Some pics have cropped up on Engadget about a mysterious phone that’s rumored to be coming from HTC. Specs include Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, a 4.5 inch display, 32GB of storage, an impressive 1830mAh battery, an 8MP camera and 1.3MP front-facing camera. Most intriguingly the HTC ‘Zeta’ is said to be on its way with an absolutely astonishing quad-core 2.5GHz processor.
Let us remind you that a quad-core device is just that: four cores. That means the HTC Zeta, if it exists and these rumors are accurate, will potentially run at the incredible speed of somewhere around (but obviously not equal to, for all those PC geeks out there) 10GHz.
If you still don’t get what the fuss is we’d ask you check out a short post we did about the current mobile world a short while back and then get back to us.
What we find a little more surprising, however, is that the Zeta’s rumored specs only include 1GB of RAM and no mention of an upgraded graphics card. 1GB of RAM is currently what you’d expect to see in a dual-core 1.2GHz device like the Motorola RAZR or Samsung Galaxy S II and that’s fine. But 1GB to go a long with a quad-core 2.5GHz processor smacks of marketing-over-functionality.
You see, more often in the mobile market top-end devices are beginning to be judged on the speed of their central processing units (CPUs). Phrases like “Dual-core 1.2GHz” are thrown around as if that’s all you really need to know to make a decision. It’s not surprising, as we’ve had exactly the same problem with digital cameras and Megapixel ratings for a long time. The truth about computers is that there’s a myriad of things you need in order to get the best out of your hardware and a powerful CPU is only one piece of the puzzle.
Don’t get us wrong, the prospect of a quad-core 2.5GHz phone gives our inner (and outer) geeky selves goose-bumps. But we’d really like to see manufacturing companies start focusing on RAM and Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) before we make the leap to a 10GHz phone.
There are already games in the Android Market that give pause to even the most impressive of mobile hardware. One specific example is the addictive title Wind-up Knight, which tends to lag on the Galaxy S II despite that phone’s fantastic specs. This isn’t because a lack of RAM or a lack of processing power, but because of a GPU deficiency.
This is an example of how we're already starting to see the effects of focusing on CPU power over other components. If RAM is also set to sit still for a time while we surge ahead in CPU power then, ultimately, we could find ourselves standing around with an extremely battery-hungry device that can never live up to its CPU’s potential.
What we’re basically trying to say is that we’re all for quad-core phones and increasing CPU power. But it’s important that we don’t get swept away in the search for more power and forget things like RAM or graphical support.
We’d like to know what you think. Are you excited about the potential of quad-core devices, or do you want to see a shared focus across all of a device’s hardware, rather than just a handful of the more marketable specs?
Source: Engadget
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