News tagged ‘A4’

Yesterday Digitimes posted an interesting interview with its own senior analyst Ming-Chi Kuo who disproved many rumors about upcoming iPhone.

He told that Apple once considered using OLED display in iPhone 3GS, but it was found to be unsuitable for displaying text, and now this is a key direction in which Apple is improving its iPhone since the company promotes iBookstore for it. Moreover, in February scientists unveiled that Apple iPhone 3GS' LCD display is much better than the OLED screen in Google Nexus One, because the latter doesn't reproduce colors accurately and has lots of artifacts.

Ming-Chi Kuo also revealed that the work on iPhone 4G was started at the end of 2008. Its codename is N90, and not many people knew about this, but Gizmodo found exactly the N90 prototype. There is another iPhone with codename N91 that is a lesser upgrade that must be used «in case there are major delays [of components] due to significant modifications.

With regard to the iPhone 4G's processor Ming-Chi Kuo told:

"Since the launch schedule of the Cortex A9 processor is estimated for year's end and iPhone 4.0 is not ready to fully utilize a multi-core processor, the A4 is the most likely candidate".

This is not the first words of Ming-Chi Kuo about iPhone 4G, previously we posted another information revealed by him, you can read it here.

Last week Apple has released its iPhone Os 4.0 beta 4 and redsn0w is finally updated to support this as well as beta 1. New version of jailbreak is 0.9.5.b4 and it can be applied on iPhone 3G only(!).

Redsn0w 0.9.5.b4 is targeted at developers who make jailbroken apps, and will not work if you are already using blacksn0w, ultrasn0w or yellowsn0w.

iPhone Dev-Team warns:

"You should stay clear of this beta software if you rely on a carrier unlock."

To use the jailbreak, follow the guide below:

1. Download redsn0w 0.9.5.b4 here. (Only Mac OS X version since app are developed on this OS).
2. Make sure you have already activated your iPhone 3G with iTunes and your own developer ID.
3. Launch the jailbreak.
4. Select your stock iPhone1,2_4.0_8A274b_Restore.ipsw (beta4) or iPhone1,2_4.0_8A230m_Restore.ipsw (beta1) file that you used to update your firmware.
5. Choose "Install Cydia" and then click "Next". Use DFU mode to install the redsn0w.
6. When your iPhone 3G comes back up, you will notice Cydia has a blank white icon. It also has no sources so you should go to the Sources panel and add this repo: http://apt.saurik.com/cydia-3.7 (make sure you are connected to the Internet before). When Cydia restarts, you should see its real logo now, and the standard sources should be ready to use.

Hours before we posted photos of another iPhone 4G prototype that were obtained by someone from Vietnamese forum Taoviet. It was revealed that device has a SoC with Apple A4 processor and 256 Megabytes of Samsung DRAM. According to iFixit, the marking "APL0398 339S0084" indicates the A4 processor, and "K4X2G643GE" goes for 256 Mb Samsung RAM.

"Our engineers are not surprised by this finding. We were very impressed by the extraordinarily low power consumption of the iPad, and remarked at the time that its power consumption and board design was much more in line with handheld devices than laptop computers."

So now we're sure that new prototype has the same hardware as in Apple's iPad. By the way, iPhone 3GS has also 256 Mb of DRAM.

It is also examined that the leaked device has a 16 GB capacity instead of Gizmodo's "XXGB", and there are no visible screws on its sites. The new iPhone has a micro-SIM port on its side. A video reveals that new device was turned on but it wasn't running the iPhone OS.

More photos of iPhone 4G hardware are posted below and here.

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Lately Apple has released a third beta of the iPhone OS 4. It is specified as build 10M2247 and available for registered developers. Previous beta release was issued two weeks ago. The situation looks familiar as last year iPhone OS 3 had also gone through 5 beta cycles before it was publicly announced.

Currently the new update is unavailable due to installation problems, but those of the developers who successfully downloaded and installed it have already revealed what's new in the release.

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Yesterday Apple closed a deal of acquiring Intrisity, a small company in Austin, Texas, that specializes on mobile computer chips producing.

This is a second time for the last two years when Apple buys a small chip company to have the facilities for making fast and power efficient processors. In 2008 Apple purchased P.A. Semi for $278 million, but with the lapse of time many chip maker employees had left company because of inadequate compensation (by the way, some of them are now in Agnilux, another company that was recently acquired by Google).

Well-known chip analyst Tom R. Halfhill has information from his sources that Apple paid $121 million for Intrinsity, but company’s representative Steve Dowling didn't comment on this information.

Such a deal isn't expensive for Apple at all, thinks Tom Halfhill:

“The purchase price is like pocket change to Apple, and they get a lot of benefit”.

It is widely speculated that iPad's A4 chip is based on Intrinsity technology that improved its processing power from 650 MHz to 1 GHz without increasing the battery consumption. With acquiring this chip making company Apple will be able to increase that 350 MHz by itself. Moreover, the company seems to be looking forward for creating its own version of ARM chip. Some other companies like Qualcomm, Marvell and Nvidia had the same experience and spent millions of dollars to gain a satisfactory result.

It is interesting that rumors about this deal started when some people saw that a significant number of Intrinsity employees changed their employer section to Apple in LinkedIn.

Also Apple's desire to create its own mobile chip contradicts to its strategy of purchasing Intel chips for computers.

Dan Primack from Pehub.com reported yesterday that Google acquired Agnilux. The latter is a startup company in San-Jose comprised of former Apple, P.A. Semi, Cisco and TiVo employees. It is intriguing that there almost no public information about the reasons why Google bought it and what Agnilux has recently been working on. One of the Google representatives confirmed the information but didn't comment it on.

Agnilux's website is currently unavailable, so we have no information about the company. But because of former P.A. Semi employees it seems like Agnilux may be working on a new chip that can be a rival to Qualcomm's SnapDragon or Apple's A4 SoCs. But, according to an investigation made by New York Times in February, one of the employees named Mark Hayter said:

"We want to make a splash. We don't want our manufacturer to take our intellectual property before we're ready".

So it looks like the company's main purpose in kept in a big secret. But it is known that later NYT heard from another Agnilux employee that the company is working on server and has a partnership with Cisco. Well that might be interesting to Google whose thousands of servers till this moment have been made by the company's engineers but not purchased.

According to the sources from Apple Insider, AMD representatives have been seen recently on the meeting with Apple's top brass. The discussion was about the possible partnership between these two organizations as Apple looking forward in bringing AMD's CPUs to workstations and notebooks. The main reason for changing its main processor supplier is probably the try to increase the flexibility and competitive options of Cupertino's company. Another explanation is problems, that were encountered with Intel recently (they include limited availability of recently produced processors and new chipset designs that don't allow using any video chips except its integrated graphics chip).

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Yesterday U.S. Federal Communications Commision revealed internal hardware photos of iPad, though they had originally obtained it as early as on March 12. It is a series of 17 pictures that gives a view of the display, the battery, the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chips and more. Like in other Apple portable devices there is no empty place to waste.

The display seems to be made by LG Philips. The device has A4 processor, Broadcom BCM5973 chip and NAND flash memory from Toshiba. The solutions provider wrote:

"It looks like there is a LOT of glue holding these chips down to the board. More than we've seen before -- Apple is really serious about durability on this thing."

The device ID in FCC is "BCG-E2381A". The related documents and photos can be found here. Some of the pictures are added below.

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A popular tech pundit John Gruber from the DaringFireball.net web-resource laughs at today's WSJ rumor about two new iPhone models coming this summer. He points at the lack of information in the article and hints at the features that he seems to know about:

"...And they have no actual details of the next-generation iPhone. Nothing. Not the A4-family CPU system-on-a-chip. Not the 960 × 640 double-resolution display. Not the second front-facing camera. Not even the third-party multitasking in iPhone OS 4."

Well, the multitasking and front camera were suggested before. But the higher resolution display is something new.

This week Steve Jobs answered an email question from Sweden. The question was from Jezper Söderlund:

I'll keep it short.

I'm Jezper from Sweden, a long time Apple fan, currently about to replace the very last computer at home with a brand spanking new iMac i7. I'm also awaiting the release of the iPad. However, I have one question:

Will the wifi-only version somehow support tethering thru my iPhone?

Two devices, based on the same OS, with already built-in technology to share one data plan suggests a secondary contract could possibly be redundant.

From the look of your keynote, where the iPad sits well between my MacBook Pro and my iPhone, I was hoping the three of them could interact as seamless as possible.

All the best,
Jezper Söderlund

This is a very interesting question, since iPad's network settings with tethering were found recently. Here is Jobs' answer:

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As you remember, Steve Jobs clearly said at the iPad's presentation that the device will have a 1 GHz A4 Chip. But after that event there was no information given about this secret two-letter name "A4". And this isn't usual, as almost every company reports the specification of every announced device before it'll come to market.

Later it was rumored that the chip is based on Cortex A9 with dual cores. But finally Arstechnica author Jon Stokes revealed that A4 is a 1 GHz custom system-on-chip with a single Cortex A8 Core and a PowerVR SGX GPU. Though the information is not announced publicly, the author is sure it is true.

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Gameloft has finally released Brothers In Arms 2: Global Front game for iPod Touch and iPhone.

In this game you can challenge up to five friends to multiplayer battles. Connection needs to be established via Bluetooth or Wi-fi.

Key features:

• 5 locations and 13 levels in detailed 3D-world
• 3 different game mods (Free For All, Team DeathMatch, Domination)
• 3 different vehicles
• wide variety of historically accurate weapons

You can purchase Brothers in Arms 2: Global Front for 7.99$ here.

The iPad will be available for purchase in March. For those who don't want to wait Jess Silverstone put together a cut-out of the Apple iPad. Just print these images on a standard A4 paper (8.3 x 11.7 inches) and make your own iPad:

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BroadPoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall calculated the real price of the Apple iPad. His numbers are based on the price of all components.

The flash memory and the aluminum case both cost about $25, while the Apple A4 processor is just $15. The total cost for 16GB Wi-Fi iPad (US$499) is just $270.50. Manufacturing adds $10 and warranty service costs add up to $20.

Thr 32GB and 64GB Wi-Fi models add even more margin. The 32GB model costs only $25.50 more than the 16GB, but the suggested retail price is $100 more. Apple will really make money on the 64GB model, which costs $76.50 more than the 16GB device but sells for $200 more.

As it was announced on Wednesday presentation, the iPad has a 1 GHz A4 chip that was developed by Apple. And now there is one thing that interests a lot of people: when this chip will make it to the iPhone?

The iPhone 3GS has an 833 MHz Samsung chip, which is underlocked to 600 MHz to increase battery life. This is better than the iPhone 3G’s 620 MHz CPU (also underlocked to 412 MHz). But there is still plenty of room for improvement, and analysts expect the latter will come either from the A4 chip or its lower-powered variant, specially designed for the smaller battery and screen, to the iPhone.

People who have already handled iPad say the device is pretty much faster than any iPod Touch or iPhone released so far. So it seems pretty likely the A4 chip will trickle down to Apple’s smaller mobile devices.