Qualcomm Inside: Mobile Dominance No Matter the Manufacturer

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
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The Verge takes a look at Qualcomm's dominance in the mobile sector. Every mobile headset manufacturer has relied on the venerable chipmaker for years but is that reliance at risk? The article takes a look at the possibility.

The company that was founded on the premise of building "Quality Communications" can now be found inside every major smartphone in the US. Even the fiercely independent Apple, which designs its own mobile processors, has no choice but to use Qualcomm’s LTE modems. The same is true of Samsung, whose Exynos chip is replaced by a Qualcomm Snapdragon for the US and other markets. But Qualcomm’s influence spreads much wider and deeper still.
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Right, Dominance... Meanwhile here I am waiting to see the entire cell phone market collapse on itself. The Chinese market is ready to storm into the US with better products at a cheaper price. Think I care how much faster these smart phones are getting? I would be using my old cell phone right now if it wasn't for the crap Adreno graphics in it. The drivers are so broken that my GPS is rendered with flashes of images. Course nobody owns a physical qwerty phone anymore so no proper working KitKat roms exist.

So I caved in and bought a brick clone phone. But I was so close to buy a jxd-s5800 or Ireadygo Much G2. Wasn't for that 3G doesn't work on T-Mobile. Ireadygo Much W1 does but they want $300+ for the device. I don't care if it comes with a MediaTek or AllWinner cpu. Damn things work very fast and don't have Adreno graphics.

Cell phone manufacturers better get smart soon before the Chinese storm the US with their ultra cheap phones. That Ireadygo Much G2 is just a hair about $100 with a quad core CPU, built in gamepad, fully unlocked, and stock Android OS.

Seriously, look at this thing. Damn you T-Mobile!
much-g2.png
 
With the way Intel is trying to storm into the mobile market prices should drop some. Hopefully the next gen chips will put those ARM bastards in 2nd place and x86 will rise again.
 
Ashbringer said:
Right, Dominance... Meanwhile here I am waiting to see the entire cell phone market collapse on itself. The Chinese market is ready to storm into the US with better products at a cheaper price. Think I care how much faster these smart phones are getting? I would be using my old cell phone right now if it wasn't for the crap Adreno graphics in it. The drivers are so broken that my GPS is rendered with flashes of images. Course nobody owns a physical qwerty phone anymore so no proper working KitKat roms exist.

So I caved in and bought a brick clone phone. But I was so close to buy a jxd-s5800 or Ireadygo Much G2. Wasn't for that 3G doesn't work on T-Mobile. Ireadygo Much W1 does but they want $300+ for the device. I don't care if it comes with a MediaTek or AllWinner cpu. Damn things work very fast and don't have Adreno graphics.

Cell phone manufacturers better get smart soon before the Chinese storm the US with their ultra cheap phones. That Ireadygo Much G2 is just a hair about $100 with a quad core CPU, built in gamepad, fully unlocked, and stock Android OS.

Seriously, look at this thing. Damn you T-Mobile!
much-g2.png
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Adreno graphics work great I've used quite a few. And there's no reason they would have bad drivers, Adreno are the most common graphics chips out there.

And Mediatek chips suck. They work fast for normal stuff but the graphics in them are WAY worse then Adreno and the CPUs themself wont work fast later since games get more demanding and so do new versions of Android.

You're gate against Adreno is retarded. And the reason Chinease phones arent just going to take off is because most of them do not offer great quality for a low price, the onws that do have great quality cost the same as US phones, and they have terrible ROM is first party OS support.
 
PCunicorn said:
Adreno graphics work great, I've used quite a few. And there's no reason they would have bad drivers, Adreno are the most common graphics chips out there.

And Mediatek chips suck. They work fast for normal stuff but the graphics in them are WAY worse then Adreno and the CPUs themself wont work fast later since games get more demanding and so do new versions of Android.

You're HATE against Adreno is retarded. And the reason Chinease phones arent just going to take off, because most of them do not offer great quality for a low price, the ones that do have great quality cost the same as US phones, and they have terrible ROM AND first party OS support.
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Fixed
 
Ashbringer said:
Right, Dominance... Meanwhile here I am waiting to see the entire cell phone market collapse on itself. The Chinese market is ready to storm into the US with better products at a cheaper price. Think I care how much faster these smart phones are getting? I would be using my old cell phone right now if it wasn't for the crap Adreno graphics in it. The drivers are so broken that my GPS is rendered with flashes of images. Course nobody owns a physical qwerty phone anymore so no proper working KitKat roms exist.

So I caved in and bought a brick clone phone. But I was so close to buy a jxd-s5800 or Ireadygo Much G2. Wasn't for that 3G doesn't work on T-Mobile. Ireadygo Much W1 does but they want $300+ for the device. I don't care if it comes with a MediaTek or AllWinner cpu. Damn things work very fast and don't have Adreno graphics.

Cell phone manufacturers better get smart soon before the Chinese storm the US with their ultra cheap phones. That Ireadygo Much G2 is just a hair about $100 with a quad core CPU, built in gamepad, fully unlocked, and stock Android OS.

Seriously, look at this thing. Damn you T-Mobile!
much-g2.png
Click to expand...

I dare you to buy it...I will promise you, it sucks.
 
Ashbringer said:
Right, Dominance... Meanwhile here I am waiting to see the entire cell phone market collapse on itself. The Chinese market is ready to storm into the US with better products at a cheaper price. Think I care how much faster these smart phones are getting? I would be using my old cell phone right now if it wasn't for the crap Adreno graphics in it. The drivers are so broken that my GPS is rendered with flashes of images. Course nobody owns a physical qwerty phone anymore so no proper working KitKat roms exist.

So I caved in and bought a brick clone phone. But I was so close to buy a jxd-s5800 or Ireadygo Much G2. Wasn't for that 3G doesn't work on T-Mobile. Ireadygo Much W1 does but they want $300+ for the device. I don't care if it comes with a MediaTek or AllWinner cpu. Damn things work very fast and don't have Adreno graphics.

Cell phone manufacturers better get smart soon before the Chinese storm the US with their ultra cheap phones. That Ireadygo Much G2 is just a hair about $100 with a quad core CPU, built in gamepad, fully unlocked, and stock Android OS.

Seriously, look at this thing. Damn you T-Mobile!
much-g2.png
Click to expand...

You are delusional. There are already cheap chinese phones on the market. Nobody buys them because they are garbage and/or lack the capabilities of the current flagship handsets. Why buy a phone from a shady company with lackluster capabilities when you can buy something a generation or two old from the big US/Japenese/Korean companies for the same price and better support?
 
Ashbringer said:
Seriously, look at this thing. Damn you T-Mobile!
Click to expand...
That's what we get for have phones tied to service contract. People are buying phones on time and not realizing it. The consequence is that its not in phone carrier's interest to put a lot of money into these nor to invest in non-mainstream features.
 
CDMA patent owed by Qualcomm, that is why, they are only one making a modem that works in CDMA, funny thing is CDMA is invented by Sharon Claude whos student took that (without paying a penny) and started Qualcomm

Sharon Claude is a genius just like Nicolas Tesla! again both of them got screwed over bad
 
PCunicorn said:
Adreno graphics work great I've used quite a few. And there's no reason they would have bad drivers, Adreno are the most common graphics chips out there.
Click to expand...
It's also very bad in drivers. There's a reason why so much attention is given to freedreno. Qualcomm's drivers are just junk. Just ask the Dolphin emulator developer which driver he thinks is the worst. I'll give you a hint, just rearrange the letters for Radeon.
And Mediatek chips suck. They work fast for normal stuff but the graphics in them are WAY worse then Adreno and the CPUs themself wont work fast later since games get more demanding and so do new versions of Android.
Click to expand...
Android applications getting more demanding? You and me have different experiences with the smart phone and tablet market. Just see for yourself.
You're gate against Adreno is retarded. And the reason Chinease phones arent just going to take off is because most of them do not offer great quality for a low price, the onws that do have great quality cost the same as US phones, and they have terrible ROM is first party OS support.
Click to expand...
When it comes to smart phones almost nobody here in the US has good support. The majority of Android owners are on Gingerbread. That should tell you something. I buy a phone based specifically on community support. How else would my MyTouch4G Slide have KitKat on it? Certainly isn't because of HTC that's for sure. Of course there's only one active developer and he broke his MyTouch phone nearly a year ago. HTC also doesn't help by locking the boot loader and kernel. Requiring me to S-OFF the phone with a dangerous wire trick.

I just bought myself a LG L90 phone for $100 and did so because there's also a community of rom developers for it. The only problem is that because so few Americans and Europeans aren't made aware of these devices, that few buy it. And therefore even fewer rom developers exist. That and 4G connectivity seems to not be a frequent found feature as well. Only reason I didn't buy it.

If Nvidia made a similar device with their quality and Tegra chips thrown in it for $300 and worked as a 4G unlocked phone, then I'd buy it. Instead they created their stupid shield devices, which are as innovative as a GameStop employee.
 
poor AMD.
Still waiting for the AMD android tablets and the AMD phones.. ooh, yeah
Why I write in a qualcomm tread?:
ATI-AMD's Imageon=Qualcomm's Adreno (in the recent past I am sure ADRENO has evolved a lot)..
I wonder what would have happened if Imageon would have remained in AMD's hands.. probably a failure by 2010, even if excellent chips maybe no one would buy since its AMD and all trust seems to come so hard for this company.. Adreno-Qualcomm = Billions in profit. AMD-Imageon=Bust : (
poor, sad, broke AMD.
Just die already I hate to see the 1000 cuts death this company is suffering (A company which I like, and I have used since my 486.
 
forcefed said:
Lol gaming phone, what are you 10?
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I don't see the LOL at all.. seems like a fun phone.. lets be honest.. phone calls have become and add-on to what are really hand held computers.
It makes a lot of sense to have this additional types of controls for gaming.
This touch only LG-prada induced situation really in the end is a money-saving aspect of this devices (in my view).. not so much 'added' functionality.. granted a full keyboard have always been a bit of a pain, and I have yet to use one that was well executed.. but my hands are on the range of big hands.... so I struggle with screen keyboards too if the screen is small.
Control like those on the picture look kind of cool to me I don't know.

I am not 10.
 
Ashbringer said:
It's also very bad in drivers. There's a reason why so much attention is given to freedreno. Qualcomm's drivers are just junk. Just ask the Dolphin emulator developer which driver he thinks is the worst. I'll give you a hint, just rearrange the letters for Radeon.

Android applications getting more demanding? You and me have different experiences with the smart phone and tablet market. Just see for yourself.

When it comes to smart phones almost nobody here in the US has good support. The majority of Android owners are on Gingerbread. That should tell you something. I buy a phone based specifically on community support. How else would my MyTouch4G Slide have KitKat on it? Certainly isn't because of HTC that's for sure. Of course there's only one active developer and he broke his MyTouch phone nearly a year ago. HTC also doesn't help by locking the boot loader and kernel. Requiring me to S-OFF the phone with a dangerous wire trick.

I just bought myself a LG L90 phone for $100 and did so because there's also a community of rom developers for it. The only problem is that because so few Americans and Europeans aren't made aware of these devices, that few buy it. And therefore even fewer rom developers exist. That and 4G connectivity seems to not be a frequent found feature as well. Only reason I didn't buy it.

If Nvidia made a similar device with their quality and Tegra chips thrown in it for $300 and worked as a 4G unlocked phone, then I'd buy it. Instead they created their stupid shield devices, which are as innovative as a GameStop employee.
Click to expand...

Are you using the LG L90 on metro PCS by chance?
 
Ashbringer said:
1. It's also very bad in drivers. There's a reason why so much attention is given to freedreno. Qualcomm's drivers are just junk. Just ask the Dolphin emulator developer which driver he thinks is the worst. I'll give you a hint, just rearrange the letters for Radeon.

2. Android applications getting more demanding? You and me have different experiences with the smart phone and tablet market. Just see for yourself.

3. When it comes to smart phones almost nobody here in the US has good support. The majority of Android owners are on Gingerbread. That should tell you something. I buy a phone based specifically on community support. How else would my MyTouch4G Slide have KitKat on it? Certainly isn't because of HTC that's for sure. Of course there's only one active developer and he broke his MyTouch phone nearly a year ago. HTC also doesn't help by locking the boot loader and kernel. Requiring me to S-OFF the phone with a dangerous wire trick.

I just bought myself a LG L90 phone for $100 and did so because there's also a community of rom developers for it. The only problem is that because so few Americans and Europeans aren't made aware of these devices, that few buy it. And therefore even fewer rom developers exist. That and 4G connectivity seems to not be a frequent found feature as well. Only reason I didn't buy it.

If Nvidia made a similar device with their quality and Tegra chips thrown in it for $300 and worked as a 4G unlocked phone, then I'd buy it. Instead they created their stupid shield devices, which are as innovative as a GameStop employee.
Click to expand...

1. Sucks for devs then and they can continue to use freedreno drivers but us consumers, it doesn't matter at all. Any app that doesn't work with Qualcomm is made by dumbasses, who for some reason refuse to use these "Freedreno" drivers.

2. I said/meant Android versions are getting more demanding. I guarantee you, if you tried to run Lollipop or a demanding game on some old Mediatek ICS-era CPU, it would run very slowly. Do this with a Qualcomm CPU from the ICS era and it will run fine. The Galaxy Nexus can run KK perfectly and Lollipop ROMs, while in alpha, seem to be running well also.

3. Actually the majority of Android users are on Jelly Bean, and I never said US/Japanese carrier/phone support is great. It's just way better than Chinese support. And you know why you're HTC has Kit Kat on it? ROM developers. Damn near every cheap Chinese phone doesn't have these and chances are, those Chinese phones will be stuck on the Android version they came on forever.
 
Ashbringer said:
HTC also doesn't help by locking the boot loader and kernel. Requiring me to S-OFF the phone with a dangerous wire trick.
Click to expand...

HTC is one of the few that still allow the end user to unlock the bootloader; it can be done via the HTCDev website. The few phones that required the wire trick were ones that were either before HTCDev, or that the carrier didn't want HTC allowing the bootloader unlocked (the Rezound being one of them, which I had). And the wire trick wasn't dangerous at all honestly... The VZW One M7 was able to be unlocked on HTCDev for <24hrs, and then HTC saw people were doing it, which Verizon didn't want. So they revoked it for JUST the Verizon M7. The other carrier models worked fine with HTCDev still.

Compare this to Samsung who's not allowing bootloader unlock at all now. They pulled that shit, and I switched right back to HTC now.
 
Uvaman said:
Are you using the LG L90 on metro PCS by chance?
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No on T-Mobile.
PCunicorn said:
1. Sucks for devs then and they can continue to use freedreno drivers but us consumers, it doesn't matter at all. Any app that doesn't work with Qualcomm is made by dumbasses, who for some reason refuse to use these "Freedreno" drivers.
Click to expand...
The problem with Adreno drivers is that developers have to make special code just to work around the bugs. These bugs have been around since the first Android phones and nowadays those bugs have to be replicated in order to render certain apps properly.

Freedreno was suppose to fix that but as far as I know there's no Android rom that actually uses that driver. Qualcomm had only recently gotten involved with Freedreno.
2. I said/meant Android versions are getting more demanding. I guarantee you, if you tried to run Lollipop or a demanding game on some old Mediatek ICS-era CPU, it would run very slowly. Do this with a Qualcomm CPU from the ICS era and it will run fine. The Galaxy Nexus can run KK perfectly and Lollipop ROMs, while in alpha, seem to be running well also.
Click to expand...
Why would Lolipop be more demanding? Also that's not an app. Doesn't matter anyway cause all modern smart phones are stuck with ~8-32GB of rom storage that a lot of times doesn't have a SD card slot. You'll never see heavy duty apps on a device with that little storage. We've seen devices with that amount of storage for 3 years now. A 32GB microSDHC class 10 card is only $16 bucks. Shouldn't 32GB be like standard for internal storage?
3. Actually the majority of Android users are on Jelly Bean, and I never said US/Japanese carrier/phone support is great. It's just way better than Chinese support. And you know why you're HTC has Kit Kat on it? ROM developers. Damn near every cheap Chinese phone doesn't have these and chances are, those Chinese phones will be stuck on the Android version they came on forever.
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You right it is Jelly Bean now. Actually the Chinese have surprisingly large amount of rom developers but they're hard to find. I'm used to visiting XDA for roms but they don't support all devices there. Hardly any actually.

I actually got one of those Android car stereos and there's a lot of people in the forums demanding for a section just for them. OUKU car stereo is very nice but yea Chinese made.
 
carnageX said:
Compare this to Samsung who's not allowing bootloader unlock at all now. They pulled that shit, and I switched right back to HTC now.
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Does anyone know WHY?

I used to get Samsung when I could because I knew I could unlock it and be happy if the factory software was shit. But seems that the newer stuff is blocked.
 
cdr_74_premium said:
Does anyone know WHY?

I used to get Samsung when I could because I knew I could unlock it and be happy if the factory software was shit. But seems that the newer stuff is blocked.
Click to expand...

carrier request, when htc becomes popular again the carrier well demand the lock as well.
 
Also you can unlock Samsung phones just fine, you just lose warranty support.
 
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