Archive for the ‘Cellphone’ Category

Cellphone vs. PC, show time!

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

Cellphones are increasingly getting popular and they may even pose a threat to the Intel Microsoft based computers. You must have come across, the previous year a series of small inexpensive notebook computers called netbooks based on ARM microprocessor design and run on several versions of Linux and on Android cell phone operating system of Google. Although ARM dominates the market for their chips used in cellphones, they are still widely to be used in computers. However today, the difference between a cheap laptop and an expensive phone is size and not its power.

Netbooks have become a growing category of computers especially because they are more portable and usually don’t cost much. Until now they have been widely used by Atom chip of Intel as they use their X86 instruction set which can run windows. Some manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard and ASUS have also provided versions of their netbooks which run Linux but they are not yet popular in the market. Some think that this might change as the combination of ARM processor and Linux might allow netbooks to be sold for less than $200.

Recently Freescale a chip company rolled out of Motorola to announce a new high-end chip based on the latest ARM deign and for netbooks. This was followed by a similar declaration by Qualcomm. On the other hand ARM designs the backbone of microprocessors which are incorporated in chips built by other manufacturers. Glen Burchersu8 the marketing director of Freescale consumer segment marked three potential benefits of ARM based netbooks. He said that ARM machines should have around 8 hours of battery power compared to 2 hours of Intel based netbooks, because right from the beginning ARM chips have been designed to be skimpy for its power use. As their chips use less power they generate less heat and so it can perfectly fit a smaller case that needed for a chip or a metal heat sink to cool it. Freescale has also found out that their chips can fit into a netbook that is just about 0.6 inches thick.

There is also the price factor to consider. The Freescale Company says that their chip would cost around $15 each when purchased in large quantities and around $5 for other chips which support the processor. The company also estimates that the computer manufacturer will have to spend around $50 on Intel Atom chips and Windows. Glen Burchers says that the company estimates that the $200 netbooks would not include a hard drive but rather have 8 GB or 4 GB of flash memory and these devices would mainly be used by those surfing the net. Additionally a few expensive devises would also be capable of connecting to cellular data networks and they will be mainly aimed at younger generation who connects through Wi-Fi networks. Additionally the company also gave some of their Linux based netbooks to a group of teenagers who already owned a computer and a smartphone. This rather intensely  digital teenage group were excited to receive yet another interesting gizmo through which they could check their MySpace pages and it yet did not slow down to their usage over other devices.