The droid 3 looks pretty good
It has a qwerty and a dual core processor
Only downside is android
I think it would be a great replace for the N950 since its not comming out to public as nokia said
What do you guys think

Written from my N900

IMO, the N900 suffered from the combination of real multitasking and lack of dual core. Most significantly, it would often be unable to reserve resources to the phone GUI when working heavily, sometimes making it impossible to answer a phone call due to no-image screen lag and lack of button response.

I think that's more related to the lack of RAM.

Whether the processor is dual-core or single-core is almost irrelevant. For a very long time we have been running multi-tasking systems on single cores without a problem. Dual-core just "doubles" the speed if used optimally.

OTOH RAM is quite critical when multi-tasking, due to the slowness of swap memory.

Well, it's a bit of the whole image. Of course, swapping is also slowing a machine down. But this problem always existed on single core computers too, the 99% application problem. That problem would completely halt a single core computer, but a dual core computer would work just fine even if a process went up to 50%.

I've had uncountable computers, but I feel there has been two particularly noticeable leaps in hardware experience; dual core technology made computers not hang, solid state discs made computers boot fast.

What I'd have liked, regardless of single core or dual core, was that a given amount of memory and cpu either were completely reserved, or at least gave prioritized access to a "real time event" priority list. So that the GUI would work and the phone app would start, even if something else were chewing up CPU+RAM.

The droid 3 isn't as good as I was thinking.
512mb ram, not that good screen, low battery 1400, and support will probably stop fast.

I really don't know what phone is good atm.

I want a dual core, 1gb ram, good screen, but also a qwerty maybe.

I want to port games to android or another os,
I really wanna start coding/programming maybe.
Does any of you guys know a good phone that will come out or is already out?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: Is the Motorola Atrix 4g good?

Well that may have been your experience. Mine is that processes are blocked while waiting for swap, so other process can run.

Plus even if a CPU intensive task is running it will only take 100% of the CPU during the time the kernel allows it. That's preemtive multitasking, as opposed to collaborative (cooperative?) multitasking as in Windows non-NT.

Of course the computer will be snappier with a dual-core than with a single-core. But generally one could say that single-core 2Ghz >= dual-core 1Ghz, because the single-core is used more efficiently (think of "turbo boost" in dual-cores).

As far as I can tell the only reason why we now have (N>1)-cores is because of power/thermal constraints. Following the example above, one can generally say that single-core 2Ghz uses more power than dual-core 1Ghz.

Well Linux is not real-time (at least by default) so this cannot be guaranteed (Symbian is actually real-time so it's not so affected by this).

In any case, the fact that the phone app takes a while to respond when receiving a call could most likely be solved (or alleviated) by tweaking the priorities and schedulers.

One thing that may also be worth thinking about is why many people expect instant response from their mobile computers (e.g. opening the calculator takes 1 second, etc.). I have a dual-core laptop (not state of the art, but "fast" for all I care) and things *do* take a while to start, even opening an x-term or a text editor. Why would I expect a resource-constrained device such as my N900 to be quicker than a full-blown PC?

Once you accept that there are limits to hardware *and* software, you may start accepting how things work, and actually start liking it as it is.

android is not an option for me, so i'm stuck with n900 for good

That's what I've been thinking all along. I can't compare Maemo to everything, but the N900 was a first phone, and it failed exceptionally often at letting me answer the phone. It should have been a prioritized task.

(...)


Because it needs to be. You need to be able to answer the phone within 5 seconds even if it's running tasks. I don't care how dirty a trick, drop tasks and prioritize! Can't like a phone that only works with outgoing calls...

Hmm.. OK, for the phone part you're absolutely right, and I agree.

I guess I was sorta ranting about the usual complaints

get this phone.. in q1 of 2012