[Skeevecr]

RIM has already suffered a "huge dent" in sales. If they could do something about it they would. I still think the PalyBook sucked up a lot of their resources that could have been spent on new phone hardware.

I think you are wrong about that, most of the more technical development work on the playbook will have come from the team they got when they bought qnx for the simple reason that the rest of the company wouldn't be familiar with the os.

Some existing rim staff would be needed for dtm support, graphics and for the bridge, but the majority of the radio and java people won't have had anything to do with the playbook.

[ekafara]

You don't really need a spec sheet, it's pretty predictable that the 4S will have the A5 dual core cpu, and I forget the name of it but it will have that dual core gpu as well. Then you throw in the obvious (and already confirmed) things like an 8mp camera and that about does it. Oh and of course iOS5 is coming out soon as well and that should add significant functionality to the OS. I'm guessing the iphone 5 next year will be a bigger update actually changing the form factor and all that.

How much faster is the A5 then the A4? I know ol' Steve Jobs will tell everyone its "much faster!" Then the A4 but it would be nice to have numbers to see. So it seems like a fair bit of an upgrade. Why did they scale back the name to the 4S? And will even with the different hardware where does the 9900 compare to this? Because if OS7 can run great with what they have in the phne it could be just as good to use as the 4S without dual core no? Does iOS really need dual core chip?

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[dooodads]

How much faster is the A5 then the A4? I know ol' Steve Jobs will tell everyone its "much faster!" Then the A4 but it would be nice to have numbers to see. So it seems like a fair bit of an upgrade. Why did they scale back the name to the 4S? And will even with the different hardware where does the 9900 compare to this? Because if OS7 can run great with what they have in the phne it could be just as good to use as the 4S without dual core no? Does iOS really need dual core chip?

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

The A5 cpu is considerably faster. It's going from single to dual core so it's expected. Also the new gpu will be significantly better, as it was jumping from ipad to ipad 2. The 9900 won't be anything near it in terms of speed and graphics but it's fair to mention that RIM's current OS isn't optimized to use dual core chips so even if it had one it would make no difference until the OS is totally changed. And that's a long ways away.

As for why Apple might only name it 4S instead of 5, that's just how they roll. Apple has always been software oriented, their hardware is always unmatched in terms of quality but they've always been software driven when it comes to all their iOS devices. They usually only rename the hardware a new number (3 to 4, and now 4 to 5) when the actual form factor of the hardware changes, otherwise the big changes will come from the OS updates, which a big one is coming with iOS5 soon. And to answer your question, of course they can use a dual core cpu. They have tons of hardware intensive games and it helps maintain the extremely snappy feeling of sliding from screen to screen and transitions. Also of course the browsing experience is boasted.

But once again, they are totally different regardless of what chip is used because of their operating systems. For Apple, having that dual core and extremely strong GPU will go a long way but that's because they have the apps and the OS that is optimized to utilize it. The Blackberry 9900 will be snappy with 1.2 because it really has no reason to have more. The OS is pretty basic, lets face it RIM has very little apps in their store, and so on. The 9900 will function well with its hardware and the iphone 4S will function very well with its hardware as well.

I'm repeating myself but software is the key here, and RIM doesn't have any to utilize a dual core cpu so don't worry about the phone not functioning as well as it could. I think it will hit the ceiling of performance with 1.2 on this current operating system.