TI's OMAP 4 bringing 1080p support to smartphones and MIDs
By Darren Murph 
posted Feb 17th 2009 1:59PM
posted Feb 17th 2009 1:59PM
Right around this time last year, Texas Instruments was busy showing off its OMAP 3 platform, which enabled 720p playback from a mobile phone. At this year's MWC, we've got a real live handset recording 720p, and TI upping the ante once more with a chip that handles 1080p. For those still with us after being blasted with resolutions, the predictably titled OMAP 4 aims to bring 1080p support, 20 megapixel imaging and "approximately a week of audio play time" to mobiles and MIDs that house it. Granted, TI also calls this stuff "future-proof," so don't believe it's totally incapable of uttering some pretty outlandish stuff. At the heart of the platform is a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 chip, a programmable multimedia engine based on TI's C64x DSP and a POWERVR SGX540 graphics engine. We're told that it'll play nice with Linux variants such as Android and LiMo, Symbian and Windows Mobile, though it'll have to be mighty impressive to outgun NVIDIA's Tegra. Battle on, we say.[Via Linux Devices]
I guess until now no one else has heard?
OMAPowmow mamama OMAPapamow
mamama
OMAPowmow mamama OMAPapamow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZThquH5t0ow
we still havent seen 720p playback so...whatever.
Yes we have, the Omnia HD supports 720p playback, brother.
ummmmm i dont know how you can say that as its screen is 640 by 360...
Pandora due for delivery in the near future
already should be capable of 720p 800x480 screen
you're all idiots except for iloveapple
the omnia hd has freaking HDMI out, so yes, while it's native screen is not HD, you can output to a TV. hence output in 720p.
and the 720 refers to rows of pixels, so the pandora's 800x480 screen, and any other device w/ a WVGA screen (omnia hd) is NOT high def. moron.
Nvidia Tegra promises 720p playback for as little as $99 for the whole device.
What does OMAP promise? 20mp sensor for $999?
the omap 4 is probably gonna release about the same time as Pandora 2 thus you will probable be able to get it in the $300 range since the Pandora 1 per ordered for that
I don't appreciate being called a moron ... also HD out was considered for the Pandora would've made the price way higher and the battery life lower due to the extra HW needed if you can give up the HD out and settle for s-video/composite and would rather have an extremely hi res screen on device the Pandora is great
BTW im pretty sure nobody could tell the difference between HD 720p and 800x480 on a less than 6 in screen the DPI is ridiculously hi
It's great to see that the feature-rich gadget industry is demanding more and more power from the chipmakers but maybe we could do without the supercomputer power and just give me video playback on a large screen and let me get through more than a movie or two on a plane trip.
That's all well and good, but we need equally as impressive batteries.
Wonder if AMD/ATI will ever get into this fight.
OMAP vs Tegra! Ready! Fight!
Yeah... This sounds pretty awesome, but Tegra still has me waiting to dump my iPhone. It will be nothing short of awesome if nVidia gets viable competition, though.
What's to say Apple haven't been talking to nVidia?
I wouldn't discount the idea of Tegra in a future iteration of the iPhone, but the last I heard about Tegra was that it is designed for WinMo devices. I would love to see it be used with other platforms, like Android or the iPhone. Though, I would like something a bit different for my next phone. I've gotten a lot of good use out of my 1st gen 4gb iPhone, but I'd like something with a hardware keyboard, just for a change of pace really.
@Levi
Tegra is coming for android, possibly this year.
Really? Link? That'd be cool
@Levi:
Nvidia running Android on TEGRA
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2341229,00.asp
++ Dual Core, Cortex A9 vs single core ARM11 on the Tegra? Easy win for the TI
-- products using the Tegra will be on the market years before ones using this
Are you kidding? This blows tegra out of the water. It doesn't even use a cortex a8 core.
720p playback on OmniaHD... How many frames does it drop?
Suspect that OmniaHD is using the OMAP3 processor. So, it will be interesting to see how OmniaHD fares in the field (not within the confined spaces of a show booth) to determine the worth of the OMAPx platform..
The palm pre is using the OMAP3 processor so it probably is very capable.
But you are right. It will show whether the WebOS is really efficient or it's just the OMAP3 doing all the work.
"though it'll have to be mighty impressive to outgun NVIDIA's Tegra"
I'm not really sure why tegra enjoys it's pedestal position before a single product has shipped containing it. The fact is tegra is an ARM11 core. Exactly the same as the ARM11 core found in your blackberry, your nokia N series or your winmo device. The thing that makes it special is the OpenGL ES 2 graphics core nvidia added. If it does what nvidia claims it will be a nice chip but it will still require complicated programming to decode video and be used to process images.
OMAP4 is an ARM Cortex A9 chip which plays in a whole other league. It will have 2 or 4 ARM cores to ARM11's 1, it executes out of order and has a SIMD unit called NEON shared with A8 chips like OMAP3. OMAP4 won't be playing against Tegra. This is a chip that has intel's first atom SoC in it's sights. For general use Tegra doesn't even play against OMAP3 let alone 4. Tegra will have nice media credentials but unless you want a pure PMP OMAP3 is the much better chip on paper.
Perhaps it is very appealing due to its price/performance ratio.
20 megapixel imaging? how long is going to take to develop a lens in a smart phone for that? Hopefully next year, then by the time i get the Idou, it will obsolete already!
If you fall for the marketing BS behind the Idou, you deserve to have your money taken away. Very, very simple optical physics constraints that cannot EVER be 'developed' away limit the effective resolution of any CCD chip in a modern phone to 3 Mpxl, and that is pushing it.
See my response to the second comment in this Engadget article for the details. http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/15/sony-ericsson-gets-official-with-idou-12-megapixel-mobile/
And yes, I know exactly what I'm talking about.
it's all true about the balance of sensor and optics.
with optical mice, the sensor is one aspect, the other is very good optics that the light has to pass through/refract. same with cameras, having a sensor/film is one thing, but if the light thats hitting it is buggered to fuck going through plastic lenses then it's worth shit.
you need some decent optics to make good use of the available sensor medium. this is why some Sony and Nokias with Carl Zeis optics provide VASTLY better results compared to other phones with higher mega pixels, but crap lenses.
as with anything, it's about balance, there's no point in investing a better sensor without investing in an equally supportive lens.
Although I'm a huge fan of the Tegra, I'm absolutely sure that this will utterly annihilate it.
However, it'll probably take a year or two before we actually will see devices with this in it...
By then the Tegra will have been upgraded too to give greater performance, we'll see. Good competition between super chips like Nvidia Tegra, Omap, Qualcomm Snapdragon and Ziilabs is just what us consumers need.
Yup....
@Josh
I saw your other post and while you seem to know a descent amount about DSLR cameras you don't seem to know near as much about cell phone cameras as you think. For example you mentioned that fix lenses are only good to about 3MP, which is fine but most good 3MP cameras are auto focus (as well as anything above that). Also the extra pixels have two key uses. First they allow better video recording. Second the extra pixels are used by the algorithms the clean up the pictures. Many of those algorithms require at least a 3MP camera, and work better with a 5MP camera.
You can respond that algorithms and software manipulation aren't taking pure pictures, but that would miss the point. In a good DSLR camera pure pictures are needed, in a cell phone a good looking picture is needed. If you don't know the difference it is the difference between a purist and one that just wants to enjoy a picture.
I could also bring up EDOF cameras which can also product beautiful picture (EDOF= Extended Depth of Field).
To skip all the details, just go an look at a couple of the good 5MP camera phones on the market; for example the Motorola ZN5 or Nokia N82. The Motorola ZN5 actually uses algorthms from Kodak (but not a Kodak sensor).
Saying all that though I do prefer the pictures from my DSLR, I have a 6.3MP Cannon. I would upgrade, but that is enough pixels and I have done some firmware modifications that I couldn't do on the newer cameras. I prefer it because of my 300mm lens and some of the filters. But for every day camera use for most people that just isn't a practical set up where a solid 5MP or 8MP camera phone that produces good images is perfect.
I will agree that 20MP seems excessive, but in an AP that is just overhead on the still camera side that you need for the video camera.
Apparently you have missed my point. My criticism is not against fixed lens cameras in general but rather the design constraints imposed by putting a lens and sensor into an extremely limited thickness device. Autofocus doesn't matter when you are diffraction limited due to an aperture that is basically the size of a glorified pinhole. In fact, this is why so many cameraphones get away with no autofocus whatsoever - because they aperture is so dang small to begin with. Yes, this results in a huge depth of field. This also means your sharpness is in the toilet and any extra pixels you slap back there are imaging nothing but blurry edges. Go read this highly informative article on the effect (and keep in mind that cameraphones are almost all using apertures that would be equal to or in excess of the highest pictured there, f/45): http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-diffraction.shtml
Diffraction means that - simply due to the design constraints of putting a sensor and lens that are so small in something so thin - optical physics limits the effective sharpness of any images to around 3 Mpxl. All pixels beyond this point are WASTED. You have proven my point when you state that a 5 Mpxl cameraphone is nowhere near as good as your Canon DSLR; the reason is because even though you do get 5 million pixels from the phone you get less than that in effective resolution. In contrast, the Canon at 6.3 Mpxl is probably limited by the lens rather than the sensor's spatial resolution assuming you are using it correctly. Nevermind all the other fun things you can do with a real camera, diffraction is here to stay.
You also have no idea what you're talking about as far as 'algorithms' go. Every CCD / CMOS sensor out there uses Bayer interpolation to get full-color information out of each pixel when every one actually only images one color (red, green, or blue). That algorithm is tweaked by each manufacturer, but in effect does the same thing everywhere. You seem to be thinking of some magical computer-function black box that the phone thinks on and then - Presto! - an excellent image appears. No such thing exists. Color can be adjusted greatly, and that's probably what you are thinking of, but the physical limitations on sharpness due to diffraction cannot be algorithm'd away. Software sharpening can be done, but to recover any significant amount lost due to diffraction you will have nasty and very obvious effects around every edge.
And you pay a heavy price in noise performance when you put more pixels back there, which is why it would be much better if the sensors on cameraphones were (at least approximately) matched to the effective resolution delivered by the lens. Which isn't much, in most cases will be 3 Mpxl or less.
@Josh:
I agree with you, but you forgot about the Foveon X3 CMOS sensor that does all 3 colors without Bayer interpolation. Too bad nobody really uses it.
Now just give me a customizable ringtone, and we'll be good.
Does this mean i'll be able to d/l a 720p mkv and be able to take it to a friends house and watch it on this?
If not then it's just a tease.
I love the technology. Can't get enough of it. It's just going to suck when you lose your phone now. Oops.