Well, don't worry, the death of PCs and smartphones will not happen tomorrow. Qualcomm also did not openly declare its end at the company's annual Snapdragon Tech Summit in Hawaii last week. However, it signaled a level of performance that would make today's smartphone and PC designs obsolete. The deployment of Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 8 platform promises the beginning of a technological revolution that will quickly make everything on the market obsolete. Moreover, as the results are likely to be far from what we've seen so far, someone understands that these two market segments will soon collide, creating a new, powerful and almost magical thing. It won't take long. For example, if a smartphone can take better pictures than a professional SLR camera, provide music quality that surpasses high-end sound systems, and provides AI capabilities that do not require translators or existing digital assistants. , Is it really a smartphone or something better? Let's talk about the new Snapdragon platform. Next, I conclude with my Product of the Week. This is a new Qualcomm-based gaming platform developed in partnership with Razor, which has the potential to transform console games forever.
A Revolution Is Coming
Typically, if we talk about blended products like amphibious cars, flying cars, or even flying boats you get something that does a couple of things poorly. Amphibious cars were lousy cars, and tended to sink, the flying cars sucked as cars and tended to fall spectacularly out of the air, and flying boats or amphibious planes weren`t competitive with ships or planes except for some unique situations where you had water but no place to put an airport. The exception to this rule was the smartphone which initially eclipsed pure cellular phones and MP3 players doing both things as well or better than the focused devices did. We knew this class of device would continue to evolve from the iPhone wave that began this transition. But year over year, the evolution has been gradual — and when things advance gradually, we often miss the rapidly approaching revolution when the technology gets so good that it no longer makes sense to buy any of the focused devices. The devices that now are on the list to become obsolete arguably include the iPhone and the traditional PC.
Better Camera Than an SLR
I am a professional photographer. I haven't practiced for decades, but I know what experts are looking for in a solution. For some time there have certainly been more portable smartphones than dedicated cameras, but they couldn't match the quality of smartphones, mainly because of space constraints and not wanting to carry a phone with a real camera lens. did. Motorola rebuilt the camera for a cell phone a few years ago, but when I plugged in the device, the device became so big that it couldn't really be used as a cell phone, which was very impressive, but most of the niche suggestions. was. I've been using high resolution sensors for some time and it seemed like a bridge to avoid lens problems. There were also advanced photo and video editing tools that allowed photographers to approach SLR quality, but they were costly and required training to do the right thing.
Qualcomm announced that it would use an AI engine to automatically correct these photos. So you can avoid lens problems and not only rival or exceed the capabilities of a dedicated SLR, but also perform better methods such as one-click panoramic images.
Normally, to take a panoramic picture, you need to pan the pictures while the phone is taking a series of pictures and stitch them together to form a panorama. With the Snapdragon 8 solution, users can take a 140 degree image in panoramic mode with just one shot.
AI Heavy
So far, the AI functionality of the phone has barely existed. With Snapdragon 8, the included AI will be an important feature of your phone. Not only can you make significant improvements to your photos and videos, but you can also use them to cancel noise and create digital assistants that are much smarter than they are today. You can also use the AI to render digital avatars for future video conference products, or use phone sensors to measure your body and make your avatar look more realistic. This is an important step in the end to work in the Metaverse.
Gaming
There are two major problems with game consoles. Most are not portable and are usually run with a refresh cycle of 5 years or more due to the razor and blade models used by the segment. What if you could get the same performance from a
smartphone or a dedicated Android gaming system that's almost as portable? Qualcomm is a concept of both smartphone capabilities that rival game consoles and move forward at the speed of smartphones, low-cost games that don't require you to pay for hardware, and the handheld developer platform first announced at Razer. Was introduced. We'll talk more about the gaming system later, but the level of performance in this first attempt was visually and acoustically impressive, so I suspect that the console will soon become obsolete. I did.
Music
The music demonstration using the lossless audio stream was particularly impressive. I plugged in a demo phone to a pair of $ 7,000 speakers and the sound was great. The depth and range of the sound was comparable to some of the best high-end sound systems I've heard. I don't think anyone would buy a $ 7,000 speaker to listen to music on their cell phone, but they are buying a high-end sound system for their car. This makes listening to music from your mobile phone more comfortable with these systems. So far, when listening to the typical compressed soundstream delivered by today's phones, it often seems wasteful to pay for a high-end car radio. But with this new platform, I'm looking forward to seeing what the result will be when I connect the premium sound system to my car (yes, I just want to pay an extra fee and really get the value I bought). ..
PC Performance
If you can demonstrate PC-level performance on your smartphone, you will be wondering if your smartphone can replace your PC with the right accessory. Lenovo unveiled a head-mounted display at the event. This is arguably the best portable keyboard on the market. We haven't announced a mixed product yet, but I think it will be announced someday. After a few months, you might wonder if most people running applications in the cloud will need both devices. Currently, Lenovo is focusing on laptops with Snapdragon processors. However, this performance wonders if you really need two devices with similar performance.
Wrapping Up
Smartphones using this new Snapdragon platform must be announced by the end of the year. I would especially like to pay attention to the Motorola version, but I've heard that this is amazing. This next generation also promises a better music player, a better camera, a better gaming platform, and a very better mobile phone. I think this is the beginning of the revolution. The change is amazing when companies like Razer, Lenovo, Acer, and HP, who have had a high level of creativity over the years, have found the potential to revolutionize and use the revolution to dominate the market. It's a thing, and it should be a big one. I can't wait.
The Qualcomm / Razer Gaming Platform
Unfortunately, it's currently in prototype format, so you won't be able to buy this game system for a while. However, at the Qualcomm event, I was surprised at the high level of interest in esports for smartphone games in Asia. I understand why games on my smartphone are fun on the go, but if I'm still at an event, why limit myself as well? It's like sitting in front of an alternative 4K TV and watching a movie on your home cell phone. In addition, during the game, the restricted screen is occupied by game controls and fingers. Gambling people need to turn off a lot of graphics to limit latency. This makes sense if you just want to win the game, but for me at least part of the fun of playing the game is to enjoy the richness of the graphics. What happens if I design a smartphone dedicated to games? Sure, this wasn't very successful before, but most of the problems with previous gaming phones were that the gaming content was designed for non-gaming phones, which has the drawbacks of special devices, and in fact. Was that there was no excellent merit. One had experience. But, as we saw in Qualcomm's early high-performance processors, there is now decent content, thanks to Asia's interest in games that rival console games in terms of graphics, richness, and performance improvements. .. Qualcomm has partnered with Razer, a leading manufacturer of gaming laptops, to create a game-focused smartphone-based gaming system.
This is the perfect size to ride the next wave of self-driving cars. You would have had a self-driving car on a 6-hour flight to and from Hawaii for a Qualcomm event. If you can't get it this Christmas, it's never too late to get ready for next year. If you have a delivery bottleneck, you probably need to plan early. In any case, Qualcomm and Razer's new gaming platform is my product this week.
