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With new phone releases and rumors every week (especially for Android), it seems like specs on phones are becoming ever-more parallel to that of computers - CPU speed, RAM, HD space.

With this being the case, I'm wondering what might be the beefiest phone coming out (of the slew of android OS phones, the Nexus one still seems to be on top with the 1GHz snapdragon CPU and 512 MB of memory). The android comes it at around a 600 MHz cpu and 256 MB Ram... whereas some other phones (i.e. Sony Xperia X10) are somwhere in the middle (1GHz snapdragon, 384 MB RAM). With Android allowing effective multi-tasking and eating up CPU cycles and RAM... I'm wondering how much RAM is enough (how often does android get close to the max in RAM usage... is Nexus one significantly faster it certain tasks and at an advantage because of the RAM)?

Any other thoughts?

I think I saw the Pre Plus has 512MB of memory, but it's got the original-speed (500MHz?) processor.

Speed on a phone only matters when you're talking about a specific platform. I'm not going to purchase the fastest phone on the market if that phone is a Windows Mobile 6.5 because WM 6.5 will suck no matter how fast the phone is. On the other hand if I'm purchasing an Android based phone I'll probably pick the fastest phone (assuming its other aspects are on par or better as well) for Android.

Great hardware doesn't make up for a terrible platform in the phone world. See HTC's amazing HD2 but its stuck with WM 6.5 and even with Sense UI on top it will still suck.

And usually the fastest CPU in the chip family may mean slightly lower batter life. Of course that also depends on other components and the software. You have to look at it as a whole package.

We compare computers using their parts because almost all of them are running Windows. Most phones aren't running the same OS, so it's difficult to do.

TurtlePerson2 wrote:

We compare computers using their parts because almost all of them are running Windows. Most phones aren't running the same OS, so it's difficult to do.

Even if you are comparing "the same OS" on different hardware it still may not be enough. With the exception of the iPhone, most OS may have optimizations and customizations specific to the device, carrier, and/or the manufacturer. Examples: Samsung Symbian vs Nokia Symbian, HTC WinMo vs HP WinMo, Nokia non-branded vs AT&T branded (loaded with different apps), etc.

The HTC Desire, to be released sometime next month, has a 1 GHz Snapdragon CPU and 576 mb of memory.

The HTC Desire is the Nexus One with HTC's Sense UI. I personally wouldn't purchase a Sense UI phone. Not because Sense UI is bad but because the Sense UI phones tend to lag behind in Android updates.

XP Phone.

ITG XP Phone Specs

* AMD Mobile CPU @ 1.2GHZ
* 4.8-inch, 800×480 pixel touchscreen display
* QWERTY keyboard
* 1GB memory for Window 7
* Dual hard drives: SSD (8/16/32/64GB) and HDD (30/60/80/120GB)
* Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
* Bluetooth
* GPS
* WiMAX (optional)
* GSM/GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA (HSDPA/HSUPA), CDMA/CDMA2000, CMDA 1X/EV-DO, TD-SCDMA, TD-HSDPA (3G)
* 7 hours of continuous use with standard battery, 12 hours with extended battery
* Windows XP OS / Windows 7

It’s a powerful phone which has quite a good battery life along with some impressive specs.

Skrying wrote:

The HTC Desire is the Nexus One with HTC's Sense UI. I personally wouldn't purchase a Sense UI phone. Not because Sense UI is bad but because the Sense UI phones tend to lag behind in Android updates.

I'm not sure there have been enough Sense UI handsets out to draw that conclusion quite yet.

With the exception of the DROID and N1, as far as I know, all other Android handsets are running 1.5 or 1.6 still, regardless of Sense UI.

I'm still waiting on the 2.1 update for my Samsung Moment. It's currently running 1.5, with no Sense UI (since it's not an HTC device).

If you haven't seen it yet, this site is a good one for android handset info:
http://www.androphones.com/all-android-phones.php

-SF

The XP phone hasn't actually made it into production yet. A poke around the interwebs shows a great deal of publicity around last September, only to fade into the background. Potentially vaporware, but it does look extremely beast from a cellphone hardware standpoint, assuming it becomes a reality.

Buzzard44 wrote:

The XP phone hasn't actually made it into production yet. A poke around the interwebs shows a great deal of publicity around last September, only to fade into the background. Potentially vaporware, but it does look extremely beast from a cellphone hardware standpoint, assuming it becomes a reality.

Last i heard, ITG were facing production issues due to which this phone is late to market, but forum information suggest this phone is coming in a short while. I personally would prefer a Desktop windows OS in my phone, so that i don't have to face compatibility issues and this phone will definitely serve my needs.

Jigar wrote:

XP Phone.

ITG XP Phone Specs

* AMD Mobile CPU @ 1.2GHZ
* 4.8-inch, 800×480 pixel touchscreen display
* QWERTY keyboard
* 1GB memory for Window 7
* Dual hard drives: SSD (8/16/32/64GB) and HDD (30/60/80/120GB)
* Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
* Bluetooth
* GPS
* WiMAX (optional)
* GSM/GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA (HSDPA/HSUPA), CDMA/CDMA2000, CMDA 1X/EV-DO, TD-SCDMA, TD-HSDPA (3G)
* 7 hours of continuous use with standard battery, 12 hours with extended battery
* Windows XP OS / Windows 7

It’s a powerful phone which has quite a good battery life along with some impressive specs.

lolwut? This actually exists? Don't people know that ARM is the undisputed king of mobile?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4W6lVQl3QA

If it weren't for Atom being based on the widely popular x86 instruction set, ensuring it had plenty of software at it's disposal, ARM would carve right into the netbook space. This seems like a step backwards IMO. Not to mention the heat constraints of using Atom in something sitting by your ear...

Anyways, comparing mobile OSs is Apples to Oranges. Nuff said.

Da_Boss wrote:

lolwut? This actually exists? Don't people know that ARM is the undisputed king of mobile?

Yes the phone exist and no, people don't care if their phone has an ARM or X86 CPU. All people care is their needs are meet.

Da_Boss wrote:

Anyways, comparing mobile OSs is Apples to Oranges. Nuff said.

agreed, there is no comparison between Mobile OS and Desktop Os.

Jigar wrote:

Yes the phone exist and no, people don't care if their phone has an ARM or X86 CPU. All people care is their needs are meet.

Unless you needs include cooking your eggs on it in the morning, and surfing the net on your W7 phone for 23 minutes, I don't see how anyone's needs are met. I want to see one in real life just so I can laugh at it.

Also. Holy crap @ the HTC desire with a 1GHz SoC and 576MB RAM. I remember when I had a $1500 computer whose spec sheet read like that..

Da_Boss wrote:

Jigar wrote:

Yes the phone exist and no, people don't care if their phone has an ARM or X86 CPU. All people care is their needs are meet.

Unless you needs include cooking your eggs on it in the morning, and surfing the net on your W7 phone for 23 minutes, I don't see how anyone's needs are met. I want to see one in real life just so I can laugh at it.

There are several features of XP phone that meets my needs.

1) This phone has a real 2.0 USB slot = I can use a USB stick to transfer data...
2) SSD and HDD both. 8-32 GB of SSD for OS and upto 128 GB of HDD for storage...
3) Marketing guy like me needs to carry laptop here and there... This phone will free me from carrying weight and plus this phone supports projector, handy for me to do presentation.
4) XPPhone supports USB mouse
5) Software support as we know is unlimited because of XP. ++ for me
6) Although it would be pain, but still i will be able to play PC games on my phone, if i am free...
there are many feature that i see usable if this phone comes with XP or Windows 7... Android or iphone just can't beat this...

You guys seem to be leaving graphics processors out of the equations. It's not as easy to find info about these. From memory, Apple is the only one proud of their hardware proudly proclaiming it's powervr chip. And why wouldn't they. Any user will tell you it's 3d performance and ability to play games and other such things is great. Well, you won't get that experience on any of the android handsets i've used, because they don't have such great graphics. This is also going to be a responsible part to snappiness and overall functionality of the home screens and browsers.

Heiwashin wrote:

You guys seem to be leaving graphics processors out of the equations. It's not as easy to find info about these. From memory, Apple is the only one proud of their hardware proudly proclaiming it's powervr chip. And why wouldn't they. Any user will tell you it's 3d performance and ability to play games and other such things is great. Well, you won't get that experience on any of the android handsets i've used, because they don't have such great graphics. This is also going to be a responsible part to snappiness and overall functionality of the home screens and browsers.

...not really.

Android is hurt in the gaming department because only a couple of the phones have great hardware (Nexus One, Droid) and even then the Android and related development tools are not making it easy for developers to exploit what hardware there is. Then there's the market fragmentation. Even if the fastest phone on the market as an Android phone it's extremely hard to justify developing for it exclusively. There's a wide range of Android phones that would have no hope running a demanding game properly (or even at all in some cases). Actually, hardware fragmentation is one of my biggest worries for Android as a platform going forward.

Palm's Pre and WebOS are a good direction to look at to get a relative idea of the iPhone 3GS 3D power. Palm has announced the PDK and had several large developers and publishers demonstrate how quickly a port can be done from iPhone to Pre and with great results.

Additionally in the Pre, Droid and Nexus one any slow down you're experiencing in general tasks is software related, not hardware. Again, shown by the quite similar levels of performance between those phones and the iPhone 3GS yet the 3GS is often sighted as being very snappy.

You say that, but it's not necessarily true. Most of what your saying is speculative opinion.

SlyFerret wrote:

I'm not sure there have been enough Sense UI handsets out to draw that conclusion quite yet.

With the exception of the DROID and N1, as far as I know, all other Android handsets are running 1.5 or 1.6 still, regardless of Sense UI.

I'm still waiting on the 2.1 update for my Samsung Moment. It's currently running 1.5, with no Sense UI (since it's not an HTC device).

If you haven't seen it yet, this site is a good one for android handset info:
http://www.androphones.com/all-android-phones.php

-SF

The point is that Sense UI doesn't hold a ton of benefits and really could be a major negative.

Anyway, why in the world are you wanting the Samsung Behold? It's so inferior hardware wise on a highly unoptimized platform that I wouldn't want to be stuck with that device for any length of time. Honestly, its the Nexus One or bust right now with Android for me. The Droid/Milestone is a good option sadly hurt by a very poor keyboard.

Heiwashin wrote:

You say that, but it's not necessarily true. Most of what your saying is speculative opinion.

What? There's a ton of benchmarks out there that compare the phones at this point. There's also the proof that Palm is showing games ported from the iPhone 3GS with major publishers and developer proof that prove it even further. We also know the processors in every major option right now and the memory amounts. It's logic, not speculation.

Have you looked at the 3d benchmarks. Iphone3gs has stomped any android phone in any tests i've seen. Your speculation that this is entirely because coders don't want to put out the effort isn't wrong in relation to apss but it doesn't disprove the fact that iphone, is in fact, more capable on many levels despite having a slower processor in some cases. So to reiterate, graphics hardware is just as important as processor and should be taken into consideration when reviewing the potential power of a phone.

Heiwashin wrote:

Have you looked at the 3d benchmarks. Iphone3gs has stomped any android phone in any tests i've seen. Your speculation that this is entirely because coders don't want to put out the effort isn't wrong in relation to apss but it doesn't disprove the fact that iphone, is in fact, more capable on many levels despite having a slower processor in some cases. So to reiterate, graphics hardware is just as important as processor and should be taken into consideration when reviewing the potential power of a phone.

There's two parts to the software equation. 1.) How much effort a developer can justify in optimizing a Android game. 2.) The hardware functionality exposed and the layers on top of that hardware.

You're stating an inherent fact ("So to reiterate, graphics hardware is just as important as processor and should be taken into consideration when reviewing the potential power of a phone.") and somehow trying to equate this to an Android devices lackluster benchmark results. The hardware inside say the Nexus One might be quite capable of matching iPhone 3GS but we just don't know because of software related issues. Read this blog post where it's mentioned the Nexus One could do better with a complier rated tweak.

Firstly i keep saying that because that's my only point. I'm not targeting a software vs software debate. This thread started about hardware and i was tossing in two cents that have been missing. You're saying software needs to be taken into account too, which is fine, but it's separate entirely from my point. If you're trying to claim that every device without dedicated graphics hardware is capable of iphones performance because of software tweaks then you might want to rethink it. Otherwise, what you're saying has no point against my own because the nexus one does have a dedicated chip. In fact it's possible that the droid or nexus one share similar graphics processors to the iphone. I don't know and i haven't seen an explicit name in specs regarding it in my previous searches, only generalizations that could also be wrong. My original statement is my only point, that the graphics need be considered as well. Regardless of software that's true so i'm not sure what you're looking for here.

Last I heard a number of phones were running essentially the same PowerVR graphics processor as the iPhone, but the ones that were (Pre, Nexus One) had software difficulties in accessing it. Palm has literally [i[just[/i] opened up native code on their phone, and the Android phones, as others have said, suffer from market fragmentation.

Skrying wrote:

Anyway, why in the world are you wanting the Samsung Behold? It's so inferior hardware wise on a highly unoptimized platform that I wouldn't want to be stuck with that device for any length of time. Honestly, its the Nexus One or bust right now with Android for me. The Droid/Milestone is a good option sadly hurt by a very poor keyboard.

I'm not wanting a Samsung Behold.

I own a Samsung Moment, which runs 1.5. I'm looking forward to the Android 2.1 firmware for my device that is supposed to materialize in the next couple months.

-SF

SlyFerret wrote:

I'm not wanting a Samsung Behold.

I own a Samsung Moment, which runs 1.5. I'm looking forward to the Android 2.1 firmware for my device that is supposed to materialize in the next couple months.

-SF

You and me both brother.

I went to the VW store to look at phones and suprisingly I purchased a Palm Pre +(I purchased it online because it was 70 dollars cheaper and I didn't have activation fees to deal with, so I saved 105 dollars). I was looking at the Eris but it didn't cut it. I didn't even get to touch the Devour because only VW authorized premium retailers currently have the phone. I did go to the authorized retailer in town but they were SuPeR sLoW. After the guy started installing the invisable shield I gave up and went home (I waited 30 minutes just watching him sell accessories to this lady). It was the Pre or Moto Droid, unfortunately the Droid wasn't in my budget this month and I needed a phone this week.

edit- how does this relate

I purchased the Palm Pre + because of the OS+ hardware specs. I did not purchase the Eris because of the hardware specs. I did not purchase the Samsung Omnia 2 because of the OS.

The HTC EVO 4G, codenamed Supersonic, looks beautiful. My contract with AT&T is up early next year, and there's a good chance that I might hop on the Sprint bandwagon so that I can get my hands on this phone.

1 Ghz Snapdragon processor
Android 2.1 w/HTC Sense
1 GB ROM, 576 MB RAM
microSD slot, supports up to 32GB
4.3-inch TFT LCD (480x800 resolution)
Camera #1: Rear- facing 8 Megapixel autofocus with dual LED flash
Camera #2: Forward-facing 1.3 Megapixel
720p Video playback through HDMI out
Built-in kickstand for hands-free viewing (about damn time!)

I have an HD2 - and love it. It has loads of ram, memory and style. Not to mention a giant beautiful screen.

I love it so far. It's been nothing short of perfect for me.