http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/ Engadget Comments for TI's OMAP 3 hardware doesn't manage to do Windows Mobile 6.5 any favors http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/
But.... lately I have been getting such a bad image of Texas Instruments.

Maybe it's because I'm taking calculus 2 and I'm forced to cough up 150 zingers for something that looks like it should cost 30$.

Maybe I'm wrong but somebody needs enlighten me.]]>Feb 18th 2009 11:23AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/
But, yeah, $150 for a TI calc gets you, what, a slow 68000, and a crappy keyboard?

$150 for an HP gets you a 75MHz ARM9 and a decent tactile keyboard. Downside is, it doesn't have the TI user interface, so you'll have to figure out how to use the thing yourself. Upside is, it has RPN and an SD slot. :)]]>Feb 18th 2009 11:31AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/Nvidia Tegra looks like something that should cost $500, promises $100 devices instead.
Texas instruments think they are unique same as their products and nobody can take the market away from them so anything, no matter how good or bad it is, should cost $1000.
In one word: Greed. Thats the word that rules business.]]>Feb 18th 2009 11:50AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/RTFA. The devkit costs $1000, it's not likely that a consumer oriented device will.]]>Feb 18th 2009 2:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/Feb 18th 2009 11:27AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/Feb 18th 2009 11:55AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/
Yeah, because android, the pandora, and palm's webOS obviously are so sluggish on TI's crap hardware. It's MS's problem here, not TI's.]]>Feb 18th 2009 12:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/o MS does NOT have a compiler that can target higher than ARMv5 in the final assembly code. This TI OMAP3 is ARMv7, and the upcoming OMAP4 is ARMv8. The MS compiler is quite behind the times, and there's no other "almost-free" alternative.

o the OS builds released only targets ARMv4 making it portable all the way back to the Wizard, and therefore proving it lacks many of the needed code optimizations.

o the C/C++ compiler natively generates only ARMv4 code without some forced ARMv5 DSP intrinsics, and even that is very clunky code to write.

o the OS (including CE6 in WM 7) was NOT written to automatically support a native FPU. It has to be hacked into the OAL layer by the OEM to enable the ARM fpu, fpu exceptions handler, etc, and we know what a great job OEMs do. A lot of sub-decimal math IS used everywhere in the OS since WM derived from an x86 OS that always had a FPU at that point.

o the whole GDI layer is an antiquated design predating modern OpenGL OSs so does not support delegate-based coding (except in slow slow slow .NET) and hardware acceleration (not that it doesn't have some minimal support for HWA), and other UI design enhancements. Even Qt is more advanced than the Windows Mobile framework at this point.

o We've seen TI OMAP2 on the Motorola Q's and they've topped graphics benchmarks, so we know it's not the cpu.

So it's definitely is a lot of work for anybody to smack WM6.5 into something usable for a modern phone cpu, and I rather have the TI experts do it than HTC, or Qualcomm, n00b hacks.]]>Feb 18th 2009 12:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/
Couple of questions... My understanding was that OMAP4 / CortexA9 was still ARMv7 instruction set based, not V8?

Any idea on when MS are going to take WinCE SMP? I believe CE 6 is still uniprocessor, so I can't imagine WM7 will be able to take full advantage of the A9 multicore parts.

But I fully agree - these performance problems are not down to a hardware limitation, it's GDI and optimisations, but I'd suggest mostly GDI, based on my current WM6 experience.]]>Feb 18th 2009 9:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. The ARM process in T.I.'s OMAP3 series, the ARM Cortex-A8, is an excellent chip and much faster than an equivalent ARM11.

The sluggishness of WinMo lies on Microsoft, but it obviously has to do with the kernel, drivers, chip level optimizations, debugging code, etc... ]]>Feb 18th 2009 10:53PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/Feb 18th 2009 11:30AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/
Paul, optimizations are done at the end of development lifecycle, that's why they are called "optimizations".

Unless, of course, the application was designed with ultimate performance in mind, which I believe is not a case with Windows Mobile, since it targets functionality, compatibility and third party support.

I know what I said here is debatable (because it is very general), but at least it is clear why Microsoft left any device-specific optimizations for the end of their development.

]]>Feb 18th 2009 11:34AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/
Windows CE on an x86 platfom doesn't perform any better than that, so I'm guessing it's not the hardware.]]>Feb 18th 2009 11:37AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/Feb 18th 2009 11:38AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/
Capacitive screens do lack in precision however.]]>Feb 18th 2009 11:46AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/
Apple (oh god, now I'm going to get downranked) accepted the lack of accuracy in capacitive / finger touch systems and traded it off against the benefits of better resilience to scratches and a lighter touch, through not having to push sheets of plastic together to make a contact (as happens in the the resistive screens).

Because they made that design choice at the start of the design process, they were able to optimise their controls and APIs for capacitive / finger touch with massive hit areas that extend beyond the visible control and intelligent guesswork, across the entire O/S, by design.

The clever bit on iPhone OS, and why it seems more accurate than traditional systems is, ironically, because it is presumed you will be less accurate hence you will make a mistake and they apply heuristics to guess what you were trying to do and do that instead, across all UI controls.

Hit 1 pixel left of a control on WM, which is still, at its core, optimised for a stylus (because that's what Palm were doing back in the 90s), and it will fail to operate. Hit 20 pixels to the left of a button on an iPhone, if there is no other button nearby, and it will guess you wanted to hit the button nearest it. Through how well and transparently it works, I can't even begin to imagine how complex the maths they use is.

It's been so successful that most people now associate capacitive touch screens with high accuracy because they have a higher success rate of doing what you want to do when you tap the screen on the iPhone than they did on a WM6 resistive screen whereas, in fact, the phone has very little idea exactly where you were trying to hit on the Apple platform.

So, make a WinMo device that has a capacitive touch screen, but without optimising controls and applying heuristics, and you will end up with a worse experience than a resistive one.

It's like 10,000 spoons, when all you need is a life.]]>Feb 18th 2009 9:14PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/Feb 18th 2009 10:54PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/
Based on the excessively negative review above, I thought we'd see them swipe a finger and a few seconds later the device respond. What I saw is completely acceptable for an in-development device.]]>Feb 18th 2009 11:52AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/Feb 18th 2009 11:53AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/Feb 18th 2009 11:55AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/Feb 18th 2009 1:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/Feb 18th 2009 12:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/Feb 18th 2009 12:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/Feb 18th 2009 12:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/
Once MS realizes they need a SMARTPHONE OS instead, they'll build the architecture right from the ground up. I don't know if that's the case with WM7 (aka photon), but I sure hope it's not just an upgrade to 6.5...

Palm's webOS seems to have gotten it right, although I doubt we'd be able to see truly amazing apps with web tools.... like the case with Android, where it's already hard to re-write emulators in Java... but it's possible nonetheless.]]>Feb 18th 2009 12:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/Feb 19th 2009 6:15AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/]]>Feb 18th 2009 1:59PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/tis-omap-3-hardware-doesnt-manage-to-do-windows-mobile-6-5-any/



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