08 August 2006

CHIPSET

Nokia N93 has the fastest hardware in Symbian world at the moment, and it is more than noticeable in working with the phone. Actually it is noticeable since first boot up, phone boots up in 22-23 seconds and means is loaded in less than second and basically it means that you are ready for working or calling after less than 25 seconds which is incredible score for one Smartphone.

Nokia N93 is powered by Texas Instrument’s OMAP2420 which incorporates the PowerVR MBX 2D/3D graphics core and fully programmable VGP vertex processor core licensed by TI from Imagination Technologies altogether with ARM11 processor. Particularly it means that PowerVR & ARM brings first taste of console quality 3D gaming to mobiles, actually Nokia N93 is the first available mobile phone with hardware accelerated 3D graphics and OpenGL ES (1.1) support. Apart from incredible gaming possibilities, even brief look at the Benchmark test result shows that above specifications puts N93 to the poll position as the fastest Smart phone at the moment.

Here are the latest MBX demo screenshots

*click to enlarge

Although Nokia N93 isn’t the only Symbian phone that uses this technology, it seams that Sony Ericsson P990 as well as M600 or W950i (the UIQ 3, Symbian 9.1 based phones) uses the light version of the same IT’s GPU altogether with ARM9 processor packed in the Philips Nexperia PNX4008 chip, but the sad fact is that the configuration its quite inferior to the TI’s OMAP2420. To add, as far as I know an HTC also produced cell phone with 3D hardware; the HTC Forseer DVB-H TV phone, runs on Windows Mobile 5.0 and uses the NVIDIA GoForce 5500 GPU same as Samsung’s SGHP910.

The only bad aspect of PowerVR MBX GPU is the the fact that it supports only DVD like video (640*480 up to 30fps) while the GoForce 5500 provide better video decoding/encoding, GoForce GPUs are capable for real DVD video (720*480 at 30fps or 720*576 at 25fps) encoding that delivering smooth, jitter-free, high-quality video.

If you are curious and if you want to know more about Texas’s chipset and PowerVR GPU, just proceed to the following article that provide detailed overview supported with demos screens.

Apart from the camera possibilities, video recorder and optical zoom, this is the one of the most excited feature of this device. Basically it means that we are not limited on the small phone screen anymore and that we can share captured moments with our family or friends on the large TV screen. It is really nice to know that you can capture videos and immediately enjoy them with your friends and leave them to rate your video directing skills.

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Mainly it is aimed to be used for playing multimedia contents like, images, recorded or downloaded video clips, but it offers much more. It allows you to browse the phone and particularly use all of the available applications through the TV screen, you can browse the net, play games, or edit office document with some nice music in the background and in most situations, actually in all situations apart the gallery, the TV provides exactly the same picture as the phone screen, I was surprised when I’ve accidentally discovered that phone is even able to use TV as the viewfinder, my congratulations go straight to Nokia’s team of engineers that have worked on implementation of this feature.

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There are already few models that features TV out, phones like D600 but as in my personal opinion the N93 has the best implementation of this great feature. Feature is implemented over the standard Nokia pop-port connector and via the supplied cable that provides composite video out via the 3-way RCA connectors. All you have to do is to connect pop-port choose right TV standard and right ratio but in most situations you will be able to use it with default setup. After connecting the cable to your phone and your TV, the mobiles’ screen will immediately appear on the TV.

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Safari browser looks very good on TV screen and brings really great surfing experience. The video is also nice but on some TV’s it does not looks as good as on the phone screen. Images can be watched in slideshow mode with some music in the background and the only feature I could not find so far is the possibility to zoom into an image in TV mode. Gaming on the TV screen is also pretty useful, although I have to admit that it cannot be compared with the Play Station but so far I’ve tried System Rush and Sky force and I can say that it is pretty nice way to impress your friends and show how powerful piece of hardware you have and what the OMAP2420 is capable do in practice.

.:[ VIDEO PRESENTATION ]:.
(crazy frog on TV screen)

.:[ VIDEO PRESENTATION ]:.
(safari on TV screen)

.:[ Nokia N93 - Technical Specifications ]:.