Intel badmouths Jesus Phone

Cusses out ARM core

Posted in Mobile, 23rd October 2008 18:00 GMT

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Intel has started calling the iPhone a flawed browsing experience. The chip giant attributes this to Apple's choice of an ARM core to power its moderately successful mobile phone.

The news comes from the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei, as reported by Cnet, but the company's disdain for all things ARM is nothing new. Intel has long maintained that it's impossible to experience the "whole internet" without an x86-compatible processor, such as the Atom, but up until now has refrained from naming the iPhone, which is generally recognised as one of the best mobile browsing experiences.

There have been allusions to the iPhone and hints that the device's lack of Flash capability was limiting the experience, but now Intel is prepared to hold up an iPhone and claim it can do better.

The problem with this argument is that even if you don’t like browsing on the iPhone - with its insistence on two-handed use and inability to remember your preferred text size - then perhaps you'd be happier with a Nokia S60 or an Archos 605, both of which are happily ARM-powered. The Archos runs Flash adequately too.

Claiming to deliver the "whole internet" on a mobile is a dangerous thing to do, as Genie found out before being snapped up by BT. We're firmly of the opinion that any internet experience is incomplete without a Gopher client - something the iPhone lacks, so perhaps Intel has a point. ®

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