Superphones to arrive in 2012, says ARM CEO

I am the sort of guy who is content with the device I have. Now this may be because there isn’t anything massively faster yet to compare it to, or even because the apps developed for it thus far don’t require uber-specifications, but I like to think it’s because sometimes, enough really is enough. Alas however times certainly do move on, and aiming to give us an insight in to 2012, ARM CEO Warren East (whilst announcing ARM’s new Cortex A7 processor, a competitor to Qualcomm Snapdragon options) said that:

“Smartphones as we know them today emerged around the Cortex A8 processor and with 3G modems. That meant a lot more data coming into the phones, so you could deliver a lot more content and services which in turn demanded more microprocessor compute power. Now we have very advanced smartphones with the cortex A9 processor which are capable of even higher levels of performance. As we look forward we can see the modem advancing to even higher bandwidth so more data coming in and out and more demand for compute power. That’s when we will see processors like the Cortex a15… delivering the kinds of performance required for some of these high compute power services and high-end smartphones sometimes today referred to as superphones” as Techradar reports.

Now, the ARM CEO here is clearly pointing to a future processor, and is also implying ARM powered handsets will be the superphones next year. It will definitely be very interesting to see how powerful handsets are next year, and that coupled with Android Ice Cream Sandwich, will make for some very tempting ‘superphones’ indeed, whether they are ARM powered or Qualcomm powered.