ST Ericsson U8500 system-on-chip has come a major step closer to appearing in mainstream devices with today’s newly announced support for the Android OS. Having optimized the OS to take advantage of Symmetric Multi Processing, this is a method for extending battery life by sharing the load between the two processing cores and underclocking when necessary. The partner company is now ready to start dropping these 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A9 beasts inside the next generation of smartphones.
The devices based on the U8500 would maintain “the cost and power consumption characteristics of a traditional feature phone.” We’re promised built-in HDMI-out support, 1080p video recording, and 120 hours of audio playback or 12 hours of Full HD video off a 1,000mAh battery.
