Motorola Droid 4 Early Test Data Confirms RAZR Internals and Software

 

Motorola has produced a lot of phones in the last several months that iterate the same hardware platform. While this is typical of a manufacturer (just look at the sheer number of Galaxy S variants available still today), the rate at which devices within a line have been EOL'd and reiterated have been a bit surprising. So, having released the Droid 3 less than six months ago, we now have the Droid 4.

 

The earlier Droid was based on the TI OMAP 4 clocked at 1 GHz and ran Motorola's non-Blur skin over Gingerbread. With the Droid RAZR, this platform was updated to 1.2 GHz and brought some performance optimizations to their software package. The Droid 4 was announced with the same hardware and software platforms as the RAZR, and after a little hands-on time we can confirm that performance matches the RAZR almost exactly. This isn't terribly surprising, but if you are a Droid-ophile still clutching your Droid 2 Global waiting for a worthy successor, your wait may be over. The Droid 4 brings LTE, dual-core performance and a QWERTY keyboard in a package that bests the Droid 3 for thinness at a surprising 8.99 mm. Of course, you could just wait a few more months for the Droid 5. 

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Ultrabook prices to fall in early 2012?

Intel will be pleased to hear that Acer, Asus and Toshiba may be able to lower the prices of Ultrabooks in the first quarter of 2012.

Supply chain sources told Digitimes that prices will fall between 5 and 10 per cent early in the year, potentially taking the prices under $1,000 in the US as Intel has always dreamed.

In a 13-inch Ultrabook, the tech site estimates the cost of all the components to come in at around $700, with solid state drives and software licensing pushing the prices ever sky-wards.

Ultrapricey

The processor company introduced the 'Ultrabook' category to refer to powerful, slim, stylish non-Mac laptops that are meant to challenge the MacBook Air.

Apple has always had the edge on price, though - manufacturers have found it difficult to come down as low as $1,000 (the equivalent of £635), with the cream of the crop, the Asus Zenbook, coming in at $1,099.

Here in the UK, the Asus Zenbook UX31, is on the market at £999 – and it is rather lovely, as you'll see from our full TechRadar review.

The CEA - which runs CES - told TechRadar recently that it is predicting that 30-50 new Ultrabooks will be announced at the show in January.

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• Samsung may quit netbook market in 2012

Early Benchmarks and Teardown of LaCie Little Big Disk

LaCie released its first Thunderbolt-equipped storage solution called Little Big Disk (LBD) last week, and some people have already received their units. A user ender21 over at MacRumors Forums has posted some early benchmarks and a small teardown of the 1TB version of LBD. The 1TB unit comes with two 500GB 7200rpm drives configured in RAID 0, so the SSDs are user-installed. LaCie also has plans for SSD based LBD but the availability is unknown at the moment.

Benchmarks

For this test, a 6.22GB QuickTime video file was used. The file was moved from OWC Extreme 6G 120GB to the LBD, and back, to test average transfer speeds. The SSD configuration was also tested with a RAM disk to eliminate possible bottlenecks caused by the internal SSD. 

What is surprising is that the SSDs in RAID 0 deliver so poor performance. We are looking at only 20-30MB/s increase (40-50MB/s with RAM disk) in performance over two 7200rpm HDs in RAID 0, while even a single Crucial M4 should deliver speeds of over 500MB/s with incompressible data, such as a video file like in this test. It's possible that the SATA controller in LBD is SATA 3Gb/s, since at least the hard drives are 3Gb/s variety (not that they could take advantage of SATA 6Gb/s anyway). Even that wouldn't explain the poor performance though, because Crucial m4 gets speeds of around 270MB/s when connected to SATA 3Gb/s, so we should be looking at figures around 500MB/s when running RAID 0 with two drives. Thunderbolt can't be the limiting factor due to its maximum transfer rate of 1.25GB/s. 

Hopefully we will find out what is causing the low transfer speeds when we get our review unit, or if there is simply an error in these figures. 

Teardown

Gallery: LaCie Little Big Disk Teardown

The teardown doesn't reveal anything special. There are two 2.5" 7200rpm drives inside the chassis. This is a 1TB model with two 500GB hard drives, which turned out to be made by Hitachi, but it's possible that other brands are used as well. Upgrading the hard drives doesn't look too hard and there aren't many screws on the way either. 

The circuit board is shown in one of the pictures but there isn't anything surprising. The actual Thunderbolt chips seems to be covered by something, so we don't see its model number either. 

Thanks to Rick for providing us the benchmarks and pictures!

Source: MacRumors Forums

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PCTuning use GIGABYTE boards for early Bulldozer and Gulftown head to head

It would appear that Czech hardware site PCtuning have apparently been lucky enough to get their hands an early AMD FX CPU sample, giving us a glimpse of the performance we can expect from AMD’s forthcoming enthusiast CPU line. In his latest article we see that Mr. Z.Obermaier is comparing his AMD FX chip with Intel’s top tier Core i7 990X part. While it’s certainly interesting to see that the new Bulldozer processors are managing to keep pace with their Gulftown counterparts, it’s also quite flattering for us here at Gigabyte to note that the reviewer is using our motherboards for both platforms.

The AMD FX chip is apparently being benched using our recently launched 990FXA-UD7 motherboard. It’s the most full featured AMD board we’ve ever done and the first to be able to harness both AMD and Nvidia multi-GPU setups. In the above image you’re looking at the UD7 in an SLI configuration. The Intel 990X CPU was put through its paces on our champion overclocking board, the GIGABYTE X58A-OC.

While these benchmarks are pretty far from conclusive, they are at least indicators that we may see the extreme performance space heat up in the next few months as AMD launch its FX line. It’s also fair to say that, as 3D gaming applications, these benchmarks are perhaps no 100% CPU-oriented, so even if these results are true, they probably do not represent the raw grunt of the two processors. It does however, at least indicate that in terms of multi-GPU configurations, DIY builders have more choices than ever.

You can read more on this, here and here.

Click here for the Chinese (中文版) version of this blog.

(Updated: Video and Gallery) Apple's iPhone 4 Coming to Verizon Early Next Month, With Wireless Hotspot

Well, it's official - Verizon is getting the iPhone 4. The Apple/Verizon relationship developed over the last two years. The two companies began technical discussions starting in 2008 about bringing the iPhone to Verizon. The phone then spent a year in testing and design and starting early next month, the iPhone 4 will come to Verizon.

The Apple/Verizon relationship is formalized in a multi-year, non-exclusive agreement. However we have no additional details, including whether or not release schedules will be synchronized with AT&T.

At Verizon's press conference there's a lot of mutual respect sharing between the two companies. It looks like there's a desire to establish that these two companies want to work together and will continue to going forward. 

Existing VZW customers will be able to pre-order the iPhone 4 online on February 3rd, 2010. A week later, on February 10th, everyone will be able to order the Verizon iPhone 4 both online and in Verizon stores as well as at the Apple store (both online and at physical stores).

The phone will sell for $199.99 for a 16GB version, and $299.99 for the 32GB version. The Verizon iPhone 4 will feature wireless hotspot capabilities allowing you to connect up to 5 devices to it over WiFi. Verizon indicated that you wouldn't be able to use voice and data simultaneously, consistent with other CDMA devices on its network.

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More as we get it.

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