Acer Liquid's Snapdragon processor to be clocked at just 768MHz?
By Darren Murph 
posted Nov 2nd 2009 11:13AM
posted Nov 2nd 2009 11:13AM
[Via MobileTechWorld, thanks Gully and Jose]
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Small battery would explain it
Agreed. Imagine if you had a 4Ghz processor and a 3 cell battery...
There shouldn't even be a question mark at the end of this article title..
Meh either way you have to love what's happening right now. Between Snapdragon, Tegra and all the other new chipsets coming out the cellphone market is starting to evolve quickly. I'm looking forward to next year when I get to upgrade and may have a choice of a 1.6 Ghz processor on my phone...
THIS IS MADNESS!?!?!!
Whoops meant to reply to INTERNET SUPERHERO
Stop releasing new CPU's when what we need is new longer batteries.
The company to release a new longer lasting can have a cookie.
longer lasting battery*
@KR3: you say that but look at the new range of ULV-based laptops, they're achieving superior battery life by way of new processors, not new batteries.
Thankfully smartphones dodged Moores law years ago. 5 and 6 year-old PDAs and smartphones did 400MHz and that number has crept up very slowly since then.
The iPhone and iPhone 3G have a 620MHz processor that is underclocked to 412MHz.
The iPhone 3GS (and everybody raves about it being speedy) is 833MHz underclocked to 600MHz. That right - Apple's super fast premium iPhone is chugging a long at a 'mere' 600MHz.
C'mon Engadget - 1GHz in a phone at the expense of batterylife is just stupid. As if you guys have a clue about what sort of difference it would make....
If I can run Duke Nukem 3D at a great framerate on my 6 year old Palm Tungten T3 (pushing the same 320 x 480 pixels as the iPhone does today btw) without any graphics hardware (GPU) support, I think 768MHz is just fuckin fine on a phone with some level of onboard GPU capabilities (I assume they have something dedicated there). As for the overhead of a more modern OS, I see a lot of sophisticated 3D games running just fine on thoise pokey 412MHz iPhone 3Gs, and similarly spec'd Win Mob and Android devices.
And lets face it - 3D gaming is probably the most taxing applications for phones. There is the general responives nees of the UI itself - but if THATS a problem @ 768 MHz than there is a much bigger issue at work than the CPU clocking.
Underclocking lowers both the Wattage and temperature.
Yeah, but overclocking increases nerdgasms.
My guess is that they're probably going to take the yield of Snapdragon chips that can't perform reliably at 1 Ghz. and scale them down to 728 Mhz., then sell them off at a discount--so this should make the phones cheaper.
Cheaper Android-powered phones ftw, I'd like to see the masses adopt Android in swathes, and the tech-inclined can still make informed purchases as always, with whatever CPU they so desire.
Maybe it's metric and not imperial Mhz....
Engadget seriously needs to stop converting directly from eurohertz to ushertz, they're NOT equal!
Maybe there's a mail-in rebate to get the other 232 MHz back.
Despite the new hardware this phone is already out of date with Donut. WTF. At least the LED notifications will light up my pocket.
Homer replying to Homer! d'oh..
BOOO!!! Bring the 1 Ghz already...
Really? I don't care how fast it is, just as long as it's responsive. The Droid by many accounts in reviews has achieved a fast, snappy experience with much less than 1 Ghz. Once you get 1Ghz you'll then complain about crappy battery life.
Needed application: Overcloker
This is full of grammatical mistakes.... It has to be fake....
I think people will think you are joking because its not in English.
But the French grammar (that it is written in) is terrible, I think it is fake too.
The grammar is horrible, but it ain't fake, the Acer Rep confirms it in the video. He clearly says "the 768Mhz version of SnapDragon"
Vive le processeurrrrrrrr!
If they messed the spelling, do they mess the hardware too?
The megahertz myth strikes again.
Glad someone else noticed this too...it's like 1GHz is some magic buzz number that everyone has latched onto. With proper design, a drop in clock freq. could result in minor performance losses and significant battery life gains.
what? A 768MHz Snapdragon will ABSOLUTELY be slower than a 1GHz Snapdragon.
What it all comes down to is battery life. How much does the average consumer need? How much do YOU need?
Being in my second year of iPhone 3G ownership, and its battery not being what it used to be (over 1 day of use is unrealistic now, assuming moderate web browsing and video playback), I'm still fine with it, about 99% of the time.
Of course, I have a charging cable at home, in the car, and at the office. My point is, that I'd gladly sacrifice *some* battery life, in favor of having a faster phone, given that it's almost always no inconvenience for me to charge my phone twice a day, and in the few cases where I know I won't be able to charge my phone for over a day, I can make the decision to NOT use the battery-life-intensive features heavily.
Because my lifestyle generally allows for me being in spots where I have no problem charging my phone (the ubiquity of iPod charging cables certainly doesn't hurt), battery life is something I'm willing to sacrifice, in order to have a not laggy experience. That said, my 3G lags a TON, AND the battery life is shitty. bah.
> what? A 768MHz Snapdragon will ABSOLUTELY be slower than a 1GHz Snapdragon.
Even if it is slower, as long as device does perfectly what it is intended for, I do not care how many gigaherzes it has.
> ... in order to have a not laggy experience. That said, my 3G lags a TON, AND the battery life is shitty.
Lagginess is a function of software. As software developer I can tell you that most R&Ds throw MHz and RAM at pretty much every problem - because it is cheaper that way and less risky than thinking about intelligent solution. No matter how many RAMs and MHzs you have now, tomorrow it will be not enough.
P.S. And personally I would gladly sacrifice MHzs for longer battery life.
What, are people forgetting that a faster processor means worse battery life? O_O
EXACTLY! +200
I'm not sure if it makes sense to do it, but perhaps one day they will design smartphones so that the CPU runs at full clock speed, when it's docked/plugged in for charging and a lower clock speed, when it's not (to conserve battery).
If cellphones progressed naturally to Moore's law this problem would've been solved years ago. I blaming the cellphone manufacturing industry for being lazy. As much as I hate to admit it if the iPhone didn't come out we probably wouldn't be at so much of a competitive front right now. Smartphones stayed at the same processing strength for about 3-4 years before just now moving up.
Surely it will be hacked to run at full 1GHz speed.
Of course it will. And don't call me Shirley.
in all honesty I hope that a lot of snobs do pass this up so it becomes a very good value phone, its already at £300, hopefully getting it from abroad at an even better rate from a lesser country.............. shame it cant be a 1400ma battery then it may well be a good trade off.
I will take 20 of each. I will first need a deposit of $500,000 to ensure you are a legit business. Upon completion of our transaction I will return the deposit plus $500,000 in interest for your trouble.
Sincerely,
Prince of Nigeria
Please, enlighten me good shopkeep; what is a bikini jacket? I'm ever so curious.
looks like phonearena was right all along... it's a shame it cannot be dynamic up to 1ghz under a setting or something.
Thankfully smartphones dodged Moores law years ago. 5 and 6 year-old PDAs and smartphones did 400MHz and that number has crept up very slowly since then.
The iPhone and iPhone 3G have a 620MHz processor that is underclocked to 412MHz.
The iPhone 3GS (and everybody raves about it being speedy) is 833MHz underclocked to 600MHz. That right - Apple's super fast premium iPhone is chugging a long at a 'mere' 600MHz.
C'mon Engadget - 1GHz in a phone at the expense of batterylife is just stupid. As if you guys have a clue about what sort of difference it would make....
If I can run Duke Nukem 3D at a great framerate on my 6 year old Palm Tungten T3 (pushing the same 320 x 480 pixels as the iPhone does today btw) without any graphics hardware (GPU) support, I think 768MHz is just fuckin fine on a phone with some level of onboard GPU capabilities (I assume they have something dedicated there). As for the overhead of a more modern OS, I see a lot of sophisticated 3D games running just fine on thoise pokey 412MHz iPhone 3Gs, and similarly spec'd Win Mob and Android devices.
And lets face it - 3D gaming is probably the most taxing applications for phones. There is the general responives nees of the UI itself - but if THATS a problem @ 768 MHz than there is a much bigger issue at work than the CPU clocking.
This bit of info was published on quite a few websites the day the handset was announced. Not sure why engadget is treating it like breaking news.
Anyway, according to some insiders, Android doesn't NEED 1GHz at this point. It runs fine on a Cortex A8, so i'm pretty sure 768MHz would be alright.
In all seriousness, has anyone else noticed that there is a lot of this type of spam on engadget lately? I'd say within the past 3 or so months its started to get pretty bad--prior to that I think I rarely came across it. I see it all the time over on IGN...
pfffft... my watch is faster than that
The real question is: why 1.6?
Because the 2.0 SDK was only JUST released. The only reason DROID got it is because Google has had their hand in it. A 2.0 OTA update would be really simple and inevitable for the Liquid. :)
That's OK, that's PLENTY, PLENTY for a phone
If it's Snapdragon, it's capable of at least 1Ghz or 1.3Ghz (some 1.5Ghz). All you need to do is root your phone, and "overclock" it back to 1Ghz where it belongs. Surely they did it to give it a longer battery life because 768Mhz is more than enough for Android to fly.
Are kidding me? I HAVE NEVER seen Android phone fly. Its always laggy, the scrolling on a page with a lot of pictures is just terrible. I want 1.5ghz at least. Right now Android is the laggiest system, thats why I returned my Hero its as slow as first gen Iphone.
lol, then see your phone melt.
Speed considerations depends on battery life and thermal envelope.
Sighh thats a major disappointment, and to everyone that says " so what?" well the G1 can be overclocked to 528mhz, which isn't that much difference from 700mhz so why upgrade
The G1 and overclocking makes some apps unstable. I've been on 3 G1's and none of them have liked having it OCed. Yes the OS runs, and doesn't crash, but consistently after installing the apps and OCing I can get lags on coming out of standby, apps coming back with a wait error, etc.
No give me a stock 768Mhz and I would be happy.
PS- Also the G1's bus sucks hardcore. Having the OS install an app while you are doing anything causes the system to hang until its finished processing its crap. Seriously I don't know if its Android or the hardware but the G1 has been the worst hardware I've ever owned. And again this is on three G1's. First was the one I got on launch day. replaced that in Spring due to all kinds of problems with dropped calls, bad BT, etc. The second lasted me until last month when the Donut update fried my ROM, then this one that is a hacked ROM. The hardware is simply shit if you are a moderate to hard core multitasker.