NYC

We know that Intel is gunning for ARM with its Oak Trail platform, and indeed there were a few early tablets at Computex following that very path to Honeycomb. The question on everyone's minds, of course, is how well this dual-core 1.5GHz platform can compare to the Tegra 2 competition. If you believe the results from a suite of tests that  tweakers.net  ran on a prototype Compal unit, then the answer is "not very well." On benchmarks like CaffeineMark, Linpak, and Quadrant the platform was largely left in the dust by ARM competition with bigger biceps, but the Oak Trail machine  did  clean the floor with everyone else on the SunSpider browser benchmark. What does it all mean? Not a heck of a lot at this point, we're afraid. It's far too early to be drawing performance conclusions about a platform based on a prototype fresh out of the fabricator, and we have our doubts that these benchmark apps are optimized for the new platform -- so don't ...

Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha took time yesterday to talk business strategy, the advantages of Android, and to take developers to task for poorly optimized apps. At several points during the 50-minute chat the topic turned to lackluster battery life, and Jha placed blame squarely at the feet of hastily tested apps -- which he said can sap between 30 and 40 percent of your phone's juice. The chairman even suggested their effect on longevity and performance were the impetus behind 70 percent of handset returns. But, the company has a solution, and (surprisingly) its name is Blur. In a moment of presumably unintentional creepiness Dr. Jha said, "MotoBlur allows us to know, with precision, what battery life you're seeing," before suggesting that future phones could warn you about power draining apps and bandwidth hogs. What wasn't clear though, was if he was talking about the existing Android battery manager or if Motorola has been collecting usage data -- since w...