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bhtooefr
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Damnit, I might get an xpPhone...

Wed Nov 24, 2010 8:32 am

So, you can now buy the xpPhone...

Goes between $666 for one with no cellular modem, 8 gigs of SSD, and DOS, to $876 for one with an 800 MHz CDMA/EVDO modem, 16 gigs of SSD, and "Windows Embedded Standard 2009" (read: XP with a different name, might be NT 5.2, but...)

Looks like it's got either a Geode LX 800 or 900 (nobody's sure which,) which is, to be honest, a fairly slow CPU. The "800" and "900" numbers are PR numbers, but rather than being relative to the Pentium 4, they're relative to the VIA C3. Yeaaaaaah. That said, in a video hands-on, it looked snappy enough... (Keep in mind that the ARMs in most current smartphones aren't that hot, either - dual-issue, in-order, no SMT support, and low-end smartphones are single-issue. They do clock significantly higher... but they get hit with the fact that Android phones are running a Dalvik VM for everything, and webOS phones are running a JavaScript interpreter for everything.)

Interestingly, the modem is Mini-PCIe... so, you find a voice-capable modem that does what you want, you pop it in, install the drivers... and voila, it works on that band and mode.

Size... it's huge, but... if you think of it as a wider, slightly thinner DS Lite (which is what it is, dimensionally,) it's still on the edge of pocketable.

Battery life sounds like it might not be dreadful - 4 hours talk time, 7 hours non-radio usage time is apparently realistic, and they're claiming 5 days standby (because it's just powering the radio and the RAM in standby, and the radio itself would be idling until a call comes in, which sends a wake-on-modem to the PC.)

Now to decide whether I want to spend $900 on a phone... (It's about $100 shipping, on top of the $800 for the 8 gig with modem phone. I'll get the non-modem model if the included modem doesn't support CDMA 1900, though, and find my own modem.)
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Jigar
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Re: Damnit, I might get an xpPhone...

Wed Nov 24, 2010 8:59 am

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=71068&p=1007618#p1007586

I have been eying on this phone since long. Is it launched ?
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bhtooefr
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Re: Damnit, I might get an xpPhone...

Wed Nov 24, 2010 9:09 am

http://en.xpphone.com/product/product.html

Although it looks like the page is broken for the 8 gig model, but you can check out via PayPal on a 16 gig model.

Edit: Works in IE5.5 (that's what happens to be on this machine,) so it's just an Opera-related bug. (Which I find kinda funny, because the display units they've been showing come preloaded with Opera.)
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Re: Damnit, I might get an xpPhone...

Wed Nov 24, 2010 2:59 pm

That sounds absolutely awful. As a former user of Windows Mobile (6.0 and 6.5), I can assure you that the "Windows Everywhere" is a failed paradigm. The Windows interface just doesn't work well for small, instant-on devices. It's too clunky and hard to navigate. And this is worse -- it's actually Windows!

There's a reason the iPhone doesn't look like a Mac. Apple gets it. A small mobile device needs an interface suited to that sort of use.
 
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Re: Damnit, I might get an xpPhone...

Wed Nov 24, 2010 3:19 pm

:o
Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero
 
bhtooefr
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Re: Damnit, I might get an xpPhone...

Wed Nov 24, 2010 3:21 pm

I'm a current user of Windows Mobile (phone came with 6.1, I'm running a hacked 6.5 ROM,) and I agree it sucks, although for entirely different reasons. (The UI isn't GOOD by any means, but it's not my complaint.)

Stability and weird unexplained freezes and things simply not working properly (dialogs failing to close, requiring a reboot to clear, wrong applications responding to phone calls, the home screen failing to come up, etc., etc.) are my problems with it. XP, the freezes on a machine like this are at least explainable.

Yes, I know, this phone would be horrible for 99% of users. I suspect that I may fit in the 1% that it's great for. (I need to figure out whether that's the case, though. I've mentioned concerns with it before.)

Also, I'm not the biggest proponent of touchscreens (I think they're a useful interface option, and they're a good idea, but I think they should be supplemented with another directional pointing device - nobody say BB Torch, I've got a BB Bold 9700 for work, and it's not BAD, but not what I'm looking for,) because they limit the amount of information that can be displayed - elements designed for a touch UI have to be of a certain size to work, which means that the amount of displayable information isn't limited by resolution, but rather actual size - links have to be clickable, and that determines a minimum font size in the browser.

The xpPhone dodges that by including a touchpad.
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Jigar
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Re: Damnit, I might get an xpPhone...

Wed Nov 24, 2010 3:26 pm

The place where XPphone wins is the compatibility with your PC. Anything that works on your PC works on your mobile.
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bhtooefr
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Re: Damnit, I might get an xpPhone...

Wed Nov 24, 2010 5:49 pm

So I just grabbed the manual (PDF), and I'm rolling on the floor laughing. Most of the manual is decent enough, although it fails to give specs for the radio module.

ITG wrote:
Differences between traditional mobile phones & xpPhone

Differences between traditional mobile phones and xpPhone in terms of CPU

At present, all the mobile phones available in the market are based on ARM (Advanced RISC Machines) CPU architecture design. Although the power consumption and cost of the CPU based on ARM architecture are relatively lower than that based on X86 architecture (computer architecture), the design idea of ARM CPU based on reduced architecture causes a considerable decrease in the instruction sets inside CPU, resulting in the failure of ARM CPU to match up to the X86 CPU in respect of performance so far.

Each CPU has specified a series of instruction sets compatible with its hardware circuit at the time of design. The strength of instruction sets is also an important indicator to measure the operational speed of CPU, and the instruction set is one of the most effective tools to improve the efficiency of microprocessor. For example, MMX (Multi Media Extended,) SSE, SSE2, SEE3 and AMD's 3DNow! are instruction sets which greatly improve the operational performance of CPU and enhance the processing capacity of the CPU's multimedia, images & graphics and Internet respectively.

The reason why the ARM devices are only suitable for displaying simple mobile phone web pages rather than Internet web pages is that the Internet web pages are quite complex and based on X86 architecture system. Almost all the browsers of ARM architecture-based smartphones can not normally browse the web stes based on X86 architecture system.

Without abundant instruction sets inside CPU to support the high frequency, there will be no leaping improvement in the processing speed of CPU. Therefore, in respect of performance, most low-frequency X86 architecture-based CPUs far exceed the ARM architecture-based CPU under the same frequency.

Differences between traditional mobile phones and xpPhone in terms of memory

The memory of smartphones generally ranges from 64M to 256M, because most ARM architecture-based smartphones use SDRAM or Mobile DDR memory IC. The frequency of these types of memory IC is very low with only 100MHZ-300MHZ processing capability, which is far behind the frequency and capacity of X86 architecture-based computer memory IC, resulting in insufficient memory capacity and slow processing speed of smartphones available in the market. The capacity of X86 architecture-based computer memories (DDR, DDR2, DDR3) is generally more than 512M at present, more importantly, the frequency of computer memory IC generally ranges from 300MHZ to 1GHZ. Therefore, for memory of the same capacity, X86 architecture-based processing speed is much faster than that of smartphones.

Differences between traditional mobile phones and xpPhone in terms of storage

PC's SSD (solid state disk) adopts the storage matrix consisting of control unit and storage unit (FLASH chips or DRAM chips), and its capacity is generally large. The SSD is faster, lighter, more power-saving, more shock-resistant, more stable and more suitable for outdoor use than HDD.

In comparison with mechanical HDD, SSD avoids the risks of data loss and hard disk damage due to bumpy environment. The mobile phones use the built-in Flash Memory chip or the externally extended Flash Memory card to store data. The interface chip in mobile phones has a relatively low requirement for data reading and writing speed, resulting in the speed of Flash Memory is far behind that of X86 architecture-based SSD.


:lol:

I am surprised at the relatively coherent English, though.

Oh, and the CPU is an LX 800.
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bhtooefr
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Re: Damnit, I might get an xpPhone...

Fri Nov 26, 2010 3:15 pm

Hmm.

Geekbench results are putting the Geode LX 800 in the same performance ballpark as a 366 MHz Pentium II.

An Atom Z500 is easily twice as fast. (And, an Atom Z500 is clocked half as fast as the ubiquitous N270.)

On the flipside, it's slightly faster than a 533 MHz ARM11 (at least in a 2nd-gen iPod Touch application.) A 600 MHz Cortex-A8 destroys it, though, and a 1 GHz Cortex-A8 comes close to the Atom Z500.

So, performance... we'll just say it's lacking. VERY lacking. IMO, not worth the money.
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Re: Damnit, I might get an xpPhone...

Fri Nov 26, 2010 4:32 pm

Jigar wrote:
The place where XPphone wins is the compatibility with your PC. Anything that works on your PC works on your mobile.


But that couldn't be further from reality. While the programs may technically run on the phone they're not going to be even close to usable.
 
bhtooefr
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Re: Damnit, I might get an xpPhone...

Fri Nov 26, 2010 5:02 pm

Yeah, this thing is Pentium II class. If it had an Atom, I'd probably go for it, but at this point, forget about it until there's a better CPU.

Oh, and the GPU is 2D-only.
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