Samsung has announced a dual-core application processor for tablets PCs, netbooks and smartphones that will be able to handle 1080p video playback and recording, the company said on Tuesday.

The Orion processor contains a pair of 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 cores, and its capabilities give a hint at what we can expect from mobile products in 2011.

Besides handling video playback and recording at 1080p and 30 frames per second, a smartphone based on Orion can be equipped with two displays, while at the same driving a third external display such as a TV or a monitor via an HDMI port, according to Samsung.

Samsung is also pushing Orion's graphics performance. With an improved graphics processor, Orion is capable of delivering five times the 3D graphics performance over the previous processor generation from Samsung, which is used on its smartphone Galaxy S and the newly announced Galaxy Tab.

Orion will be available to "select customers in the fourth quarter of 2010" and will go into "mass production in the first half of 2011", according to Samsung.

Samsung isn't the only company working on dual-core processors for smartphones and other smaller portable products, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments are also working on products.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.c ... ID=3238493

All I want is a cheap-ass phone that doesn't have a stroke every time you decide to open one of the options... I've no idea if that's down to the processor, a crap OS, or both.

There is absolutely no benefit to having 1080p (as oppose to 720p) playback on a mobile phone. A 720p mobile phone screen would already have pixels below the level the human eye can resolve unless you literally stuck it in front of your face. Even if you believe the most skeptical position, the iPhone 4 retina display is almost at that level and it's display is effectively 640p.

This may be useful in a laptop, but even them I'm dubious about the value of a 1080p display on a typical laptop size screen. Generally speaking at reasonable viewing distance people can only tell the difference between 1080p and 720p once the screen is over about 30", and no laptop ever is going to have a 30" screen.

This may all become relevant when you can build a decent quality micro-projector into a mobile phone or laptop and we can do away with the screen for viewing video anyway, but right now it's typical gadget company willy-waving. 'Our number is bigger so it must be better' even when in the real world it's completely irrelevant.

Jon

The only advantage I can see is that it avoids re-sizing the source video in order to get it to show on a given device. I still think it's 'tarded, mind, and I wouldn't have videos on my mobile anyhoo.

Excellent, no mention about power...So you can record at 1080p, but only for five minutes as after that your phone'll die

Or you need a bigger phone?

Could the phone not just have a video output so you could hook it up to your telly? I would imagine that's what they have in mind.