Holiday Gift Guide »

ST-Ericsson U8500: 45 nm, 1.2 GHz, dual core, ARM Cortex A9

By: , IntoMobile
Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 9:17 AM

Forget everything you know about how fast smartphones are right now, because once you buy something with the dual core ST-Ericsson U8500 inside, then you’re going to have your face blown off. You’re looking at a chip manufactured on a 45 nm process packing 2 ARM Cortex A9 processors, each humming along at 1.2 GHz. That’s twice as fast as the iPhone clock for clock, and twice the number of cores, plus a generational leap ahead in terms of ARM architecture.

The U8500 supports recording video at 1080p resolution, taking 20 megapixel photos, 1024×768 resolution touch screen displays, has a HSPA+ radio included, and can last 120 hours while playing music, or 12 hours while playing 1080p video, all on a 1000 mAh battery.

No word as to when this chip will start sampling or start showing up in mobile phones. When a chipset company does that, that means you’re looking at roughly 1 to 2 years, closer to 2 years, before you can get your hands on a smartphone running this thing inside.

[Via: Press Release]

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • Jonathan

    Dual core =/= two processors

    • Stefan Constantinescu

      It’s two ARM Cortex A9 processors, aka dual core, and they’re on one die.

      What part did I screw up?

  • persnipoles

    Making a wish, crossing my fingers: Post-silicon development for new arm implementations will speed up so that we’re under a year from eng sample to consumer product. May happen if Arm and the chip manufacturers get more involved.

    (thanx for the write up).