Nokia E90 or Nokia E71??

We know that E71 has faster CPU clock than E90. Nokia E71 has CPU Clock Rate at 369 MHz, while Nokia E90 CPU Clock Rate at only 332 MHz. Does that mean E71 is going to be faster than E90?

Michal Jerz over my-symbian forum has great great answer for this question:


The Freescale processor in the E71 has different architecture than the OMAP2420 processor in the E90. It doesn't make much sense to compare just the clock speed of two different processors.

It's like with Intel and AMD processors. Even tough they're both based on the x86 technology and are compatible (just like the E71 CPU and the E90 CPU are both based on ARM11 technology and are compatible), differences in their internal architecture cause that e.g. some AMD processors are faster than their Intel equivalents at LOWER clock speeds.

There is also one important additional difference between these CPUs: the Freescale in the E71 is a single-core CPU whereas the OMAP in the E90 is a dual-core CPU. The E90 processor has separate core to handle the baseband (telephony and network related tasks) and separate core for applications. The E71 processor has only one core, dealing with both network and the OS. So while (thanks to its faster clock) it can sometimes be faster (e.g. when there is no network/telephony activity to handle), with such activity in the background it may actually turn out to be slower. And it's worth noting that some network/telephony activity happens almost all the time, even if you're not connected to the Internet or making a call at that moment. The phone constantly updates its location, switches between neighbouring base stations, monitors their signal quality, checks which services are available (GPRS, 3G, supported call encryption algorithms, etc). It only doesn't do any such operations in Offline mode.

Last but not least, the OMAP in the E90 has graphic and video hardware accelerator, missing from the Freescale. That's why you can e.g. run the full OpenGL ES version of Quake on the E90 but not on the E71. That's also probably why the E90 can record high quality VGA/30 fps video while the E71 only records QVGA clips at some poor 10-15 fps.

Long story short, the OMAP2420 is definitely more powerful than the Freescale in the E71, so don't worry, you didn't waste your money.

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