Originally Posted by Laughing Man

Probably not, but why would you? From reading Ars Techina it seems they are a step lower than the current Cortex A8. Their benefit is being more power efficient, not faster or even more efficient.

Originally Posted by vkv.raju

Could we see devices with these from Nokia in 2010? Which one would be the first to sport these? I mean, the mobile computers or notebooks?

Originally Posted by Apoc

Personally I like TI's OMAP4440 dual core ARM Cortex-A9's clocked at over 1ghz. You want fast for netbooks and phones? This is the next one. Who wants to start a rumor of Nokia using this in the next wave of Maemo devices? :P

And as for the question netbooks or phones.. Honestly I think this will spawn a new idea.. Phones that plug into bases and become linux powered nettops. With a typical KDE or Gnome interface made for a mouse and keyboard.

Imagine sticking your work laptop in your pocket and when you get on the metro emailing the report you just finished before leaving work over the 4G internets, and then replying to everyone's responses to the report on a full monitor and keyboard once you got home. I think that would be AWESOME

Then again the OMAP4440 is also more then capable of 1080p decoding/encoding, you could just use it for recording/editing/playing a lot of movies :P

And the PowerVR 540 chip it uses is also really powerful for ARM based gaming, perhaps it'll work for something a little closer to crysis... Then again that is *really* getting ahead of myself... Nice dream though..

Originally Posted by Peet

According to the Ars Technica article Laughing Man is probably referring to, these Cortex A5 chips won't be out until 2011, i.e. they're 1½-2. years away.

If I understand this correctly they are sort of poor man's A8 which can run the visual fluff most system development is heading towards, but only barely. Something like Mer (poor man's Maemo 5, maybe even Maemo 6) might work well on these A5's, if only Mer was more actively developed and pushed to/adopted by ODMs other than Nokia (who've already moved on...).

Too bad NVIDIA (with their Tegra, and generally with their proprietary approach) is too deep in microsoft's pocket to promote the open platforms the low-cost and low-power ARM CPUs like the Cortex A5 would be ideal for: better (in terms of size, cost and power requirements) than N8x0 class companion devices.

Off topic perhaps, but I find it unfortunate that Nokia stopped pursuing the (mobile phone) companion device strategy, which would have played into their strengths (inexpensive entry to market -> creation of bigger Maemo ecosystem, handsets & batteries etc.). Nokia's Maemo 5+ may be cool, but Android is being pushed by a growing number of manufacturers.

Originally Posted by tso

i suspect nokia listened to the number of people that wanted a single device to carry, rather then 2+ (even if the right setup of protocols, radios and wires could allow one to carry multiple devices with one set of headphones and data connection).

i guess our basic problem right now is that our fashion have not kept up with our technology. As long as it seen as unfashionable for a guy to carry a bag, and we do not have clothes of the rack that makes it easy to carry multiple devices without looking like one is going to war/wilderness, convergence will stay king (and i suspect the marketing deps loves it also, as extra hardware features are a easier upsell then software features).