Native Development

[minicom]

Does anyone know what chipset is powering the Blackberry Z10? Some news reports say that it is using an OMAP 4470 in most markets, but using a Snapdragon S4 dual-core 8960 in US and Canada. Is this correct?

[peardox]

I read something similar thought mine gave diffo OMAP versions if memory serves

I guess we'll have to wait and see

My best guess it that they wanna build millions but can't get the chips so take similar platforms for deployment - sorta makes sence unless you're Apple and can buy China

[achipa]

If there is such a split in chipsets, the real reason is legal, and that's why you'll almost invariably see that North-American phones get Snapdragon chips, even if rest of the world doesn't. Don't believe it? Take a look at Samsung, even the North-American Galaxy S III uses Snapdragon and not Samsung's own Exynos chips (which is in the European, Korean and International variants). Hard to believe Samsung can't make enough chips for itself.

[peardox]

Yeah but everything is ARM

This raises an interesting Q

Which would be faster?

They launch in UK tomorrow...

[achipa]

Of course it's ARM, what else would it be?

IIUC the choices, the Snapdragon should actually be better, if it's indeed the S4 Pro with the Krait cores and Adreno 330 GPU. The OMAP4470 is no slouch either, but half a generation older (A9 cores, 45nm process).

[peter9477]

Output of "uname -a" on the Z10 for Canada:

QNX 8.0.0 2013/01/13-16:46:52EST MSM8960_V3.2.1_F_R070_Rev:19 armle

I don't have a non-Canada Z10 handy, but I'd expect someone from the UK to show up with that data shortly. ;-)

In the vendor portal downloads, you'll see them show up as "Imagination GPU" and "Qualcomm GPU". I'm getting a mix of those in the downloads, with some Imagination (OMAP) ones even in Canada, though those ones are all 10.0.10 so that's just the Dev Alphas.

[achipa]

Interesting. I think I'll add some CPU detection to my trusty QtInfo app. On my dev alpha A, I get Cortex A9 MPCore, 2 cores, 1008MHz

[thebrave]

A link in French notes that the OMAP version should be cheaper and targeted to market where 4G isn't available.

All retail UK/US/CA/EU versions should be Qualcomm. But the OMAP could be a lever to get to a price point when sold by the carrier.

[achipa]

That's a rather naive explanation, as the 4G playbook happens to be OMAP 4460 The price difference in volume should be minimal, certainly not in the level that it would influence anything. And sure enough, so far in my download stats I have only OMAPs for EU and only Qualcomms for US, so it seems the usual pattern.

[achipa]

So, couple of days later, CPU patterns seem to be stabilizing:

UK, US (AT&T), Latin America - Qualcomm

(rest of) EU, US (T-Mo) - OMAP

Canada seems to be a mixed bag (have both OMAP and Qualcomm, and seemingly mixed even on same carriers)