Originally Posted by Venemo

That's what the Neo900 project is doing, for the reasons you mention.

The disadvantage of such an approach however is that the old hardware has very low performance by today's standard so you can't really have a very responsive GUI or anything. So if that chip were used, the device would have no market appeal to the average consumers.

Originally Posted by juiceme

Why not if the said SoC or some OEM's drop-in replacement still would be available?
Assuming it was available, the price should also be pretty low, and since the chip architecture would be have been well tested and familiar then further silicon editions would surely be more optimized and be less-power hungry.
Also there'd be good time to hone and fix open source drivers.

Actually now as I come to think about it, there are nothing but good reasons to use an old SoC.

Originally Posted by JulmaHerra

I wouldn't take lower price for older SoC granted. Usually they are made on older manufacturing process, which may be more expensive to manufacture, also they don't have economy of scale as the demand for them is generally lower. This of course in situation where one is not trying to tap into some leftover pieces. Newer manufacturing process usually means improved power efficiency as well as improved processing power, so going to mid-level reasonably fresh SoC and architecture instead of already abandoned tech IMO has it's benefits. Also, creating PCB with all the other components for old SoC may require more effort and add up costs. OMAP was decent architecture but AFAIK it didn't have much demand outside Nokia and when Nokia went with Qualcomm, TI didn't have much incentive to develop it further. Maybe if Nokia had bought it and made it "their own" like Apple did with their own SoC there would have been a differentiator... but it would have required MeeGo to succeed.

So, IMO there are not many good reasons for (really) old SoC if one is to create competitive device.

Originally Posted by juiceme

As it happens, device battery runtimes have remained about the same and in the long view gone dramatically down even as battery capacity and technologies have improved all the time.

I hold the view that going for all-the-time-faster CPU's and new architectures is the culprit to blame.

On the other hand if you had an existing SoC that would be evolved in manufacturing technology but not tried to squeeze more power out of it would certainly come more power-efficient over generations.

And having same drivers that could be optimized properly and not some quick-hack-let's-just-make-android-compatible-drivers-now would leverage to get more out of the HW.

Originally Posted by juiceme

I don't fully buy into that explanation.

As it happens, device battery runtimes have remained about the same and in the long view gone dramatically down even as battery capacity and technologies have improved all the time.

I hold the view that going for all-the-time-faster CPU's and new architectures is the culprit to blame.

On the other hand if you had an existing SoC that would be evolved in manufacturing technology but not tried to squeeze more power out of it would certainly come more power-efficient over generations.
And having same drivers that could be optimized properly and not some quick-hack-let's-just-make-android-compatible-drivers-now would leverage to get more out of the HW.

Originally Posted by juiceme

I really doubt that; for example N9 performance is pretty good IMHO.
The real determining fact here is that only gaming people need high performance hardware

Originally Posted by juiceme

And now, seriously, hands-up anyone who really needs those all-the-time-more high-resolution screens?
And please define why, since the pixels already are too small to see withlut a microscope??
I hold that even halfHD resolution is almost too much for 5" device...

Originally Posted by juiceme

And cameras! people have gone straight off the edge megapixel-crazy. And it's the Mpx:es that consume power/memory/cycles.

Instead I'd opt for less pixels and better optics...
I am willing to bet anyone immediately that I can capture more striking image of any given subject/situation with my 15 years old DSLR having only 3 megapixels than any and all daring to contest me with latest mobile devices!

Originally Posted by juiceme

And now, seriously, hands-up anyone who really needs those all-the-time-more high-resolution screens?

And please define why, since the pixels already are too small to see withlut a microscope??

I hold that even halfHD resolution is almost too much for 5" device...

And cameras! people have gone straight off the edge megapixel-crazy. And it's the Mpx:es that consume power/memory/cycles.

Instead I'd opt for less pixels and better optics...