NTT DoCoMo cooks up low-power chip for Super 3G
In technology, speed is almost universally the enemy of power, and that rule certainly holds true in the world of cellular data standards. You heard it from His Steveness himself -- one of the main reasons we don't have a 3G iPhone on store shelves is because he isn't happy with battery life on HSDPA chipsets yet (consumers' opinions be damned, apparently), and in general, runtimes on 3G handsets large and small flag their 2G cousins, sometimes by a significant margin. Happily, the wiz kids at NTT DoCoMo are on the case, crafting Super 3G / LTE chipsets on 65nm dies capable of burning through 200Mbps at "sufficiently low power consumption" for mobile use. There's still no word on when NTT DoCoMo (or anyone else, for that matter) will be launching a commercial network at LTE speeds, but the company's hailing this latest batch of chips as a "milestone" on that journey -- and let's be honest, odds are good that Japan's gonna be rocking this stuff years before the rest of us anyhow.[Via PhoneMag]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ben Grimsbo @ Dec 21st 2007 10:56PM
"(consumers' opinions be damned, apparently)"
You KNOW for a fact that if Apple opted for 3G over 2.5G, you'd all be up in a hissy that the battery life for the iPhone was terrible.
There is no pleasing everyone.
Andy @ Sep 21st 2007 8:28AM
Not really. My HTC Titan has 3G, and while it probably has less battery life than an iPhone, I plug it in every night when I get home. Ohhh... that was hard to do. add approximately 2 seconds to my process of setting it down on the dresser to also plug it in at the same time. Then when I wake up, imagine that, it's charged!! As long as you can make a full days worth of battery then I could care less. The rest is just people whining about numbers. The only time my phone doesn't last a full day is when I use it as a GPS becuase that drains battery with the bluetooth connection and if I'm using Google Maps or Live Search, it will probably go through at least 20mb of data on a fairly small trip if I turn on the aerial view (which is pretty cool when you see your dot on the same road as you).
Lets be simple here, Apple didn't add it because they wanted to be able to produce a 3g iPhone in a couple of months and get all the suckers to buy it again. The battery life crap is BS, because if that were really the case, they could have added an option in the settings for the data network to be "off, save battery, or full speed" and let you flip between data off, EDGE, and HSPA. That would have been a VERY simple way, not to mention the way tons of other phones work, in allowing the consumer to choose what's important to them at the moment, battery or internet speed.
If you really believe that Apple did it just for battery life, you're blind to Apple's marketing. Their marketing is pretty crappy for consumers, but it works amazing for them. They've created products that people will re-buy if they just come out in a new color. It's genius on their part, but makes the general public look like sheep following their master.
ShortFuse @ Sep 21st 2007 10:43AM
Yeah, but this isn't 3G. This is Super3G. Super3G is LTE, HSOPA. This isn't HSDPA.
And Chris, you said: "There's still no word on when NTT DoCoMo (or anyone else, for that matter) will be launching a commercial network at LTE speeds"
Read: http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/Report-Japans-DoCoMo-to-spend-up-to-US17-bln-on-new-highspeedSuper-3G-cell-phones/2007/01/04/1167777219593.html
They'll have it ready by 2010.
Chris Ziegler @ Sep 21st 2007 10:53AM
ShortFuse - yes, perhaps I should've thrown an "exactly" in there. 2010's a long way away, and we're far from an exact launch date for NTT DoCoMo, let alone any of the other carriers that have committed to LTE for their next-gen networks.
Chris
ShortFuse @ Sep 21st 2007 11:05AM
I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything. Apologies if I came off rude. We all appreciate your work. I read engadgetmobile religiously. :)
Chris Ziegler @ Sep 21st 2007 11:31AM
None taken! We appreciate everyone keeping us in check!
Chris
Montusama @ Sep 21st 2007 6:41PM
The first comment not referring to Iphone (in any important way)
This technology once "perfected" will probably stay in Japan for at least a year....probably more as many companies probably won't like NTT DoCoMo's method or some stupid stuff like that.
NTT DoCoMo's chip will probably be more expensive than Qualcomm's chip
Companies love the green (unless where you are money isn't green....) than battery life