All Google Phones

The Google phone will use what is probably the fastest smartphone chip on the planet and become the first non-Windows smartphone to tap into this kind of processing power.

Conspicious among the Google phone’s leaked specifications is the Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm. Snapdragon is the first gigahertz-class ARM-based processor to be used in smartphones. (In current implementations, Snapdragon runs at 1GHz.)

And the Google phone–aka, Nexus One–will have some interesting company, though both of the rival phones that use the chip are in the Windows Mobile camp: the Toshiba TG01 and HTC HD2.

Interestingly, all of these phones have, relatively speaking, large screens: more than four inches in diagonal size. The Google phone will also add high-resolution (based on an OLED touchscreen) to that.

What’s the big picture on all of this? Smartphones are getting larger and more like small tablets (or “media pads”–which is really a more apt description) and their functionality is becoming more akin to personal computers. So, faster processors are necessary (let’s not forget Nvidia’s Tegra chip or Texas Instrument’s OMAP processor) to handle the increasing hardware and software workloads.

Sort of sounds like the old PC mantra. Bigger, better, faster. Bigger storage/memory capacities, better (increasingly sophisticated) operating systems, and faster processors. Which is why Intel is sprinting as fast it can to get its “x86″ PC architecture into smartphones. But this market is going to be a hard one to crack for Intel, no matter how much it wows device makers with its technology and marketing clout.

Look no further than Microsoft for proof. Despite its size and status, it is currently losing the smartphone (Windows Mobile) mindshare (and market share) battle to the Apple iPhone. And prospects won’t improve with the emergence of devices–such as the Motorola Droid and Google Phone–based on Google’s Android operating system, not to mention other popular platforms such as the BlackBerry.

The bottom line is that silicon competition will be varied and vigorous in the smartphone market–unlike the PC space. Which makes the unveiling of every new major smartphone all the more interesting.

[Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10415466-92.html}