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Identity Crisis: HTC Edge Becomes Endeavor, Then Supreme

Michael Kwan — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 01:24:09 +0000

HTC has a habit of having a million different names for effectively the same product. Maybe it comes from the days when their primary business was still as an OEM/ODM manufacturer for other companies. Remember the HTC Wizard? That same habit is continuing right through to 2012, because it looks like HTC has come up with at least two more names for the HTC Edge, a phone that still isn’t really all that official at all.

As a quick refresher, the HTC Edge is going to be this super powerful smartphone with a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra3 processor under the hood. We’re hearing of a 4.7-inch AMOLED 720p display, 10mm profile, and an 8MP camera (with F/2.2). The design should be similar to the leaked image we have here, but it’s also quite possible that individual carriers and countries could find some slight variations.

In the meantime, the HTC Edge seems now to be carrying the codename of the HTC Endeavor. But that’s not enough. We’re also hearing that the final product name is more likely the HTC Supreme. And that’s not taking into account the various names that the different carriers will use in an attempt to differentiate themselves from one another. And this is all ahead of the official MWC unveiling in a few weeks. I’m just waiting for an HTC XXXtreme XL 4G Elite.

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Official: Kal-El Lives With Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime

Michael Kwan — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:06:13 +0000

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer is one of my favorite current Android tablets, but it looks like Asus is outdoing itself with the successor. What we once knew as the Eee Pad Transformer 2 is now officially revealed as the Eee Pad Transformer Prime. And yes, it’s got Kal-El going on.

The NVIDIA Tegra3 processor is easily one of the biggest stars of this upcoming Honeycomb tablet, but Asus is throwing in a few extra goodies to make sure you want it too. For starters, they’ve reworked the design so that it has more of a metallic finish, not unlike the gorgeous Asus Zenbook UX21. They’ve also slimmed down the package to just 8.3mm and 586 grams; compare that to the the 12.9mm and 690 grams of the original.

The rest of the specs are right in line with our previous expectations, including the 10.1-inch IPS display, 12-core GeForce GPU, memory expansion, 8MP rear camera, 1.2MP front camera, GPS, WiFi, USB 2.0, microHDMI, and 12 hours of battery life. Curiously, they’re only putting a single gig of RAM in there. I hope that’s enough to give us the true Kal-El experience.

The 32GB and 64GB models should both become available next month for $499 and $599, respectively. It looks like they’ve killed off the 16GB option, but pricing has remained steady for the upper two capacities. The keyboard dock is $149.

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TI goes crazy, announces OMAP5 quad-core 2GHz mobile processors

Michael Kwan — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 03:04:47 +0000

I can hear Tim Taylor grunting already. If you’re looking for more power on your smartphone, it looks like Texas Instruments is about to crank the volume up to eleven.

Remember when the first 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chips hit the scene and we amazed by having a “G” in the mobile CPU’s clock speed? And now NVIDIA Tegra2 is winning many hearts with its dual core wonders? Not to be outdone, the upcoming TI OMAP5 chips are going to boast four cores of processing.

“But the NVIDIA Tegra3 beat them to the punch!

True. The Tegra3 will do the quad-core thing, but “only” at up to 1.5GHz. The new OMAP5 platform will offer four cores going nutso at up to 2GHz. That’s supposed to offer up to 3x the processing power of the OMAP4 (which will power the BlackBerry PlayBook) while improving power consumption by 60%.

What’s interesting is that the four cores aren’t the same. You get two ARM Cortex-A15 cores (up to 2GHz) and two ARM Cortex-M4 cores. Combined, OMAP5 is said to support up to three QSXGA (2560×2048) displays at the same time.

Sure, that all sounds good on paper, but will it work in practice? That’s the bad news. Samples aren’t going to get shipped out to manufacturers until late 2011 with actual OMAP5-powered devices following in mid-2012. By then, Tim might have already Franken-welded four Tegra2 chips together for more power. (Grunts notwithstanding.)

[PhoneScoop]

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