Qualcomm In New York:
Bringing the Magic to Mobile
Posted October 25, 2013 - 14:23 by Rob Enderle
Qualcomm kicked off a big
press event in New York this week and it was kind of amazing to see what the
company showcased. Not only did Qualcomm have both the new Kindle Fire HDXs and
the new Nokia Windows RT tablet on
display, but also showed off a large number of phones in the phablet class from
vendors like Nokia, LG and HTC.
But what really took me aback was the amazing
things that Qualcomm was able to do with its amazing Snapdragon technology.
360 Degree Photos
The most amazing demonstration was conducted with
hundreds of HTC One phones placed in a double circle around a stage. Operating
the phone’s cameras remotely, Qualcomm was able to capture a 360 view of
acrobats performing in real time. At the touch of a button, the operators could
freeze the image being shown in a 360 degree still frame and then spin the
frozen image around in real time, showing all sides of the acrobat. This is
something that typically requires a series of expensive cameras to pull off, yet
Qualcomm managed it with just smartphones.
Their reveal of the stage was almost magical, very
OZ like if you remember the original movie, where the curtain surrounding the
stage near instantly dropped revealing the acrobats and the huge smartphone set
up.
Orchestrated ARM Music
One of the big ongoing demonstrations was of
musicians using a touch interface to provide the music using a Snapdragon
powered touch table. Reminiscent of the old Surface Table Microsoft put into
bars and hotels, this solution not only played amazing creations which were
mixed in real time, it displayed graphics on a massive multi-screen display.
This was fascinating to watch as the musicians, a young man and woman team,
looked like they were playing air hockey as their arms were moving so fast and
aggressively. And these seemingly random movements were producing a very
pleasant, and contemporary set of tunes. I could imagine having this set up in
a house and having kids torture their parents with it. Seriously, it looked like
a ton of fun.
Power of Snapdragon
The event was held to showcase the power of Qualcomm's
Snapdragon platform which stands behind most of the halo and flagship phones
coming to market this quarter. This technology is what makes
cameras in phones like the Nokia 1020 (which I used to take pictures at the
event), an amazing 41 megapixel camera work.
Of the products shown I was particularly fond of
the new Nokia line of Windows phones (I’ve been using one for years) and their
new tablet. All had amazing cameras, came in a range colors, though my favorite
color, blue, won’t be hitting the US. Well designed, amazing large screens (also powered by
Snapdragon), and they consistently used standard USB charging plugs so one
power supply could be used across the family and with non-Nokia devices as
well.
They were also talking about the new Kindle HDX
tablets. While I have the small tablet I wasn’t aware of how amazing the
big one is. Larger screens in the Retinal class tend to slow down performance
dramatically and the old large screen Kindle HD was noticeably pokey and it
didn’t use Snapdragon. However, the new line is equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800, their fastest chip,
and it is impressively fast, particularly when compared to the older version.
I’m actually a fan of the larger Kindle but have been disappointed in its
performance. Apparently, I won’t be disappointed anymore.
Wrapping Up: A Slice of
Amazing
It is a real treat to go to Qualcomm’s events
because I have so many old Intel friends there, some I’ve known for years and
they are some of the best and brightest from that company. At their event they
did an amazing job and I’m such a fan of their little dragon commercial as
well. We get so little magic at technology events these days that the magic
Qualcomm brought this week touched me and I hope to see more of this in the
future. Technology should always be this fun and magical and my personal thanks
to Qualcomm for bringing that magic to this event.
No comments:
Post a Comment