Snapdragon processor bound for Nokia and Symbian later this year

[Ewan]

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs confirmed to the Helsingin Sanomat that they are working with Nokia to have a Snapdragon processor running with Symbian by the end of this year (reports Stefan at IntoMobile). Snapdragon is of course the processor inside the Google Nexus 1, and provides built in GPS, BlueTooth, WiFi cellular radio chipsets.

Read on in the full article.

[Hih]

Only for North America though.

what do you mean only for NA?

[giggig]

Very funny Ewan Spence , when you say nokia may go direct to 1.3 GHz, when they are years late in putting even 1 GHz or 800 MHz processor, world was going after 1 GHz and Nokia was happy with 369 MHz overclocked at 434? situation is still very same. First weight long for them to put 1 GHz and they will do so when other companies will move to next generation processors. For how long nokia will take its good market position for granted. they need to stand up and tighten there screws i feel.
Its understandable to put outdated hardware in cheap Symbian phones but i don't know, what decision makers at Nokia tried to achieve with outdated hardware on N97 and N97 Mini, Apart from losing some market share and letting the competitors laugh on them, even Symbian lovers could not defend N97 only due to poor processor and RAM, but they blamed the OS, Symbian mostly.

What market share did they lose?

@giggig:

It wasn't a 369 MHz processor overclocked at 434 MHz, it was a 434 MHz processor initially UNDERclocked at 369 MHz and now running at its nominal speed.

No manufacturer would deliberately overclock components in production devices knowing the consequences for operating temperature and stability and the impact on battery life, both of which are already problematic enough - not just for Nokia but for all manufacturers.

Why would they choose Snapdragon, when OMAP3 is cheaper, more powerful (compare graphics and multi-tasking capabilities of existing phones) and drains less battery!?!?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Why would they choose Snapdragon, when OMAP3 is cheaper, more powerful (compare graphics and multi-tasking capabilities of existing phones) and drains less battery!?!?

Propably related to these being spesificly designed for NA market, and Qualcomms close relationship with american networks.

The way that Helsingin Sanomat article is written hints strongly that Nokia has finally caved into demands of those operators. Except these to be seriously cripled, or designed to have feature set according to network wishes.

[clonmult]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Why would they choose Snapdragon, when OMAP3 is cheaper, more powerful (compare graphics and multi-tasking capabilities of existing phones) and drains less battery!?!?

Are you sure about the pricing advantages of the OMAP3 over the snapdragon? The CPU core is basically the same in both (Cortex A8), similar possible overall performance, offering 720p video, 12mp imaging support, DSP, etc.

How can you compare graphics and multi tasking though - you're likely to be comparing totally different devices with very different overall designs.

I want to comment that Snapdragon is using ARMv7 instruction set, but it is not the same implementation as found on the TI OMAP 3, that is A8, Snapdragon is using Qualcomm implementation and it different to the other Cortex A8 or A9 implementation, these two are fully developed by ARM.

agree with the comment on NA. This is nokia's move to get back in North America. The new phones will probably be CDMA EDvo that will work on Verizon and Sprint type networks. Meaning SimCard-less phones. Nokia might stay with Omap in their GSM 3G SimCard phones. At first though. They might decide differently along the way.

[clonmult]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

agree with the comment on NA. This is nokia's move to get back in North America. The new phones will probably be CDMA EDvo that will work on Verizon and Sprint type networks. Meaning SimCard-less phones. Nokia might stay with Omap in their GSM 3G SimCard phones. At first though. They might decide differently along the way.

Eh? You what? You do realise that what you've just written makes almost precisely no sense whatsoever.

Strange that the iPhone has done amazingly well in america even though it isn't CDMA.

Nope, nothing to do with CDMA, Nokia have been doing CDMA kit for years.

Its purely down to performance and probably pricing - no doubt Nokia are going to get a relatively good deal, even if only down to the quantities that they're going to be buying. Remember that despite all the blogging stupidity over "Nokia is done, Symbian is dead", Nokia are still by far and away the biggest sellers of smartphones on the planet.

[bartmanekul]

Originally Posted by clonmult

Remember that despite all the blogging stupidity over "Nokia is done, Symbian is dead", Nokia are still by far and away the biggest sellers of smartphones on the planet.

While that's true, this is only because of the low end and cheap smartphones they make, ala 5800 and 5230. While those are very good considering price, Nokia have been out of the top end battles for quite some time.

Quite frankly, Nokia have been producing pure rubbish.

The N97 was a joke of mythical proportions. Not only was there issues with build - which Nokia refused to do anything about for a long time - but it is woefully underpowered.

Enter the N97 mini, too late and too little, with a price tag thats simply not justified.

The N86 seems to be a decent phone by most accounts, but Nokia seem to have lost interest in their non touchscreen phones. Good example being the 5800 getting free Ovi maps, but the N86 still in limbo.

Whatever possessed Nokia to think that the N97's processor would be ok is beyond most people. Especially something claimed to be a 'mini computer.'

Snapdragon or OMAP, Nokia should have gotten with them a long time ago, rather than reserving it for the N900.

@bartman...
> Nokia have been out of the top end battles for quite some time.
> Quite frankly, Nokia have been producing pure rubbish.

Oh dear, I'm afraid your own personal bitterness is rather on display here. Guess you bought an N97 or similar and then didn't like it. Dorry if that's the case, but if you'd calmed down a bit and said that some of Nokia's latest top end smartphones were less competitive than they could have been in some respects (mainly UI it has to be said) then that would have been a fair and balanced assessment.

As it is with comments like you've made you're going to be lumped in with all the 'Nokia and Symbian are dead' loonies on the net, who see the next thing to criticise and jump on it.

May I remind you that actually the N97/mini have done not badly at all, despite some initial hiccups, and this notion that Nokia's smartphone success is purely down to the low end is myth. Prove it.

What's more, Nokia's smartphone market share grew 5% last quarter, which is HUGE all things considered, while poor old Apple's remained static, which is REALLY bad news for them, as it's traditionally the iPhone's strongest quarter, so a bit of a shocking result for iPhone which is also traditionally flat in the first half of the year until a new iPhone emerges.

With all the recent amazing Nokia announcements (Symbian^3 demo, free Maps+Nav, Ovi Store successes, MeeGo) smart investors will be dumping Apple and Android shares, and rushing to buy Nokia.

[Tenkom]

Does anyone have any proof of which is faster of the omap3 and the snapdragon? Comparing 2 different devices is useless because software optimisations play such a big role.