Looks like smartphones are all set to go 64-bit. After Apple's unveiling of the iPhone 5s, which is considered to be the first smartphone based on a 64-bit architecture chip, South Korean electronics giant Samsung has also said that its next smartphone will be powered by a 64-bit chip.
Samsung's mobile business chief Shin Jong-kyun told Korea Times that the upcoming Samsung Galaxy-branded smartphones will come with 64-bit processing capability.
"Not in the shortest time. But yes, our next smartphones will have 64-bit processing functionality," Shin said.
The Apple iPhone 5s is the first mobile phone with an ARM chip that has 64-bit support. According to Apple the chip has 64-bit desktop-class architecture, a modern instruction set, 2x general-purpose registers, 2x floating point registers, and over 1 billion transistors.
In desktop computing, a 64-bit processor can perform certain tasks at double the speed of a 32-bit one as it can address more volatile memory or RAM. A 32-bit CPU is limited to only 4GB RAM, so a 64-bit CPU addresses that limit. However, Apple has not shed any light on the amount of RAM inside the iPhone 5s (it usually does not), though it's improbable that it comes with more than 4GB. Overall, whether the move to 64-bits has any real world benefits at the moment is questionable. While Apple has said that the processor is twice as fast as the iPhone 5 and up to 40 times faster than the first iPhone, the move to 64-bit is likely only a small component in that, and undoubtedly there are several other improvements underneath.
The report talks about how Samsung is all geared up to take on Apple in the Chinese market, where it has a much larger market share compared to the Cupertino giant. However, with the launch of the new iPhones, Apple has increased its focus on China by including it in the first phase of the iPhones' release. Apple has also reportedly gained approval to offer the device with China's largest carrier, China Mobile which uses its proprietary 3G network.
The new iPhones also support a wider range of 4G LTE bands, making them an attractive proposition for Chinese customers. However, contrary to rumours, Apple's new iPhone 5c is not a low-cost offering which might go against Apple as the Chinese market is price conscious and Samsung and Chinese players like Lenovo and Xiaomi, offer a bigger range of smartphones across different price points.
The Korea Times report also cites Samsung officials as saying that Chinese authorities had recently authorised Samsung to integrate time-division duplexing (TDD) LTE technology on the company's future devices and that Samsung plans to release mobile devices that support both TDD-LTE and FDD-LTE in China ahead of previous schedules.
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