
$310 Xiaomi Phone: 1.5GHz dual-core,1G RAM,4GB ROM,480x854 4',MIUI+Android2.3.5 - est
http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/16/xiaomi-m1-with-miui-os-a-310-phone-with-1-5ghz-dual-core-soc-a/
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ck2
So this is already more powerful in all aspects over the first generation
netbooks.

At the end of this decade will cellphones be as powerful as today's average
integrated desktop computer?

Can you imagine a server rack of cellphone sized computers (the drives will
all be external SSD by then of course).

~~~
codedivine
A single-core Atom will still beat these in single threaded performance.
Multi-threaded performance is a different story, but I would still not expect
an outright win for these Snapdragons. However, Adreno 220 is clearly superior
to the GMA 950 crap bundled with most Atoms.

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ck2
I wouldn't be too sure of that. And these were BEFORE a 1.5ghz ARM chip.

[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_pEfSMUbljUA/S9yFTQn2xoI/AAAAAAAAAD...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_pEfSMUbljUA/S9yFTQn2xoI/AAAAAAAAAD8/P2r0WkVYhZI/s1600/Benchmark_ipad_iphone_atom_arm_cortex_apple_a4_nvidia.JPG)

[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_pEfSMUbljUA/TIJceUBPyCI/AAAAAAAAAE...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_pEfSMUbljUA/TIJceUBPyCI/AAAAAAAAAEU/hvvbfuIRaxA/s1600/Cortex_vs_ARM11_vs_Atom_Coremark_Benchmarks.JPG)

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codedivine
Coremark isn't a good benchmark. I have been benchmarking Snapdragons and
Atoms myself on a variety of integer and floating point codes. I will publish
them sometime soon but Atom-based netbooks came ahead of the Snapdragon based
systems I had access to. I suspect this is partially because you have more
memory bandwidth available in netbooks compared to mobile devices.

edit: Also, I do expect results to change quite a bit when the Krait
architecture comes into play for Qualcomm.

~~~
ck2
Ah interesting - I look forward to your benchmarks!

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rb2k_
It's not a 310$ phone unless I can actually buy it.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
I googled for 10 minutes to work out how to pre order this phone, a website,
something, anything. It's all just stuff about the MIUI ROM or news about this
phone.

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schme
"will be available for pre-order on August 29th for October delivery"

Maybe the websites will come up by then.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
Ah, googling for just the company name returns a more relevant result. But not
in a language I can understand :(

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forgotusername
When they say "4gb ROM", do they literally mean 4gb of crapware burnt in?
(Which might help explain the low cost) Or is it perhaps supposed to say
flash.

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Game_Ender
ROM = Read Only Memory, so yes they do mean "flash" as you understand it.

~~~
forgotusername
So flash as I understand it, generally refers to memory that can be written
many times, whereas ROM specifically refers to memory that is "written" once
(often before leaving the factory) and that's it. I'm slightly perplexed by
your reply. :)

Didn't realize until after posting that Android needs a writeable FS, so the
article was clearly wrong.

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hackermom
I wish I could get myself together to put some trust in telecom equipment from
PRC-based companies, but I just can't. The phone seems like an awesome piece
of hardware.

~~~
jarin
Wasn't there some thing about Lenovo laptops having crazy spy chips in them,
or was that just silly CIA psyops propaganda?

~~~
starwed
The CIA hardly need exert itself to create crazy, unfounded rumors on the
internet.

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karolist
Looks like Chinese copy of what Apple did in 2006, despite the technical
specs.

~~~
jensnockert
Imitation is the highest form of flattery, and the specifications seem to be
almost the best around.

At that price-point, some thing like the battery life might not be very good,
especially with such a high-clocked processor, but it seems to be a quite
reasonable design from the pictures, not counting the buttons, I prefer
hardware buttons.

I don't own an Android phone right now, but I am definitely considering buying
a Xiaomi Phone, and if you can actually import it at that price, well, then it
is competing with phones like the Wildfire S. Which may make it quite a nice
high-end phone popular with geeks and developers, befriending those groups is
always important.

~~~
exDM69
Cheap phones might have low-end displays too. The quality of a display is hard
to quantify as numbers (unlike the CPU, memory, etc) so it's easy to leave
that out from your marketing material.

~~~
jensnockert
They claim to have a huge 1930mAh battery
([http://www.gadgetsbing.com/2011/08/first-chinese-phone-
with-...](http://www.gadgetsbing.com/2011/08/first-chinese-phone-with-1-5ghz-
dual-core-soc-xiaomi-phone-pre-order-on-august-29th/)) and that the display is
a Sharp 480 x 854 LCD, but there might be many models.

