With RIM introducing totally new processors in the upcoming/rumored BlackBerry OS 6.1 devices I thought I would do some digging into them. The first thing I noticed off the bat is that the Qualcomm 1.2Ghz CPU’s specified for the Storm “Monaco” and Bold “Montana” are a bit of a mystery. As far as I can tell Qualcomm does not have a single core 1.2Ghz chip. They only have a dual core MSM8x60 1.2Ghz third generation chip. That makes me wonder if those BlackBerry devices will be packing dual cores… UPDATE: Barrist pointed out to me that the Qualcomm press release from January of this year says it is capable of 1.2Ghz even though their specifications sheet says 1Ghz… Very odd.
On the other hand we have the BlackBerry Curve “Sedona” and newly leaked Curve Touch both supposedly sporting a Qualcomm MSM8655 800Mhz processor. That processor is actually a 2nd generation Snapdragon processor and is rated to run up to 1Ghz. It seems like RIM will be under-clocking it to 800Mhz like they have done in the past but still it is not capable of 1.2Ghz…
All in all both processors are HUGE upgrades for the BlackBerry platform and will answer 50% of the needs users have had with a nice speed boost. Hopefully RIM will follow it up with a one two punch including software the take advantage of the hardware. In OS 6.1 I am hoping to rarely see an hourglass and reboot should take less than 10 seconds.
Barrist pointed out that the MSM8655 chipset in the Sedona is the same chip as the HTC ThunderBolt which has it running at the full 1Ghz. As you can see on AndroidSpin the processor gets some impressive results in Quadrant.
Let me know if you spot anything else about these Snapdragon processors. You can read more about the Snapdragon generations on Qualcomm’s website at this link.
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