Comments on: The iPhone's secret silicon: A need to know?

Should Apple be more open about the silicon inside the iPhone?

[beltaine777]

Until Apple releases something like an "iPhone Lite" or an "iPhone Ultra", I don't think it needs to release the internal specs. Right now you choose your iPhone by the only spec listed, storage space. Other than that, all current iPhones for sale are the same.

Blackberry sells many smartphone models based on capability. If you want just a phone that does e-mail and messaging, get a Pearl. If you are a power user that wants to have many apps open at the same time, they have more powerful models like the Bold available. If Apple ever adopts multi-tasking in the iPhone, then I can see the need for more models based on hardware specs. In that case, then they should tell you more about the hardware you are buying.

[monkeyfun14]

Alot of people don't realize that you can base how well a phone does things based on the hardware inside.

If your looking for a phone with alot of battery life and the phone comes with a 1ghz processor and a smaller battery.

[jmshepherd]

Dude,
You really need to get out more often! Find yourself a woman! Get a Life!

[jmshepherd]

And you Mr "Drink the Koolaid" Anytime someone has something good to say about Apple, you or one of your little buddy's pops up with this comment. Talk about drinking the Koolaid! My god, enough already.

[CreativeMalcolm]

I'd rather not have those specs publicly known. Fact is sell phones and I don't want customers picking between a Bold and an iPhone because one has a couple Mhz faster processor, I want them to be able to pick which one they want based on the features of the phone they'll use, internal memory sure, camera specs sure (though something greater than mp would be nice) talk time, reception, call quality, those are the important things with the phone.

Proc speed is useful when running cross platform apps,specifically apps that can run on lots of different hardware and you want to know what'll do what the fastest. A faster processor won't help me make a call any faster, probably won't even help me send a txt faster. Beyond that there are so many things, sure it might help me browse the web faster, but am I browsing it in the BlackBerry browser? Mobile Safari? The POS IE that comes with WIndows Mobile phones?

Listing speed of smart phones is only useful when comparing something within the same sphere, IE BlackBerries to BlackBerries.

[jlovell--2008]

Really don't care, since they run on different OSes. Too many variables to make me give a rat's arse about tech specs. I just want it to work effectively and as advertised.

[sebastien.kalonji]

Why would we want that? We've seen how the industry used specifications to mislead buyers. Remember the Ghz myth? Why would we ask the industry to fool us again with that ****. At the moment we rate the phone on how it works, do we really want people to rate a phone based on nonsense all over again?

[infinitely]

Maybe Apple doesn't want to turn it into the same stupid megahertz thing we had with PCs? It doesn't matter with the iPhone and it's not what Apple is about, so forget it.

[JustAnothertechie]

No, I wouldn't.

[Norseman]

I don't care if it's a squirrel on a treadmill inside the thing--just as long as it does all the cool stuff it does.

[Arthur Young]

Since Apple has made writing to the processor irrelevant (and impossible in their programming environment), then it's the phone OS that's important. Ultimately that is what makes the phone/unit work.

The customer experience, (which is all a phone buyer has for real judgement) is what matters. If I can get my work done more quickly and more elegantly, then that is what matters to me. The processor specifications are totally irrelevant. Just like in basic computers, if one processor is twice as fast, but the OS on the slower processor executes the task in one-third the cycles, then the "slower" processor is faster.

Techies have a history of demanding a number for evaluation, even if it's irrelevant. This is one of those cases.

[Catalina588]

"By comparison, take your typical laptop. Prospective buyers are able to see the exact specifications and make an informed buying decision." No way do buyers see exact specifications at the chip level. What is the Ethernet chip in your desktop/laptop? Marvell, Intel, TI? Who cares? The chip does gigabit Ethernet. Do you need to know whether your Core 2 microprocessor is made in Arizona, Oregon, or Israel? I don;t think so.

iPhone is a software platform to users and developers. Neither users nor developers write at the hardware level. So I don't really have to know just what custom ARM system-on-a-chip Apple has in the next generation iPhone.

[rsucre]

It would be insteresting to know all the specs, but really, at the end of the day, we should just worry about the end result. I see it much like when you buy software as a service, you don't really care about what hardware the software is running on, you just care that the Service Level Agreement be met. A smartphone could have a faster processor but more inefficient OS and software running on it. You really care about the end result. Btw, most likely the faster processor will eat up your battery faster. Just my 10 cents.

[forever4now]

The standard practice seems to be for someone to tear down new devices, to try to determine the BOM. The cost to produce a device is competitive information that Apple (and I suspect others) would prefer to keep under wraps.

Besides, as smartphones get smaller, more powerful & less expensive, the silicon is likely to become highly integrated (i.e. SOC). This will likely make it even more difficult to do an apples-to-apples comparison between devices.

[graphicsrod]

I've never given less of a crap about something in my life. No wait...
... Garbanzo beans. I do give less of a crap about garbanzo beans.

[xtrmtrk]

Looking at individual components has almost always been a stupid way of comparing systems and with smartphones this is more so than ever.

I want to be able to compare smartphones at the application level - how fast can it render a web page? How many typed keystrokes can it handle a second? How well does it receive faint phone signals? How accurate is the GPS? What's the sound quality? How fast is bluetooth connectivity?

The usability and desirability of these phones has only a limited dependency on the separate individual components used to build them.

[forever4now]

I agree that benchmark test results would be a better way to evaluate different smartphone "platforms" rather than individual hardware components (e.g. page rendering time, sound quality, boot-up/shutdown times, app responsiveness, security, etc.).

Hopefully, someday these kind of tests will be made and results published.

[petersenj612--2008]

I think you hit it on the head at the beginning of the column. I want it to work the way I need it to work. Anything else is pretty much extraneous information. (One of the historical strengths of Apple products has been that they allow you to do things without getting in the way. For example: you never see a listing in the catalogues of Adult schools for "Learning Mac". They always have taught classes to "Learn Windows". I'm not going to choose my smartphone based upon individual components but rather on the package of tools it provides.

[therealgeeves]

If I could buy apple gear not made in china would be a start - human rights...

[capnvan]

If you can find almost anything not made at least partially in China, I say congratulations.

[SpiritWater]

If Apple tells you the number of hours of us you can get on a charge and you can visually see and feel the performance then what more do you need?

[ckm5]

What's wrong with using system_profiler from the command line with mobileterminal?

system_profiler | grep CPU

I don't have an iPhone to check, but if it really does run OSX, then it's easy to find out.