Motorola Sholes: Specs and speculations

While daydreaming about the Motorola Sholes having the snappy 1GHz Snapdragon doing the dirty work of the handset, Android and Me did some digging in an attempt to find out which processor would be under the Sholes' hood. Based on the Linkedin profile of a Motorola employee that showed the company building an Android device that was not the Morrison, it appears that the handset will feature the TI OMAP3430. It is a mature processor that has been around long enough to be mass produced at a decent (read lower) price. If this is true, the Sholes would be in good company with other high-end devices that use the processor including the Palm Pre, Sony Ericsson IDOU and the Samsung OMNIA HD. The chip has a 600MHz CPU and contains a PowerVR SGX 530 GPU. While the Sholes will not use the Snapdragon, it will certainly have enough power to get things done.

Another prediction made by Android and Me was a forecast that the Sholes will have serious gaming capabilities and come with the Eclair (2.0) version of Android. Google's top Android exec, Andy Rubin, told Reuters that Eclair should ship this year and would be considered Android 2.0. While the Donut is supposed to update and enhance the UI, Eclair focuses on multimedia and gaming. Rubin said that with the Sholes, you can compare it to the serious handheld gaming experience seen with the Nintendo DS and the PSP. And since the TI OMAP3430 supports OPEN GL  ES 2.0. it all adds up to a device that Android and ME says will be more powerful than both of those portable gaming units, possibly incorporating 3D features into the games.

The final prediction made was on pricing and launch date. Looking at the recent stare of pricing in the smartphone market, a price of $199 with a 2 year contract would make sense. Both the Pre and the iPhone 3GS have similar specs to the Sholes and both of those devices debuted at that price point. The predicted launch date would put the Sholes in the public's hand just before the Thanksgiving Day Turkey and football feast.

Google's Rubin says that while the Sholes is certainly a consumer oriented phone with the seamless connection to the users social networks, future versions of Android phones would be more business oriented. "Today, we don't support many enterprise applications but in the future, I think enterprise will be a good focus for us," Rubin told Reuters. He added that he expected this to happen this year. He went on to say that after the Eclair OS, the next Android update will  have the code name Flan.

Motorola Sholes Preliminary Specifications

source: Reuters, AndroidandMe