There is no digital design. There is no analog design. There is only a mixed signal design in SoC. — Arthur Jensen, Network
Despite years of investment in its Symbian operating system, Nokia has picked the Linux-based MeeGo instead to go head to head with Apple’s iPhone and other higher-end smartphones, reports C/Net. Nokia will continue to use Symbian on inexpensive phones, a Nokia spokesman explained.
The Nokia N8 will be the last of the flagship N-series smartphones to use Symbian, Nokia told CNET Australia, and confirmed the move in a Reuters interview. “Going forward, N-series devices will be based on MeeGo,” said the Nokia spokesperson.
Nokia’s N8, which won’t be available until the third quarter, has a 12 megapixel camera, 3.5-inch touch screen and retails for 370 euros ($493). Nokia has four smartphone product families. The C series is focused on personal social networking. The E series phones are for business users. The X series for youth and music, and N series for the most advanced models.
Nokia bought full Symbian control from other partners, then released it as open-source software. But it wasn’t sufficient to make the operating system a top-end competitor, notes C/Net. Developers, mobile operators and manufactures have been moving to the “free”, open-source Android platform, instead.
MeeGo hopes to be in handhelds, tablets and nettops, although the Android SDK (software development kit) has first mover advantage & backing from Google.
MeeGo was announced in 2010. It combines two earlier Linux efforts, Nokia’s Maemo (which works on ARM processors) and Intel’s Moblin (which works on Intel’s Atom processors). MeeGo can run on both ARM and Atom processors.
Meanwhile, Intel plans to ship a fully native x86 version of Android 2.2 ‘Froyo’ to developers in the next two months, reports APC. That means Intel’s hardware partners will be able to use Atom processors inside tablets, netbooks and smartphones running the Android operating system.
Android 2.2, running on PC-standard x86 architecture, may be MeeGo’s biggest competitor. Android originally only ran on devices that used ARM-family processors. But ARM processors are used in most smartphones, as well as many anticipated tablets and “smartbooks”.
“Our expectation is that (native x86 Android) will be based on the Froyo release and will be available this summer to developers” Renee James, Intel’s senior veep for software and services, told APC.
Meanwhile, Nexus One users started receiving Google’s Android 2.2 upgrade over-the-air on their devices Wednesday night. User reports indicate the updates appear to be hitting phones in various parts of America, on both T-Mobile and AT&T.
Sprint expects to launch Android 2.2 in the near future. The EVO 4G WiMAX phone will receive the 2.2 update, Samsung Moment and HTC Hero will not. Future devices launching with 2.1 also will be updated to 2.2. Android 2.2 is coming to Droid in late July, with Droid X expected in late August.
Code-named FroYo (from frozen yogurt), Android 2.2 is the latest Google’s OS named after a desert, following Eclair (2.0/2.1), Donut (1.6), and Cupcake (1.5).
Monday Note explains the tension between Intel and ARM:
ARM doesn’t make and sell chips; it licenses microprocessor designs. Over the last two decades, designing electronic circuitry has largely become a software affair thanks to EDA tools. With such design software, you take ARM’s licensed designs, presented as ‘‘libraries’’, and adapt them to your needs. When done, you turn to a manufacturer, a “fab”, such as Samsung, TSMC, Global Foundries and many others.One crucial advantage of the ARM world stems from the customization process, often with additional libraries licensed elsewhere. The result is what we call a SOC, a System On a Chip. A SOC reduces cost, physical dimensions and power consumption by adding “non-processor” functions to the chip. This is what all smartphone makers look for. Hence ARM’s omnipresence in the emerging world.
According to EE Times Europe, the iPad’s A4 consumes between 450mW and 800mW, depending upon the application it runs. Comparable Atom processors, with a graphics unit, consume about two or three times as much.
The six major smartphone operating systems are Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, Nokia’s Symbian/Meego, Microsoft’s Phone 7, RIM’s BlackBerry OS and Palm’s (now Hewlett-Packard’s) WebOS. They run on ARM processors.
It’s Apps that matter. Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market are the ones to beat. Who cares if ARM processors won’t run Microsoft programs? Or even if they did.
R. Colin Johnson, Technology Editor at EE Times offers his impressions on the Freescale Technology Forum on ARMdevices.net, especially the launch of the new Freescale Xtrinsic sensors and the iPhone4.
Freescale’s Kinetis family, based on the new ARM Cortex-M4 processor, integrates many external signals. The demand for mixed-signal chips (analog and digital) has exploded, with the market growing from $2 billion in 1998 to more than $25 billion today. Dylan McGrath has Six reasons why Intel remains a good bet.
