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News -
Industry
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Wednesday, 08 April 2009 13:05 |
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 Motorola has announced a handset capable of running different operating systems depending on the build. The Evoke QA4 is the worlds first commercially available virtualized environment capable of such a feat, and this means rock-bottom costs along with a quality OS such as Android. The software is provided by Open Kernel Labs and is called the OKL4 hypervisor.
Further cost reductions are provided in the single-chip design from ARM, whilst still being smart enough to run a simultaneous RTOS to handle the telephony stack. As customers clamour for the must have features in IPhones and Blackberrys, this has the possibility of offerring the same if not more powerful features (touchscreen, internet etc) at a fraction of the cost, and thats whats holding back consumers from mass smartphone adoption.
Already beijng termed Motorolas best answer to the iPhone, the Evoke QA4 offers a full touchscreen along with a slider keypad.
Motorola is carefuly positioning this handset so that it neither cannibalises any of its other offerings, nor truly starts a full-on iPhone callenge, by leaving out certain features, such as Wifi and a full keyboard.
Mobile hypervisor technology could be the key to a new era of low cost ultra-smartphones, as the traditional solution to PDA-rich handsets has been to implement 2 physical CPU's, one dedicated to the telephony functions and the other to the UI and PDA. The resulting cost and complexity of such a design has been a large barrier to low cost OEM manufactures seeking to crack the mass smartphone market.
Android handsets at feature phone prices ... just what the doctor ordered!
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