iPhone/Zune/iPod & More Prediction Thread

I got a porn pop-up from there. =\ Sex webcams. No nudity, but who knows if other pop ups might have some.

Tread with caution.
 
wco81 said:
I didn't see it linked here but Anandtech speculates on the silicon in the 3G S.

http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3579
Click to expand...
Well, the only thing that isn't "clear" yet is the GPU. Anand speculates in the article that it is a SGX 520 (the smallest SGX) and writes in the comments when asked how sure he is about that: "The graphics side I'm also very sure about, although I can't post why :)".

Some people hope for SGX 530 or even more. SGX 530 is very possible, 540 a long shot. I think Apple plans to reuse this year's SoC in the 2010 model (@45nm and with some tweaks), so a more powerful SGX than the 520 would imho make more sense.
 
Mike11 said:
Well, the only thing that isn't "clear" yet is the GPU. Anand speculates in the article that it is a SGX 520 (the smallest SGX) and writes in the comments when asked how sure he is about that: "The graphics side I'm also very sure about, although I can't post why :)".

Some people hope for SGX 530 or even more. SGX 530 is very possible, 540 a long shot. I think Apple plans to reuse this year's SoC in the 2010 model (@45nm and with some tweaks), so a more powerful SGX than the 520 would imho make more sense.
Click to expand...


Its is nearly guaranteed NOT to be 520. In Oct '08, IMG stated:-

"SGX540 is licensed to more than five partners, and has taped out this quarter in multiple SoCs, while SGX531 and SGX520 are in design with several licensees"
http://www.imgtec.com/News/Release/index.asp?NewsID=400


So 520 wasn't in Tape out at that time. Its pretty much impossible to go from "in design" to in a chip in production quantities in 9 months.

It would appear that 520 was present in some physical form in Nov '08, as it passed opengles2.0 conformance testing at that time:-
http://www.imgtec.com/News/Release/index.asp?NewsID=411

I think its highly likely to be 530, with a very outside chance of being 540.
 
warmi said:
Read the new OpenGL docs on their dev site ... it is there.
Click to expand...
i must be reading the wrong docs then, as i still can't see anything like that. technically, i see no reason for it, but then again, apple have been acting rather minimalistic re their iph/ipt GPU featureset exposure (VGP vertex shaders, hello?), in stark contrast to their desktop GPUs, where they'd go extra miles to offer as full feature support as possible, so go figure.
 
darkblu said:
i must be reading the wrong docs then, as i still can't see anything like that. technically, i see no reason for it, but then again, apple have been acting rather minimalistic re their iph/ipt GPU featureset exposure (VGP vertex shaders, hello?), in stark contrast to their desktop GPUs, where they'd go extra miles to offer as full feature support as possible, so go figure.
Click to expand...

Check out OpenGL ES Programming Guide for iPhone|Platform Notes|OpenGL ES 2.0 on the PowerVR SGX|Limits - look at the second bullet point.
 
rendezvous said:
The flash memory is not visible on the iPhone 3G picture becouse it is mounted on the back side.

Follow link for pictures of iPhone 3G and iPhone 2G boards:
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20090114/164030/?SS=imgview_e&FD=-825822605
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info! I guess we need to see a photo of the back side to know if it's 2x16GB (front and back) or 1x32GB.

Anyone wanna bet how long it takes until the 3G S is jailbroken? I hope it's no longer than 3 months. I just got mine for a few hours and I already miss it (mostly Backgrounder, Intelliscreen and SBSettings) ;)
 
Microsoft confirms Nvidia Tegra for Zune HD from Zune Insider Podcast...

“We actually wanted to confirm something; there’s been a lot of chat going on right now about us possibly putting the NVIDIA Tegra chip in the Zune HD. Guess what we did? Ok, right now, we’re going ahead and confirm that: Yes, the Zune HD does have the Tegra chip in it, which is so sick, so much better battery life, graphics acceleration, I mean, this thing is like a mini laptop in your hands.”
Click to expand...

http://zuneinsider.com/archive/2009/06/19/zune-insider-podcast-24-is-available-now.aspx

Tommy McClain
 
I was a little pessimistic about OLED touchscreens in sunlight, but it seems like they are getting much brighter very fast, they should be iPhone ready next year.
Samsung S8000 Jet with 3.1" 800x480 (WVGA) in sunlight:

http://www.mobile-review.com/review/samsung-s8000-en.shtml#3
http://www.mobile-review.com/review/image/samsung/s8000/add/pic01.jpg
http://www.mobile-review.com/review/image/samsung/s8000/add/pic02.jpg

And by the way, it's 4 days now since the iPhone 3G S was released and we still don't know what SGX it uses etc. Seems like the "we'll know everything on the first day" predictions were a bit overly optimistic.
 
Well for IMG the most interesting part about iPhone 3GS should be the claimed 1M sold units already; I can picture someone in the upper management drooling over a calculator right now while zipping on his tea :LOL:
 
But regardless of which SGX, there's a wide performance-gap between iPhone 3GS and 3G/2G.

So how is the iPhone gaming market going to develop from this new hardware?

Will developers support the new graphics capabilities right away? Can they when 99 cents games sell so much better than even $5 games?
 
One way to do it would be to create fat binaries .... ie one for ArmV6 and another for ArmV7 - this way you can still sell just one app while supporting both devices.

To make things even more complicated iPhone 3GS support for OpenGL 1.x is just an emulation layer running with shaders etc .... which means potentially different performance characteristics.
Interestingly, there are actually 3 different profiles now:

1. 3G with OpenGL 1.x - 2 texture units etc ...
2. 3GS with OpenGL 1.x - 8 texture units, stencil buffers , larger texture sizes etc ..
3. 3GS with OpenGL 2.x - same as 3GS 1.x but based on shaders.
 
warmi said:
One way to do it would be to create fat binaries .... ie one for ArmV6 and another for ArmV7 - this way you can still sell just one app while supporting both devices.

To make things even more complicated iPhone 3GS support for OpenGL 1.x is just an emulation layer running with shaders etc .... which means potentially different performance characteristics.
Interestingly, there are actually 3 different profiles now:

1. 3G with OpenGL 1.x - 2 texture units etc ...
2. 3GS with OpenGL 1.x - 8 texture units, stencil buffers , larger texture sizes etc ..
3. 3GS with OpenGL 2.x - same as 3GS 1.x but based on shaders.
Click to expand...


Well you could do, but seeing how iphone apps are distributed purely via electronic download, its totally feasible for the app store to pick-up which device you are downloading to, and send the correct version transparently. Would keep the download size to a minimum which is important given many downloads will be via wireless/2G/3G as opposed to via PC/Mac.

Makes it more complicated for the app store to handle mind you.

I suggest that is part of the reason that Sony has gone for electronic distribution with the PSP GO. It paves the way for a complete hardware platform change (to SGX of course circa Q4 '10). The online store just has to pick up the hardware and offer/download the appropriate version of the game.
 
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wco81 said:
But regardless of which SGX, there's a wide performance-gap between iPhone 3GS and 3G/2G.
Click to expand...

The performance gap of MBX for the first generation OpenGL_ES1.x cores compared to competing solutions was even wider than that at times.

So how is the iPhone gaming market going to develop from this new hardware?
Click to expand...

I doubt any developer that would code a mobile game from scratch for the iPhone wouldn't use the iPhone3G as one of the lowest common denominator. The 3GS in that regard will probably be quite a bit faster with any possible result.

Will developers support the new graphics capabilities right away? Can they when 99 cents games sell so much better than even $5 games?
Click to expand...

My own personal objections regarding ergonomics and game controls aside on mobile phones, you can play something like Quake3 mobile on a SoC with MBX just fine. If you now go to anything in the SGX league you could eventually enable antialiasing which is available in the mobile version. Just an example.
 
Ailuros said:
Well for IMG the most interesting part about iPhone 3GS should be the claimed 1M sold units already; I can picture someone in the upper management drooling over a calculator right now while **zipping on his tea :LOL:
Click to expand...
I'd better go put the kettle on then - just got in a fresh box of "Kenya" tea bags.

**Tea is better uncompressed IMHO
 
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