Nokia Lumia WP8 to come with Qualcomm S4 dual core?
Forbes titles their post to suggest that the future Nokia Lumia WP8 phones will get dual core. This isn’t just any dual core, this is Qualcomm’s S4 dual core, which we heard may be coming at least to Nokia’s W8 tablets. The S4 Krait chip has been shown, at least on benchmarks to produce some excellent and ‘Amazing/Insane’ results, rivalling and at times outperforming (on those tests) quadcore counterparts.
Now WP, like Symbian and MeeGo extremely well on single-core. First gen and current gen WP7 run so fluidly, 808 runs the fastest Symbian ever and N9 is also very fluid.
In WP7 it’s not so much a choice to be single core because it can’t make use of multicore at the moment. On performance at least, it runs core activities just as well as multicore rivals. I’m all for multicore. I don’t believe it’s just some negative battery drain – well, if the OS can’t use it properly, then yes. There may be instances when a multicore chip will only activate one core if that’s all that is needed – which in WP’s cases is pretty much all the time.
CNet points out that phones like the OneX and S3 activate additional cores for more graphically intensive games. It is of interest that US versions of the One X and S3 are NOT quadcore but dualcore.
At the very least, having multicore would satisfy the users who enjoy playing the specs game. For them, spending hard earned cash requires investing a little research into bigger numbers being better. When comparing phones on a spec sheet – user experience is hard to compare so go on quantitative metrics of multicore immediately being better than single core. I don’t think it’s enough for Nokia or Sony to try and point out that multicores/quadcores are not yet efficient enough. The very biggest deal is their product perception of being ‘behind the times’. Perhaps the typical non techy end user might not be aware of it, but what about those reporting about the tech and subsequently the staff at retail store who are recommending what phones to get.
Cheers MANU for the tip!
Category: Lumia, Nokia, Windows Phone
About the Author (Author Profile)
Hey, thanks for reading my post. My name is Jay and I'm a medical student at the University of Manchester. When I can, I blog here at mynokiablog.com and tweet now and again @jaymontano. We also have a twitter and facebook accounts @mynokiablog and Facebook.com/mynokiablog. Check out the tips, guides and rules for commenting >>click<< Contact us at tips(@)mynokiablog.com or email me directly on jay[at]mynokiablog.comSubscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
Comments (79)
Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed
Sites That Link to this Post
- Qualcomm S4 nei futuri Nokia Windows Phone 8 ? | June 9, 2012
- Nokia Lumia con Windows Phone 8 podrían tener procesador de doble núcleo | June 9, 2012
- Nokia Dogphone se pojavio na Occasional Gamer stranici. Možda prvi dvojezgreni WP8? | NokiaMob | June 9, 2012
- Mobilissimo.ro | June 9, 2012
I say bring on MultiCores, only if it means my Lumia won’t die in less than a day, and in giving it competitive specs, Nokia can climb back to the top
Yeah but we also need pentaband 3G. Leave the S4 processors for the states and telcos Like Hellstra who want more 4G phones. Best choice would be the TI OMAP5. They showed off windows 8 running on the OMAP4 so when the OMAP5s come around next quarter they’ll most definitely be supported.
Qualcomm’s S4 processor are the only good ones for LTE until mid-next year when ST-Ericsson finally releases a SoC with a A15 processor and integrated LTE. I’m not too sure about any one else’s 4G plans.
In theory two cores running at half speed use less power than one running at full speed.
It’s been given for some time already that all of the first wave devices will have S4 inside.
It’s also more than likely that Nokia’s Windows 8 tablet will be S4 Pro, something that would be great.
US versions of GS3 and One X use Qualcomm S4 due to integrated LTE.
That’s all.
By the time WP8 comes out, there will be A15 based chips with better power efficiency. Cant Nokia LEAD the adoptation of the latest for once?
S4 is more power efficient than the piece of shit that every tegra has been (still remember the fiasco that Tegra 2 was on Android tablets).
Dual core S4 got Tegra 3 pretty much killed.
He’s not taking about the tegra 3 do bringing it up is pointless.
What Nokia needs to use are the TI OMAP5s. 2 GHz Dual-core A15 plus low power dual core cortex-m4. Plus all the other DSPs and shit Texas instruments puts on their SoCs which results in them outperforming all and any equally specced processors. Samsung bases their designs on TI OMAPs which is why the gs3 is faster than the tegra 3 and even the newer-gen S4 in some benchmarks. Also the Pentaband radiochips/basebands are made by TI.
Now that the OS comes from MS Nokia cant do anything about what HW it can run.
I think you’ll find they can. Preferred partnerships work that way.
The manufacturers have already made MS modify WP for phones with 256MB RAM.
As we are progressively learning half the things doesn’t work on Tango/610 and Nokia can do nothing about that because they simply cant force MS to fix it or do anything MS already doesn’t want.
Nokia controlled Symbian and couldn’t get it to work competitively even after throwing years and 10000 engineers at it.
Nokia can affect change on Windows Phone. 610 is living proof. And the fact that it works less than perfect is proof positive that Nokia with its Symbian heritage can affect things.
Look, Nokia has plenty of control through the partnership. How much exactly, we don’t know, but any lackings in Tango are no proof of anything. For all we know, Nokia wanted Microsoft to rush it, and Nokia was the reason for the problems…
I think at this stage Nokia has needed restrictions on OS\CPU\chipsets so they can focus on the ‘added’ value that they can bring, rather than the years of internal wrangling when given the apparent choice.
Luckily looks like now adults are in charge.
And yet, Symbian was and still is far more competitive than anything MS is able to produce. Those developers were at least creating enough useful things to pay for themselves, now Nokia is bleeding hundredths of millions on pushing and marketing product that isn’t their own and can’t control where it’s heading.
We have previously discussed this special relationship, the ability of Nokia to requests things from MS and the Tango. Funny that now, when we can see fruits of that relationship in this particular case, you have to double down and claim that it’s because Nokia rushed it and demanded it to be this way. MS is such a slave that they have to produce crap when Nokia orders them.
Not that it’s unexpected, it was always obvious that the final defence of WP fans is going to be that the incompetent idiots who strangled WP efforts were in Espoo, WP and MS were simply too good for Nokia.
competitive – you mean, the browser experience, ease of use, multi-touch ?
you do realise that the big N wasted several billions of euros trying to emulate something Apple threw together in 18 months with 200 engineers ?
Even now at the end of things, Belle FP2 looks like the user\browsing experience something like iOS v1.
Even now at the end of things (almost), Symbian still sells 4-5 times more phones than WP. For majority of people Symbian is far more better than WP.
Really ? So how well are the £300 Symbian phones selling compared to the £300 WP7.5 Phones ?
Symbian bar the 808 is relegated to the low end market now < €95 and lets be honest – it makes no money at all for Nokia.
Affecting change is far cry from controlling a platform.
Nokia’s competitors can directly modify their user experience and they are _thriving_: Nokia so far has only made in-app explorations on Windows Phone (and _supposedly_ has been allowed to _ask_ for features). Oh, safe to say, Nokia is _struggling_.
“half the things doesn’t work on Tango/610″
Exaggerate much?
Nokia should already plan to release Quad Core A15 chips! NOT dual core!
Use those upcoming 5450 Quad Core 2.0 GHz chips from Samsung!
In addition, use 2 GB RAM.
Stores are advertising specs of the phones!
Wake up Nokia!
Heh, Windows Phone isn’t going to support that. It’s not Nokia’s work to make it support it, it’s MS.
Meh, from the leaked Apple info’s. Next iPhone will be dual core as well and updated from 512mb ram to 1GB.
Tegra 3 is perfect example of numbers that non translate to real life. S4 dual core has Tegra 3 beaten everywhere.
there’s still future. Microsoft might not be quiet. surely there is a new version of WP that supports multicore procie and over 1 GB of RAM
my experience has been very smooth single core is used. but if coupled into a multi-core processors better. what matters is whether I can reach the price/no
I wondering if new lowend wp handsets will still run 7.5 or if there will be cheap wp8 phones?
snapdragon s4 is good enough.but nokia should not stick with it till wp9 comes.should move onto quadcore ,quadcore is said to be more efficient produce less heat,especially the exynos one of samaung.
The efficiency improvements in the Exynos chip used in the GS3 come from the move from 45nm to 32nm and the introduction of the high-k metal gate production process.
RISC is good
Not sure what you mean. All ARM processors are RISC.
Haha, it was a reference to the movie Hackers! The way people talk about mobile CPUs now reminds me of the great CISC vs. RISC debate of 1995.
See Angelina Jolie discuss CPU instruction sets here:
RISC is fabulous for servers as it gives you more core freedom to optimize certain processes outside of what CPU architects could predict at design time. RISC for mobile (notably ARM) was born out of necessity – the necessity to pack as much useful transistors per cm² as possible – not out of its advantages over CISC.
The problem with CISC is that it generally requires more die space to fit in all the instruction interpreters, decoders, branch predictors and other things, which makes the RISC CPUs far simpler and in theory more energy efficient given that they don’t need to power all that jazz. But… The software executing on RISC processors is thus more complex (you have to specifically tell the CPU to load something in one register, then to load something else to another, then to precisely instruct the CPU what to do with those, then where to store the result…) all of which eat at least one CPU cycle whereas CISC can optimize that on a low-end level and get away with a couple of CPU cycles saved by reducing the number of instructions needed, and of course you need more memory to store the precise instructions – both of which are terribly limited on any mobile and power-restricted platform. Sure, with RISC you can interfere anywhere in the process of executing a complex instruction which can be very useful with high-math stuff like encryption or graphics/signal processing (which is the reason why GPUs are by the most part RISC-like structures), but that is not too big of an advantage over CISC as some people might think.
Thus, as you shrink down a CISC processor you get at the point where CISC becomes more efficient than RISC for general computing. And that has just happened with Intel’s Medfield – they are now, on average, on par with their ARM competition. It gets interesting in 2013 when Intel releases 22nm Silvermont, and then in 2014 14nm Airmont – in theory those will simply murder the ARM competition, including Qualcomm’s and Apple’s customizing of the ARM platform, in both raw power and power efficiency. Even if ARM manages to optimize the design, and manufacturers master the 22nm/14nm manufacturing processes, Intel is way ahead in that game, and at that point CISC disadvantages will turn into advantages with pure brute-force. I can bet you that Apple is already streamlining their iOS for x86 – in couple of years there really won’t be any contest judging by the looks of it, Intel will, I might add to an extent sadly, become the dominant player in mobile CPUs as well.
RISC is good, it’s just not good enough to kick the CISC out of the race, and given the CISC-oriented Godzilla – Intel – not sure if it can even survive the race in long-term. Certainly not in the mobile space at least. Advantages of CISC, especially the x86 flavor, become more apparent as the die size shrinks. And let us not forget that the CPU is only a part of the equation, CISC CPUs generally require far less supporting structure around them, and can be more closely tied to their surrounding hardware, which can only strengthen their advantages. I died a little when Apple left the PowerPC platform as it was a tremendous fun to play with those CPUs, but they couldn’t ignore the advantages of x86. The same will most probably happen within a couple of years in the mobile space as well. RIP ARM, we had some fun time together.
Thanks for the information, interesting read.
Disagree, CISC works well due to lower memory bandwidth requirements, ARM works very well precisely because it can offer something Intel can’t, as soft cpu that can be easily merged with other chips to create unique combinations.
Saying that the Intel offerings now are looking very interesting and they have an advantage due to the tight research\design\ manufacture process that they run.
Both have very different strengths and weaknesses.
Perception is everything with phones so its crucial to have a processor that’s on equal footing with its android counterparts and by the sound of it the s4 is the real deal.
“ It is of interest that US versions of the One X and S3 are NOT quadcore but dualcore.”
From what I have heard, this is because LTE will not work with quad core processors.
I agree with those writing Nokia need to bring out a phone with quad cores, even if it is not needed, as a lot of people do seem persuaded by the spec sheets.
Who knows, what I do know is that I’m very excited by prospect of Nokia WP8 phones and tablets.
Quad Core with LTE will be released in Korea soon!
And it has 2 GB RAM!
http://www.gsmarena.com/the_lte_galaxy_s_iii_has_2gb_ram_in_korea-news-4362.php
Why can’t Elop/Microsoft do this?
They can, its a matter of standardization so it won’t be a pain in the ass for the devs.
In Q4 all high end phones and tablets will be using quad cores, and once again nokia will lose out the marketing battle
i c no difference both ways.
if the galaxy S3 had dual core, and the new lumia had quadcore(or even more), salesmen will tell the consumer that the number of cores will only drain ur battery more or something.
another example is the 41mp, pixel number means little,(or worse: the more the pixels are , the less light travels through to the sensor)..
the Nokia brand is suffering these days, not a single friend of mine is looking forward to buy a new Nokia phone. Nokia made sure their customers remembered them for laggy slow phones.
i’ve alwayz grown up with the perception that, if there is any mobile company that can create a super duper phone, it would be nokia, and only nokia. i dont understand why they keep shooting their self in the foot when it comes to Cpu and rams.. 1ghz for a 80dollar phone, yet we have 1.4ghz(lumia and 808) for a 600dollar one.. :S
1ghz for a 80dollar phone, yet we have 1.4ghz(lumia and 808) for a 600dollar one.. :S
And they never tell the differences between ARM11 and Cortex A8 to the public. And that makes people think Lumias are overpriced, which they are only 400mhz faster than the ashas.
This is a situation which they are stuck with Windows Phone. They cant use faster chips till Apollo.
LOL.
And I always hope Nokia make a Super Android phone. Not about to develop much in Android. But to tell the public Nokia can really capable of making Super Smartphones(As most people think only android and iOS are smartphone OS). Which helps to regain the popularity of Nokia Brand.
Haha. This will never happen
the diff between arm11 and Cortex A8/9 is another sad sad story
the n900 had a cortex i believe , .. maemo was the answer for all of nokia’s problems, it was ready, it had everything, best browser, nice ecosystem(lesser apps , but qt?).. the only prob was battery life? shows how silly the management of nokia were(not defending elop, which has his own lame moves, who announces the death of his OS, 5 years in advance :S,, lol)…
the problem of maemo is the merger with moblin.
I think this is 2nd worst move from Nokia management team besides the M$-Nokia deal.
Nope they wont. By far the most popular one, iPad will more than likely still continue to be dual core, like next iphone.
Also Nokia has no worries on the power side when it comes to W8 tablets. The S4 (not used in phones) is likely to be the most powerful SoC at the time.
Of course if you are a core whore you can buy Tegra 3 that is already spanked by dual core S4, not to talk abouy S4 Pro.
Nope they wont. By far the most popular one, iPad will more than likely still continue to be dual core, like next iphone.
Apple knows marketing. Yeah they may not use quad cores, but they will use a more powerful quad core GPU
Public will think the new ipad has a quad core CPU, competitions only have dual core
The S4 (not used in phones) is likely to be the most powerful SoC at the time.
None of the SoCs in current market can match A5X with the SGX543MP4 GPU
This is still not going to make the folks happy. As for S III having Qualcomm S4 chip in the U.S, this is because the current S4 doesn’t support LTE as far as I remember.
Hey folks.don’t you know tegra 3 is a more than 1 year old chip?when we get our hands on S4 phones,maybe tegra 4 will be out.the only qualcomm thing i m looking forward to is the future snapdragon chip with amd/ati tech gpu.i hate Nokia, we love her so much ,but she always give us fans rubbish hardwares expect camera.
They need more power to run high resolution screen.
Not really – in a power-optimized system, the CPU would only be responsible to set the graphics layout which is not really big of a deal even on insanely large resolutions, and the GPU would do the graphics crunching and composition. That’s what allows Symbian Belle to run so smooth on the ancient ARM11 architecture.
CPUs these days are not really used for graphics processing, and for a good reason, too.
Why I would to buy any tablet from Nokia? I don’t need it
Why I would need more cores in my mobile?
I need perfectly working mobile, and I realy don’t care number of cores. What counts is OS which is not a monster consuming resources. The Americans has flight to the Moon and get back with one single core and 16KB RAM. And were talking Earth-Moon call. I am not going to fly even a friction of that. I think you only plays another marketing wars about nothing.
Nokia is good at two things. Dumbphones and Camera. They have lost the Smartphone market, let them concentrate on s40 with great camera capabilities.
I don’t get it. I simply don’t. Give me a real reason why it is the number of cores that makes a smartphone? It is a truly idiotic way to benchmark the overall performance and usability of a phone.
This. In general only programs that are designed for dual core, make use of dual core, and only pograms that are designed for quad core, make use of quad core. There are some tasks that you can scale with “any” number of cores and keep the performance increase near linear ( if those cores are equally powerful ), but there are not many of them in a phone.
Of course, it’s not quite as simple as that as one core needs to handle exceptions -> OS code. Or if you like to multitask ( though I wonder how many intesive workloads can you throw at a phone anyways ).
IMO 2 cores is pretty optimal right now, but that really depends on processor design. If optimized properly I kinda like the Tegra3 way of having 1 weak main core and additional cores activated as needed.
Because bigger number is better. It is the same as with megapixels, people will buy camera with more megapixels even when in reality it will produce worse images.
From general consumer perspective quadcore is clearly better than dualcore and Nokia would need to bring some other clear advantage to counter that. Of course the problem is with WP they don’t have one. BTW, this again proves that WP is lagging competition by more than one year.
http://pocketnow.com/2012/06/08/intel-questions-android-multi-core-efficency-whos-to-blame/
Even the chip manufacturers are not happy about the “multicore-love” around the Androids. I prefer efficiency over bragging.
If they can show like double the battery life as quadcore competitors then Nokia has advantage. But WP7 is barely holding to others and nobody thinks this will change with WP8.
BTW, it would be interesting to know in what way you think the link relates to this discussion.
If your view is “only specs matter”, then the link doesn’t relate to this discussion at all. Marketing-wise, it would be good to have this steroid phone that makes no sense, I agree. But in general, I don’t count anyone out just because they don’t have the most amount of cores in their phones.
“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail”
It’s not “my view”, it’s simple fact of life that people like to think they made the right decision. If Nokia can’t get quadcore on its flagship it’s big marketing blow and 30 more minutes of batter life, even if they are able to get that, can’t fix it.
And frankly the relationship between cores and efficiency is lot more complicated than the simplistic more cores = less efficiency.
Dual core cortex a9 shit !! The best chipset Qualcomm APQ8064 (quad core,28nm,Adreno 320,LTE)
OK man, everything what is not a pee is a shit. Satisfied?
ok guys.. Much as we all pretend dat windows phone don’t need all those cores, the fact is IOS runs very smoothly on single core. Even smoother than WP. Bt Apple gives IOS the chance to run very powerful 3rd party apps and games without compromising on performance.
If u put a single core and a quad core cpu on a browser battle, no matter how optimized the software, the quad core will always win. so we need higher resolution screens more lots power full bluetooth acess and all limitations removed and a whole new UI in wp8 . Then nokia will kick ass.
I hate specs. race!
Nokia, please just release a phone with 5inch full HD Amoled Screen, 100MP pureview APS-C sensor, Intel i7 extreme edition CPU(6 core, 12 threads) , Nvidia Geforce GTX 680M GPU, Windows 8 laptop dock, interchangeable lenses and end this spex. race!
After that no one will talk about specs. ever again
what about specs race ? only android and apple is there in that race for specs. nokia has NEVER given any decent spec’d hardware other than the camera. have they ever given the fastest processor, most ram, most storage, in the recent past ? all i remember is how stingy they have been with ram and a low powered cpu and heck even a low powered battery with the E7. so, please do not tell me nokia has ever been in the specs race that you now don’t want them to rush into it.
i’d be glad if someone told us to give current specs, not tomorrow specs like how samsung and apple forever one up themselves in the race. competition is good for us customers.
You are the people who want Nokia to enter the spec. race, not me.
I’m happy with my Single core Lumia 800 which performs better than most dual core droids out there.
Nokia should make best devices, regardless of specs.
Like Dinning said- when we’ll do 1080p, we’ll do it like no other.
And I want Nokia to take the same approach for other specs too
I would like Nokia to join the spec race ( or war at this point ), but to do it with only 1, king of the hill, device.
i did not say nokia enter the spec race. but they gave sub standard specs to paying customers. ram has been pathetic for so many years on nokia. the e series all the way till e71/ 72 their bread and butter for a number of years. E7 has pathetic battery life. underpowered cpu for all the S3 devices when they started. and the asha series has a much more powerful cpu – it’s a joke. and you tell me nokia gave great hardware ? forget great hardware, give “decent” hardware, not yesterday’s leftovers !
nokia has been bad since the last 3-5 years with poor hardware – just the time the smartphones had a phenomenal run. no wonder they are searching for clues to crack the market!
Hahahahahahahaha. They are all Eldar and Android fans. We are now in the same position with phones as computers were in 1999. Some fools sitting and benchmarking hardware instead of using it to see which one is faster in everyday use and better suited for them. It will pass. Apple didn’t build their stuff on the best specs, but on human use. It worked for them, and has been working for Nokia. Just ignore.
Your so right man! All this sounds like a hardware pissing contest to see who knows the most and nobody cares. Brains over braun…. Apple showed this by advertising the compete user experience despite Nokia having all the tech for years before. Specs will disappear from the store front and only really exist cos Android phones try to differentiate themselves. Most people buying a phone just ask the sales rep anyway and reps will eventually stop talking specs and just talk about the eco-system…and lets not start an apps pissing contest either.
You tell me where the hardware spec of a phone takes presidents over its user experience? picture quality ( not mp) battery life, screen, toughness etc…. These are measures of quality not specs. Ok 41mp does produce the best pics ever (I have an 808) but that’s just a headline grabber for PureView tech, all my pics are in 5mp PureView mode. As for battery life, if more cores make it more energy efficient then all the better, but more cote do not make it a better phone!
Btw despite the 808 giving the best pics/video it just doesn’t cut it as a great phone. My Lumia 800 still knocks the socks off it in every other department…. and IMO beats the al the others to.
why can’t nokia offer a spanking new multi core CPU and a powerful GPU in their phone ? they keep saying that windows/ symbian are frugal with power needs anyways. what stops them from giving the best to the consumers ? a smartphone battery anyways lasts one day because of the large screen, so might as well give something that’s good. if the OS is frugal, that means the tasks can be accomplished even faster, plus the added benefit of having a lightning fast cpu/ gpu – this will trounce androids or apples out there.
but no, nokia wants to give yesterday’s hardware at today’s rates.
Because of standardization. Attracting devs are hard enough, having a major fragmented key specs will mean a dead marketplace.
Agree.
Best hardware w/o devs is like the best sport car but w/o any chances for fuel – will not ride anywhere.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flagship
flagship
flag·ship
noun \ˈflag-ˌship\
Definition of FLAGSHIP
1
: the ship that carries the commander of a fleet or subdivision of a fleet and flies the commander’s flag
2
: the finest, largest, or most important one of a series, network, or chain
A FLAGSHIP mobile phone should be just that: Top of the line, bleeding edge technology.
It should represent the WHOLE of Nokia as a company. The crowning glory of ALL SERIES.
It should make Nokia users proud. It should capture the very base desire and craving of the MARKET.
It should make the consumers breathless in admiration and gasp, “F**K ANDROID!!! F**K APPLE!!! I WANT THAT NOKIA PHONE SO BAD!!!”
Do you have that very same reaction with our current Nokia FLAGSHIP?
That’s right, I guess not. Too many features lacking. And talk about the hardware, we’ve only scratched the surface.
Lesson: Do not make the same mistakes.
P.S., And no, it doesn’t have to be Android, Symbian, MeeGo, Meltemi nor Harmattan.
Wrong!
When I saw the N9, I was like-
F@#k Apple and F#%k Android…just give me the N9… But then I met Lumia 800.
I’m happy with it!
The amount of misinformed or even completely ignorant opinions on advantages and disadvantages of multi-core systems both, in these comments and on the interwebs in general, is just staggering. Sadly, I’ve used up all my free time on the RISC vs. CISC comment, but I might get around it at later time to explain a thing or two about it.
Sufficient to say – those who think this is purely a spec game have no idea what are they talking about. Smooth animated transitions != fast and good performance. I’d bet you that any s30 phone with abysmal hardware does the tasks it can – faster than any smartphone on average. But it couldn’t stand a chance in hell when used as a general computing device, which smartphones these days are, due to extremely limited hardware it comes equipped with.
I disagree with you on a lot of things but you’re spot on with this one.
Windows Phonee will support multicore in the same way it supports multitask. When one is working, another one is sleeping.
get a life all of you, do you have a share in any of the companies? NO.
then who gives a heck about nokia doing this and samsung doing that. just buy the one you think is better and if the crowed doesn’t follow good luck to them.
lumia 800 owner by the way
Lolol