Verizon Wireless Rewards Mediocrity: Moto gets exclusive rights to Droid

The Recently announced Droid Ultra, Droid Maxx, Droid Mini, are the beginning of the end for other manufactures to market "Droid" devices.  The devices chosen are not exactly Halo/Hero devices since they aren't even cutting edge when announced.  Motorola has also promised these devices to be sold for longer than previous models.   It's a bold move for Verizon to back mediocrity so hard.

Droid Ultra, Mini, Maxx Announced then Pronounced Obsolete

Techies have already picked apart the "exciting" X8 system which is loosely based on S4 Snapdragon with Adreno 320 GPU, which isn't weak but it isn't cutting edge.  The practically free Droid DNA boasts better specs besides battery, & microsd/nand.  That would be significant advantage if they were all released at the same time but the DNA is already 9 months old. 

I'm sure they are built well and will sell well.  But they are announced with already old, but good, hardware.  This may not present enough of a jump for users to upgrade from S3, DNA, Note 2, etc. 

Microsoft Windows RT & Surface is Dying-- MSFT Needs to Open Up OS Access

Open letter to Microsoft re Windows RT:

I announced this months ago, if you want to have an impact in this mobile space where Apple and Google are well entrenched you will have to make Windows RT boot on any unlocked device. 

You're not going to lose any sales, these people wouldn't buy your product, at least now, because there's no developer support.  However, developers love unlocking devices and trying new things.  Every device that newly runs Windows RT will not be running a competitor OS.  It's so simple. Now that you're own partners are stopping making the devices Windows RT will have to open up or die and this computing sector is far too important to give up on, even if you have to give the software away.

Microsoft don't give up on Windows RT: open it up, get the developers, point out enhanced privacy and you may just stand a chance at not sucking. 

Snapdragon quad core S4 pro 600 800 vs Tegra 3 SOC Subjective Comparison

Its easy to compare benchmarks between similar devices.  However benchies don't tell the whole story.  Especially when it comes to this comparison which is completely subjective based on the user experience of devices.

Tegra 3 and S4 are quad core devices, one based loosely based on 4 ARM Cortex A15 the other with A9 cpu architecture with a low powered ninja core (can you guess which one is which 'cause my writing is not telling).  The Tegra is from Nvidia and has been touted to have some extra 3d features; however, running viper on the DNA with beastmode kernel water splashes up to the screen on Shine Runner which is supposed to be a Tegra 3 exclusive (iirc). 

Anyway the Adreno 320+ is the equal or better of the Tegra 3 in graphics even replicating extra features.  I do like how the Tegra 3 can output 3D over HDMI I am not sure S4 architecture can. 

The biggest difference between the two processors is from the seat of the pants feel.  The S4 is much smoother without hiccups.  I would posit this is from better RAM, NAND interfacing, and better out of order processing.  The whole data gathering android experience is much smoother with navigation of complex pages.  In fact the S4 is the first SOC that runs Android in an Apple iOS smooth fashion, very impressive. 

I'd say this round goes to S4, and it highlights areas Nvidia NEEDS to address to stay competitive.  The Tegra 3 needed more RAM bandwidth and better ability to address NAND quickly, Tegra needed this too as did the Tegra 2.  I say this needs to change because more processing power and gpu compute power will highlight these information/performance bottlenecks further. 

(I can't wait to get a Tegra 4 devices in my hands later this year.) EDIT: Still haven't seen any Tegra 4s in the wild.