What to do

[bsutton1]

I've been lurking this board for a few days now. I, just like the rest of you guys, can't wait for this mystery passion phone to come out; if it ever does.
I'm in the midst of my 2 year contract with Verizon which ends in June. I'm eligible for a new phone on December 23.
I'm hoping and praying that the Passion will be out by then. If not, it will be the Droid or the Eris. Right now, I'm looking more toward's the Eris. It and the Droid are suppose to be getting android 2.1 next Thursday, right? If that's the case, the only difference between the 2 will be the size.
If I don't see the Passion, I will hopefully get the Eris.

 

[lerch629]

right now i have the droid and i am debating whether or not to return it on the hope that the passion will come and be better....

but bear in mind that screen size isnt the only difference between the droid and the eris... the reason i have the droid instead of the eris is because it has a much faster processer and a much better battery life....

 

[sooper_droid12]

It's likely that the only difference between the Passion and DROID will be the processor and HTC's Sense UI. It's a slick interface, although I'm not sure it's a deal breaker. It uses a lot of the processor's resources (hence the lag on the slower processor).

Here's what some others are saying that might help you: Figure out what you want. I think the main difference will be whether you want a physical keyboard or not. If not, wait for the Passion. It's very likely that the Passion will have a 3.7" screen like the DROID. While Android 2.x has provisions for different screen sizes, it's unlikely that Android would go with the HD2 screen which is 800x480, as big as it is. A full 16:9 screen allows for a nicer layout for the OS.

 

[bsutton1]

Since the Droid has a better battery and processor then, I may go with that. I do, however, don't like that keyboard and could do without it.
I'll just to have wait and see what happens in the next few weeks.

 

[sooper_droid12]

On paper, the DROID does not have the "better" processor. For all accounts, the Snapdragon is similar to the OMAP3 in that they share some similar architecture. The Cortex A8 shares from the same ARMv7 that the 9250 draws from. However, Qualcomm took that ARMv7 architecture and used proprietary design architecture to create what they called Scorpion.

On the face of it, there are a number of differences: Snap's got a 128-bit single instruction, multiple data functionality, whereas OMAP3 is 64/128-bit hybrid SIMD. The DROID has 256mb RAM available for apps, whereas the 320mb. The Snap can clock to 1GHz and OMAP3 can too, except the 3430 execution in the Droid is just under 600Mhz. Acer's Snapdragon phone is running at 768MHz, I believe. Snap's dedicated GPU is clocked at 600Hz and can render up to 22M polys/sec at full clock. The 3430 has been shown to render 14M polys/sec @ 440Hz running. According to Qualcomm, the combination is supposed to be about 5% more powerful than the OMAP3 processor which translates to milliseconds of differences.

Honestly, if you want to note the real differences, compare the DROID to Acer's Liquid. That's the "Passion" in the flesh. No spy photos, it actually exists and it's a nice looking phone. Honestly, it's like comparing an Intel chip to an AMD chip or something. Clock speed doesn't mean much and it really comes down to how they perform. As I mentioned in another post:

The HD2 running a full GHz Snap/Imageon was toasted in every GLBenchmark test compared to an OMAP3/SGX... toasted. Not even in the same realm. I really don't know what it means. Someone suggested non-optimized drivers, but I doubt it. While the Imageon GPU clocks faster (600 vs. 440), the SGX GPU is the benchmark by which mobile GPUs are measured for a reason! This might explain why the HD2 Snap/Imageon got its butt handed to them by a slower CPU/GPU in the OMAP3/SGX.

So, it really depends on who you're talking to. On paper, HTC looks to have the better CPU/GPU by clock speed. But it's the OMAP3/SGX combo that goes into the best Smartphones today: DROID, iPhone 3Gs, N900, etc.

 

[skiindude33]

I'm in the midst of my 2 year contract with Verizon which ends in June. I'm eligible for a new phone on December 23.
I'm hoping and praying that the Passion will be out by then. If not, it will be the Droid or the Eris.

Just because you're eligible on that date doesn't mean you have to rush out and buy a phone on that date! I've been eligible for over six months and have deemed it as not worth the upgrade unless a really crazy cool phone comes out. I thought that was going to be the droid, but now I'm banking on a much better Android 2.xx HTC phone being released relatively soon.

 

[bsutton1]

^ I know but I just dying for the passion to come out.

 

[david83]

The HD2 running a full GHz Snap/Imageon was toasted in every GLBenchmark test compared to an OMAP3/SGX... toasted.

hmm... toast

clock speed is always misleading. i learnt that ages ago. 1ghz does sound nice though, i wouldnt mind one of those badboys in my Hero.

 

[sooper_droid12]

hmm... toast

clock speed is always misleading. i learnt that ages ago. 1ghz does sound nice though, i wouldnt mind one of those badboys in my Hero.

I'm sure that it would help too in the same ways the QSD9250 helped the HTC HD2 compared to the TouchFloHD (300% improvement).

 

[Mykpfsu]

On paper, the DROID does not have the "better" processor. For all accounts, the Snapdragon is similar to the OMAP3 in that they share some similar architecture. The Cortex A8 shares from the same ARMv7 that the 9250 draws from. However, Qualcomm took that ARMv7 architecture and used proprietary design architecture to create what they called Scorpion.

On the face of it, there are a number of differences: Snap's got a 128-bit single instruction, multiple data functionality, whereas OMAP3 is 64/128-bit hybrid SIMD. The DROID has 256mb RAM available for apps, whereas the 320mb. The Snap can clock to 1GHz and OMAP3 can too, except the 3430 execution in the Droid is just under 600Mhz. Acer's Snapdragon phone is running at 768MHz, I believe. Snap's dedicated GPU is clocked at 600Hz and can render up to 22M polys/sec at full clock. The 3430 has been shown to render 14M polys/sec @ 440Hz running. According to Qualcomm, the combination is supposed to be about 5% more powerful than the OMAP3 processor which translates to milliseconds of differences.

Honestly, if you want to note the real differences, compare the DROID to Acer's Liquid. That's the "Passion" in the flesh. No spy photos, it actually exists and it's a nice looking phone. Honestly, it's like comparing an Intel chip to an AMD chip or something. Clock speed doesn't mean much and it really comes down to how they perform. As I mentioned in another post:

The HD2 running a full GHz Snap/Imageon was toasted in every GLBenchmark test compared to an OMAP3/SGX... toasted. Not even in the same realm. I really don't know what it means. Someone suggested non-optimized drivers, but I doubt it. While the Imageon GPU clocks faster (600 vs. 440), the SGX GPU is the benchmark by which mobile GPUs are measured for a reason! This might explain why the HD2 Snap/Imageon got its butt handed to them by a slower CPU/GPU in the OMAP3/SGX.

So, it really depends on who you're talking to. On paper, HTC looks to have the better CPU/GPU by clock speed. But it's the OMAP3/SGX combo that goes into the best Smartphones today: DROID, iPhone 3Gs, N900, etc.

You're being a bit misleading here. Your saying that the snapdragon doesn't equal to the OMAP based solely off of graphical performance. Yet put the actual CPU's head to head and what do you get? Snapdragon leaving the OMAP in the dust. Its something like 2100 million instructions per sec to 1200.

 

[sooper_droid12]

Uh, so much of what a Smartphone is called to do is push graphics. Ask it to crunch integers, yeah, Snapdragon is 3x better at it than the OMAP3. But brother, if you think that's all your phone is doing then you're the one misled. Again, these phones are called to push graphics, otherwise they wouldn't have dedicated GPUs. That's why in evaluating the hardware, you have to take the performance of the combination of the CPU/GPU/DSP. In this case, the numbers don't lie. OMAP3/SGX/C64++ shine compared to the Snap/Imageon/DSP. That's the fact...

 

[rushmore]

On paper, the DROID does not have the "better" processor. For all accounts, the Snapdragon is similar to the OMAP3 in that they share some similar architecture. The Cortex A8 shares from the same ARMv7 that the 9250 draws from. However, Qualcomm took that ARMv7 architecture and used proprietary design architecture to create what they called Scorpion.

On the face of it, there are a number of differences: Snap's got a 128-bit single instruction, multiple data functionality, whereas OMAP3 is 64/128-bit hybrid SIMD. The DROID has 256mb RAM available for apps, whereas the 320mb. The Snap can clock to 1GHz and OMAP3 can too, except the 3430 execution in the Droid is just under 600Mhz. Acer's Snapdragon phone is running at 768MHz, I believe. Snap's dedicated GPU is clocked at 600Hz and can render up to 22M polys/sec at full clock. The 3430 has been shown to render 14M polys/sec @ 440Hz running. According to Qualcomm, the combination is supposed to be about 5% more powerful than the OMAP3 processor which translates to milliseconds of differences.

Honestly, if you want to note the real differences, compare the DROID to Acer's Liquid. That's the "Passion" in the flesh. No spy photos, it actually exists and it's a nice looking phone. Honestly, it's like comparing an Intel chip to an AMD chip or something. Clock speed doesn't mean much and it really comes down to how they perform. As I mentioned in another post:

The HD2 running a full GHz Snap/Imageon was toasted in every GLBenchmark test compared to an OMAP3/SGX... toasted. Not even in the same realm. I really don't know what it means. Someone suggested non-optimized drivers, but I doubt it. While the Imageon GPU clocks faster (600 vs. 440), the SGX GPU is the benchmark by which mobile GPUs are measured for a reason! This might explain why the HD2 Snap/Imageon got its butt handed to them by a slower CPU/GPU in the OMAP3/SGX.

So, it really depends on who you're talking to. On paper, HTC looks to have the better CPU/GPU by clock speed. But it's the OMAP3/SGX combo that goes into the best Smartphones today: DROID, iPhone 3Gs, N900, etc.

I agree with you, but there are a ton of Snapdragon fanboys that love the chipset even when they have owned no device with it

I have athree 3430 devices: Archos 5, N900 and used a Droid for two weeks. All performed great with video and the two phones handled emulators better than any device I have tried. Quake 3 plays great on the N900- smooth with sound. Takes up a over 200 megs though, but I still have 1.5gb free

 

[rushmore]

You're being a bit misleading here. Your saying that the snapdragon doesn't equal to the OMAP based solely off of graphical performance. Yet put the actual CPU's head to head and what do you get? Snapdragon leaving the OMAP in the dust. Its something like 2100 million instructions per sec to 1200.

Both chipsets do things well, but Snap needs more clock to get er' done. What is the instruction / clock cycle correlation? Some chipsets need to work harder to reach their max points than others.

Still, my guess is for game emulators (they love clock cycles) Snapdragon would kick the 3430's butt. More the reason I wish Nexus had a keyboard