Hasta La Gadget!

A very strange thing popped up on mobile graphic benchmarking site NenaMark the other day — an entry for the Droid Bionic. Now, it would be very easy to fake this test, and you’d be right to be skeptical given the incomplete score and the fact that it’s reporting PowerVR’s SGX 540 GPU, instead of the Tegra 2 we saw at CES. But, let’s not be too hasty — we heard back in April that NVIDIA’s mobile chip wasn’t playing nice with Verizon’s LTE. Perhaps when Motorola said it was delaying the Bionic to incorporate “several enhancements” it really meant “rebuilding the phone with a more LTE friendly CPU.” Both Samsung and Texas Instruments use the SGX 540, and Moto has previously turned to TI’s OMAP for the Droid, Droid 2, and Droid X. Then again, a single, suspiciously low benchmark score isn’t the most convincing basis for a rumor.

Droid Bionic benchmark reports PowerVR GPU, new SOC inside? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 29 May 2011 05:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Droid Life  |  NenaMark  | Email this | Comments

A lot of portable PC power cells last for only four or five hours, after which you’ll find yourself chained to a wall socket. Good thing there are external batteries to keep us in current when a plug’s nowhere to be found, and Tom’s Hardware has done some benchmarking on a slew of such devices so you’ll know which one’s suited for you. A Dell Vostro 3300 and an Inspiron Mini 10 running Windows 7 were used to put packs from Amstron, Brunton, Digipower, Electrovaya, Energizer, Lenmar, PowerTraveller and Tekkeon through some real-world paces — we’re talking word processing and web surfing, not fragging and film editing. So if you’re in the market for a mobile power unit, hit the source link and get the down and dirty on which external battery’s best.

External batteries benchmarked, the portable juice is loose originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Tom’s Hardware  | Email this | Comments

iFixit may have physically uncovered Apple’s latest silicon, but it’s the processor gurus that have discovered what’s truly inside — using software benchmarks, they’ve unearthed the speeds and feeds of the Apple A5. As you’ll no doubt be aware having read our headline above, there actually isn’t a 1GHz CPU at the helm, as AnandTech and IOSnoops report the dual-core ARM chip is dynamically clocked around 900MHz, likely in search of reduced power consumption. Perhaps more interestingly for all you gamers in the audience, the iPad 2 reports that it has a dual-core PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU on the die as originally foretold — and, spoiler alert — it mops the floor with both the original iPad and the Motorola Xoom. Though the new chip didn’t quite demonstrate 9X the graphical prowess of its predecessor, it rendered 57.6 frames per second in a GLBenchmark test where the (admittedly higher-res) Tegra 2 tablet managed only 26.7fps, and last year’s iPad pulled only 17.6fps. That’s some serious Tai Chi. Hit up our source links to see the difference it can make in games like Infinity Blade.

Update: Though it sure sounds like there’s a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 in there, that’s not yet a proven fact — we only know that it’s a dual-core ARM v7 chip which performs relatively similarly in non-graphical tests. [Thanks, Jim]

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

iPad 2 specs discerned, 900MHz dual-core ARM CPU and PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU blow away graphical benchmarks originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Mar 2011 20:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  AnandTech (1), (2)  | Email this | Comments

Which dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 system-on-a-chip rules the roost? It’s probably too early to tell, but if you’re looking for a preliminary verdict, AnandTech has benchmarked all three of them now. Texas Instruments’ OMAP 4430, NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 and Samsung’s Exynos 4210 went head to head in a gauntlet of browser and graphical benchmarks, and it looks like the LG Optimus 3D’s OMAP 4 came out on top, boasting minor but significant improvements practically across the board. Good news for the BlackBerry PlayBook, no? Oh, and if you’re wondering why the iPhone 4 and Atrix 4G fall behind their older brethren in the image above, remember that they both have to render images at a higher screen resolution. More graphs at our source link below.

LG Optimus 3D’s OMAP 4 benchmarked, pulls ahead of Exynos and Tegra 2 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  AnandTech  | Email this | Comments

We’re unabashed spec junkies here at Engadget, and can you blame us? There are mountains of new devices every year, and it helps to have bullet points and numerical differentiators to cut through the fluff. That’s why we’re happy to say we got the chance to run the Quadrant benchmark on Motorola’s Tegra 2-powered Xoom, and have a number with which to compare it against the many competitors sure to breech Android’s bow soon. 1823 is the magic number — which doesn’t quite compare to the LG Optimus 2X — but that’s with a non-optimized smartphone version of Quadrant running the app on the tablet’s sizable 1280 x 800 display, no less. What’s more, Quadrant cleared up some of the codename confusion we’ve seen out of Moto as of late, as it turns out the Xoom also identifies itself as both Trygon and Stingray. Good to know!

Motorola Xoom first benchmark: 1823 in Quadrant originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments