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Infant version of Android gets a walkthrough on Google's Sooner development phone
No, that's not a QWERTY feature phone you're looking at -- it's Google's earliest Android development device, the Sooner. While the HTC-sourced phone itself hasn't been a secret, the build of Android on this particular specimen, obtained by Steven Troughton-Smith, is something few eyes outside of Mountain View have seen. As Mr. Smith notes, this isn't the first public build of Android that was detailed in November 2007 (M3), but rather an earlier version from May of that same year. The non-touch UI is almost totally unlike what eventually shipped with the touch-friendly HTC Dream, aside from obviously housing Android's basic framework and apps including G Talk and the like. We won't spoil it for you, though, so hit up the source link below to see Smith's full walkthrough and analysis of the device that once served as the initial development vehicle for Android.
Qualcomm Krait S4 SoC fully benchmarked, diagnosed as 'insane'
We've seen it, touched it and we fully expect it'll be turning heads in Barcelona next week, but until now Qualcomm's Krait chip has largely escaped the rigors of independent benchmarking. Fortunately, AnandTech has to come to our rescue once again with a characteristically thorough analysis at the source link. Those blue and green charts can speak for themselves, but if you're in a rush then here's the rub of it: the Krait truly is a next-gen SoC, with the dual-core 1.5GHz MSM8960-powered reference handset delivering an "insane performance advantage" of between 20 percent and 240 percent on CPU benchmarks. As we glimpsed recently, graphics performance is somewhat less ground-breaking but still very healthy, with the 28nm process allowing the Adreno 225 GPU to run at up to 400MHz, versus 266MHz on its Adreno 220 predecessor. Oh yes, this is going to be one mother of an MWC.
