Over the past
few years, mobile phone usage has been gradually moving from feature phones to
smartphones and it is no surprise that smartphones now have more sales than
feature phones worldwide.
With smartphones’
growing popularity, improvements have also been made in the various parts of
the device to improve users’ experience. This has gone so far that many
smartphones today now have similar specifications to personal computers.
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| Processor. Img: planalog.com |
Someone may
already be wondering what the most important part of a smartphone is. Well, I
may also have to ask what other part of the human body is more important than
the brain? Your guess is as good as mine, no part.
The brain of
a smartphone is its processor. The processor is responsible for
millions/billions of calculations per second to perform the most important
tasks in a smartphone.
To put it
simpler, the speed of a processor will determine how fast a smartphone will be
able to do tasks like video capture, gaming, web surfing or even basic call
making. The importance of a processor in a smartphone cannot be overemphasized
because it has more than a processor incorporated into the processor chip.
In a personal
computer (PC), components like Central Processing Unit (CPU), Graphic
Processing Unit (GPU), Video encoder and decoder may be separated on the
motherboard but this is an entirely different story in the smartphone.
The
smartphone has integrated all these components into system-on-chip (SoC) which
makes it a processor much more integral to the functioning of a smartphone.
This is done to improve communication between the components and to make a
provision for the small space inside a smartphone compared to a PC.
Processors
have advanced from single-core to double and quad-core in recent years. What
are some functions being done by the system-on-chip (SoC) and how does number
of cores affect them?
Running the operating system (OS)
The CPU part
of an SoC is responsible for running the operating system on a smartphone. Of course,
we already know popular OSes like Android, iOS, Windows Phone and others.
Touch-screen functions
The CPU part
is also responsible for controlling the touch-screen capabilities of a
smartphone as most of today’s smartphones employ touch screens.
3G, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi
The SoC is
responsible for the network and connectivity functions in a smartphone. These
components are also being incorporated into the processor to improve
connectivity.
Gaming
The graphic
processing unit of an SoC is responsible for the image capabilities of a
smartphone. High capacity processors like the latest quad-core processors are
able to render games with the best image possible and for 3D in games.
Camera
Cameras on
smartphones today are able to capture 1080p videos and 20MP pictures because of
the improvement in processors. The processors carry out these functions and at
minimum power usage.
Battery Efficiency
Everyone
knows the frustration that follows having a weak battery when you have to do
many things on your smartphone. You have a call to make while you still have to
surf the web about the latest player your club just bought.
The truth is
that strong processors improve the battery efficiency. It also increases the
time charge will last on your smartphone by sharing workloads across multiple
cores and running each core at lower voltage.
Reduces Heat
The latest
processors in the market have been designed to minimize heat in a smartphone.
It must be noted that unlike a PC, the smartphone doesn’t have a cooling fan.
The heat is considerably reduced because workloads are shared between many
cores.
For instance,
the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor to be used in Nexus 5 has been confirmed
to reduce heat by 30%.
These are few
but not all functions of a processor in a smartphone and that is why
improvements have been made on the processor by companies like ARM, Qualcomm
and Nvidia over the years to make the smartphone stronger and better.
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What the most important component of a smartphone does