February 13th, 2006
Wanna Play Quake on Your Phone?
By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
It’s certainly not something I’m searching for in a phone, but the graphics chip should sure help out the displays.
Nvidia’s latest graphics processor for high-end mobile phones, unveiled on Monday, can take 10-megapixel pictures and decode high-resolution video, thus marking another step toward turning mobile phones into powerful handheld entertainment devices.
Nvidia’s new chip has received support from major game developers, including id Software, which will demonstrate its “Quake III” on a phone with the GoForce 5500 at 3GSM.
The GoForce 5500 adds support for the h.264 codec and externally stacked SRAM (static RAM) chips to the GoForce line of handheld graphics chips, first unveiled in 2003. It will allow phone makers to boost screen resolution to 1024×768, and is capable of taking up to 10- mega pixel photos in rapid succession. Source: News.com
We Say: I don’t really care for my cell phone as much as most people do, as a matter of fact, if it wasn’t for work or little league, I wouldn’t even have one, but taking those 10 mega pixel photos very quickly sounds pretty good to me. So, I may be changing my mind in the last quarter, when manufacturers are expecting to start shipping the phones for the holiday season.
DavidChait says:
Well, I don’t know that it’ll really help out the displays — that’s another issue entirely (LCD density, or moving to OLED or other tech…).
What it does mean is that much more can be done in graphics hardware rather than in the CPU, which allows for much more animated/fluid interfaces, and of course games. Not to mention video decoding, meaning high-quality video playback.
Actually, battery life (and tech) is going to become extremely important. If you want to play really cool games on your phone, and watch video, AND use it as a phone (i.e., charge it once a day at MOST), battery tech needs to take a real leap.
February 13th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Bill King says:
In the end, I think it will be a long time to market unless they price the chips at rock bottom. A big thing in the mobile industry is to get absolute rock bottom prices available. Even now, 200MHz, 32M is the standard for “smart phones” (think the new cellon c8000). The reason for this, is that even 1 or 2c more per part, equates into large amounts of overhead, when it is “per phone”. With multiple parts, this accumulates. Having a part that costs $10 or more per part than the current stock, puts a massive dent into the already super-tight profit margins. So, unless it’s a high-cost, high-profit line, or someone like RIM, willing to go out on a limb, it’s highly unlikely this will be seen in standard consumer phones for a long time to come.
February 13th, 2006 at 6:52 pm