ARM promises dual-core phones by next year

ARM

Every phone is set to become a smartphone, as even lower-end handsets become powerful enough to run full-sized operating systems, according to British chip designer ARM.

As the company ramps up its high-end offerings, even low cost handsets will have enough power to run fully-fledged operating systems such as Google's Android.

"You'll be buying a smartphone by default," Rob Coombs director of mobile solutions for ARM told IT PRO. "These will use an open source OS, [giving] access to millions of lines of code available for free."

We'll also see dual core processors in high-end phones by the end of next year, according to Coombs. He said this will give phones more headroom for complex tasks such as speech recognition.

"It's useful if you want speech recognition, or you want to push out to higher resolutions," he said. "We're also helping Adobe optimise for Flash. There have been many man hours put into that."

Benny Har-Even

Benny Har-Even is a twenty-year stalwart of technology journalism who is passionate about all areas of the industry, but telecoms and mobile and home entertainment are among his chief interests. He has written for many of the leading tech publications in the UK, such as PC Pro and Wired, and previously held the position of technology editor at ITPro before regularly contributing as a freelancer.

Known affectionately as a ‘geek’ to his friends, his passion has seen him land opportunities to speak about technology on BBC television broadcasts, as well as a number of speaking engagements at industry events.