This is rather embarrassing
I’ve been a big proponent of ARMs Cortex CPU cores and have regularly highlighted that they are ‘entry level’ for any sort of Web work on an ARM platform. I’ve tested many ARM11 devices from smartphones to tablets and have never seen any browser speed or quality that would make me happy in a productive scenario. In today’s world of advanced smartphones, there’s every chance that the average consumer would notice too. The latest device that I’m testing, the SmartQ T7, is so slow that I’ve postponed my review until the company can confirm that there isn’t a networking fault. I’ve also been fairly public that the Nokia N8 with its ARM11 CPU won’t be a blazer when it comes to Web browsing and my early tests confirm it. I’ve also disputed cries that a new browser will make it better.
Imagine my surprise today when a tablet I’ve been very positive about in terms of speed turns out to be an ARM11-based device. Initial reports from Viewsonic indicated that the Viewpad 7 it would be a Snapdragon-based device but the specifications were changed and the unit will be based on the Qualcomm MSM7227 CPU. I only found out because all the other devices based on the same OED (Camangi FM600, Olive Pad, Spice Mi700) are all advertising the Qualcomm MSM7227. Viewsonic confirmed to me today that the device will now ship with the MSM7227 and interestingly, that the unit I tested at IFA and am basing my positive thoughts on was the ARM11 model. [Gulps]
Of course it doesn’t change the product one bit (unless you have an affinity for Cortex cores) but it does mean I have to be more careful with my analysis in the future. In my defence I was told that it was Snapdragon and it was actually pretty fast but I apologise for this mistake and hope you’ll respect my openness. The relevant product specification pages have all been updated. Learnt from this: Android 2.2 is an extremely efficient OS and it’s possible that Symbian^3 could also be well-optimised in terms of its latest browser software.
At the end of the day our ‘Open Review’ sessions and videos catch any failings and issues and we’ll be planning just that for the Viewsonic products (Viewpad 7 and Viewpad 10) so stick with us for the real story.
Note: I’ve also added a bunch of early review links to the Viewsonic Viewpad 7 product pages.
Don’t just blame the hardware. Blame the software too.
It’s easy to forget about Angstrom Linux, which grew out of Open Embedded which grew out of OpenZaurus. This is an OS that runs great on arm-11 devices as well as older arm devices like the Intel (now Marvell) Xscale. It doesn’t just run well, but it offers a favorable web experience. It’s curious that we’re running clumsy and fad-centric operating systems like iOS, Android, and Ubuntu on these devices given what they represent in terms of software quality versus what this hardware represent in terms of performance. I guess it’s good that the Viewpad 7 can still accommodate its OS well, but it’s too bad there’s not something better running on top.
In a related note, as a graduate student I once attended a seminar given by a fairly famous speaker. He demonstrated the cumulative performance gains from advances in computational mathematical algorithms over the years compared to performance gains from advances in computing hardware during the same period. To the (self-congratulatory) surprise of those in attendance, to that point, the performance gains from better algorithms had surpassed those from hardware. Of course, the combination of state-of-the-art hardware and software can’t be beat, but I’d rather have clever software on oafish hardware than clumsy software on blazing hardware.
It was this experience (and many things that friends who work at all of the major tech companies told me that they probably shouldn’t have) that made me realize that hardware upgrades are not as “important” as I thought. In fact, most hardware upgrades are basically coordinated by software that either runs worse (and therefore needs the hardware boost to maintain the baseline computing experience) or outright intentionally obsolesces older hardware through an inability or unwillingness to support it. This is both frustrating and ironic given the fact that better software on the same hardware would probably yield a better experience than “upgraded” software on “upgraded” hardware.
Sad thing is that at least on x86, higher performing hardware have allowed lazy programmers to optimize less.
as we are all migrating from an X86/64 world pretty much every commenter on various websites seem confused by ARM CPU’s, as they are relying on catchy code names (Snapdragon) & mhz which mean almost nothing. it seems like their are only a few people out there that really understand the underlying architecture.
i dont really understand it myself & hope ARM gets around to simplifying things the way Intel & AMD have done.
I am surprised the Qualcomm MSM7227 does so well even in a 7 inch tablet.
I came across the MSM7227 in the HTC Legend and Aria phones. It is really fast and responsive compared to the 1GHz Snapdragon phones. Initially I though it is because these HTC phones have smaller screens / lower resolution (3.2 inch compared to eg. 4 inch of the Sony Ericsson X10). Therefore I am surprised that this chip drives a larger 7 inch screen device so well.
That demo you showed was not bad for an ARM11 device. Still the Archos 7 beats the crap out of it both in performance and price.
I suspected as much since the Device(FM600) at the Camangi Booth looked and felt the same but didn’t hide the specs. I have the actual specsheet in my hands right now and it clearly states ARM11 Qualcomm MSM7227 600Mhz. They also mentioned a price wich was not very far from the Viewsonic, so all to much a difference wasn’t very likely. Regarding the SmartQ, there is at least one device out there that does perform better. On youtube you can find several videos by FamasHK wich show clearly visible progress in speed and features. He seems to have improved firmware-versions with about every second or so Video. Unfortunately they are in cantonese.
If you do test the N8, I would request that you do test out various browsers: the inbuilt one, Opera Mobile 10 (and not mini) and perhaps Skyfire. Browsers make a world of difference. On my Nokia X6, Opera Mobile is a far superior experience. It has been reported that Nokia are working on a better browser for Symbian (Browser 8.0 vs Browser 7.2 currently shipping on Nokia devices) and will be released as a software update for N8 and other Symbian 3 devices.
The SmartQ T7 seems to be based on a Telechip processor with just 256MB of RAM, while the ViewPad7, Camangi FM600, etc are based on the Qualcomm MSM7227, and include 512MB RAM.
The SmartQ T7 is a re-badged version of the Chile T7 which is clearly advertised as an e-book reader with Android, probably due to its low end specs.
There is no way the two devices can be compared ..
I do wonder how much of an impact something like a floating point unit can have on android performance.
If this is the case, those telechip TCC8900/8901 may actually be worth keeping an eye on.
The Qualcomm MSM7227 is quite an improvement from previous ARM11 CPU’s. It features an integrated Floating Point Unit and L2 cache, which improve performance quite dramatically.
From the looks of it, earlier ARM11 designs could have had it also. But it was not a mandatory feature, like it is on the cortex series. If a core have a ‘f’ in its name, it has floating point.