If you’re one of the millions of people that are filtering through MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Last.fm and the many other rich online applications and you’re looking to take that with you, in your hand, on the bus, into the coffee shop, to the park bench or just to the sofa, you have three choices. The first option is to find a mobile client version of your Internet application. On the iPhone, you’ll find YouTube and Google Maps as separate applications and on many mobile phones you can also install dedicated Gmail and Google Maps applications. They work well, but that’s all you get. Fixed client apps that are just a small segment of the Internet. The second option is to find mobile-optimised versions for you favorite online Internet sites. For most popular sites there are mobile versions available but you always end up hitting a wall at some point and its frustrating to have cut-down versions of your favorite sites. The third option, and the only real option, is to use a mobile PC. A real mobile PC. That is, a device with a desktop PC processor and the ability to run a desktop browser on it. A dedicated mobile Internet device.
Intel has a class of devices called MID’s. I tend to call them all UMPCs. Either way, both device classes use powerful and flexible desktop hardware and run desktop versions of the browser which solve both the speed and the compatibility issue. I’m not going to talk about how desktop browsers solve the compatibility issues here because I’ve talked that in other posts (Intel also presented an interesting slide on the topic at IDF Fall 2007) what I want to demonstrate is the very important speed issue.
In the video and presentation below, I’ve attempted to highlight two major differences between the ARM and x86 devices. First I’ll show you the difference in time to pick up a single email via the Gmail web interface on 4 different devices connected to the Internet over 3G or better (VIA the same provider). A feature phone (UMTS). A Smartphone (HSDPA). A handheld PC (HSDPA) and a full-blown UMPC (HSDPA). The smartphone wins mainly due to the always-on feature. Then you’ll see how fast it is if you skip the browser and use a dedicated app. Its even faster. Half the time of the UMPCs.
| Samsung Q1b HSDPA | Everun S36HS HSDPA | Nokia E90 communicator (HSDPA) | Nokia 6280 (3G, via Opera Mini) | Nokia 6280 (3G via GMail java app) |
| 26 seconds | 29 Seconds | 24 seconds | 22 seconds | 14 seconds |
It proves that instant-on/always-on gives you an advantage in that situation and that dedicated text-only apps can be very quick indeed. But then I’ll show you another major difference.
In the presentation that follows the video, you’ll see how the instant-on advantage of an ARM-based device is blown away with just one additional page browse. After just two page views, the x86 device is ahead. There’s no comparison. Take a look at the video below and then carry on reading… [Note: in the first part of the video I say 'always on'. I actually mean 'always connected']
If you guys interest to read more, just use the link I given below
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