely smart, which is why I am confused. You wrote that the word is failure and not fail as if you knew what the writer meant. Couldn't it also be true that the writer forgot a comma?

Seriously, correcting other people's grammar just makes you look like a tool.

[Aaron @ Jan 8th 2009 8:41AM]

Qualcomm is a horrible company, and they're just lucky they have such a grip on the handheld processor market, otherwise they'd be done by now. They charge ridiculous licensing fees to any sort of driver support, among other crimes. It's why HTC's devices have had (of late) very poor video performance. For whatever reason, HTC continues to do business with Qualcomm, and they suffer because of it.

[Ray @ Jan 8th 2009 1:27PM]

Agreed. Qualcomm is a very... trashy company. But HTC continues to sleep with them even when knowing how bad it really is.

I'm done with both, and i'll advise my fellow engadget commenters (and lurkers) the same as my friends IRL. DONT BY A HTC DEVICE UNTILL QUALCOMM IS NO LONGER IN THEM!

Looks like samsung got things rights and even sony erricson knows that these two = bad combo. Theyve went as far as to not even consider them for the making of the X2... which is good for the consumer.

[Jash Sayani @ Jan 8th 2009 9:50AM]

Wow!! That's pretty mobile!

[roomtek @ Jan 8th 2009 11:42AM]

that's a prototype you dum!

[myyellowshoe @ Jan 8th 2009 10:15AM]

Easily fits in your pocket!

[pheer6224 @ Jan 8th 2009 11:50AM]

Beats winmo.

[JSWinston @ Jan 8th 2009 3:08PM]

I am just curious about all these people bashing Qualcom, you do realize that they are the number 1 mobile chip manufacturer by a lot. TI is number 2 but falling quickly (especially once they sell their low end baseband business) and ST-NXP is number 3 but still completing mergers (with EMP soon).

Don't buy Qualcom based phones? Okay, so I guess you had better watch it when you buy those Samsung phones that use Qualcom? Or in the future watch out for those Nokia phones that will use Qualcom (with the lawsuit settled this is coming).

I almost forgot, and this is a great one for all the Qualcom bashers here. Guess you can't buy the next generation iPHONE. Yep, Infineon is out and you have got a decision...are you more of a Qualcom hater or a Apple fanboy?

[NuShrike @ Jan 9th 2009 5:48AM]

Pretty big turn-around for a company that faked last year's demo and then claimed all over that Snapdragon would be the biggest thing at 2009 CES.

The biggest thing so far has been the Palm Pre running TI Omap3! Next-gen iPhone will be in-house CPU/baseband, not anything close to a Q. QTCFail!

It's fairly easy to buy a non-Qualcomm phone. Look at the Omnia, or the new Asus P565 which has been crushing every benchmark thrown at it, although the device is kinda ugly.

Who really cares about Cortex in a mobile device? It's not like it we've been short on the CPU side lately. Mr? Got a video driver?

[JSWinston @ Jan 12th 2009 4:10PM]

@ NuShrike

You wrote that no one should care about Cortex in a mobile device, but earlier you wrote that the biggest thing was a Palm Pre running OMAP3. Uh, OMAP3 is an ARM Cortex A8 device.
And you should care. Beyond more power, Cortex is a lot more efficient for power savings.

As for an in-house CPU/baseband from Apple, how much you want to bet? Apple is making a baseband, the investment is way to large for the number of phones they do a year. To even begin it they would need some baseband IP. Nope. Apple may have an application processor, but not a baseband. They are using Qualcom (and dropping Infineon).

[NuShrike @ Jan 14th 2009 8:46PM]

@JSWinston: I don't see a contradiction. The point I'm making is that Palm is NOT going with a Qualcomm SoC, and that's a big win since any ARMv5TE cpu is still very fast (Omnia, Asus P565). The fact that it's a Omap3, sequel to the king SoC that the Nokia N95 uses only doubles the win instead of halves it with any Q SoC.

I don't have an issue with using Qualcomm as a baseband, or just moving over to the EMP baseband since at least that works without obvious speed deficits. We'll see if there's power-draw differences.

[JSWinston @ Jan 14th 2009 10:28PM]

@NuShrike

Has the use of EMP in the Palm Pre been confirmed? That would be extremely interesting, it would be good for the industry to see EMP move beyond Sony Ericsson and LG.

Despite my comments I am not a fan of Qualcom, most because of their arrogance and restrictions they place on the designs (you have to use their PMU, built in AP, and GPS; and they are trying to force their connectivity).

I see your point on CPU power, but I think the power issue is there. Look at the Motorola ZN4, it is actually a really nice phone but the underpowered processor makes the OS run poorly. WIth phones soon adding HD video (with HDMI connections), 3D video, larger cameras, etc the processing power is going to be a problem.

[Charbax @ Jan 9th 2009 12:24AM]

Now this is a pretty useless Qualcomm bashing post by Engadget.

All I want to know is when are the Qualcomm ARM Cortex A8 processors ready to ship in $200 laptops running Android or Ubuntu?

Texas Instruments and Freescale are making those ARM Cortex A8 processors as well. This is the best way to kill off Intel and Microsoft.

ARM Cortex A8 can run a laptop for 15 hours, in a lighter, more compact form factor and at a lower cost. This should be what Engadget should be talking about and asking the representatives about at CES. I guess I'll have to look for some info other places.