Review: (Flashback) NTT DoCoMo Sigmarion III

I just won a Sigmarion 3 on eBay! BTW I couldn't help but laugh at how the reviewer refers to SD cards as "Standard Definition cards" lol, they are "Secure Digital cards".

Actually it says "standard definition SD card slot" as in not a SDHC SD card slot

It's still a mistake, there's no "high" or "low" definition memory cards, memory cards don't have definition/resolution so you can't give a memory card a definition/resolution rating.

Anyway my Sig 3 is about to be delivered any minute now.

Great review though not the pinnacle of hpc performance as the Smartbook G138 and it's 200mhz strongarm totally destroys the sig 3 and not by a small amount. None the less a super review of what was for many years a fantastic daily companion device for me that did everything I wanted very well for a long time.

Great work

John

Interesting, most hold that the Sig III is the faster due to its AMD chip, I've not heard many call the G138 faster before!

I think the video processing on the G138 gives it an edge in functional thoroughput...not necessarily faster by strict chip speed.

Lol. The only thing sig3 does faster is video due to gpu.

Everything else the G138 destroys it by a huge amount. The only reason me and cmonex think the G138 is just so ridiculously fast is the OS runs from ram and not rom there is also some kind of programmable chip in it which I'm not sure what it's programmed to do. At the time I had a sig3 and a G138 I'd say sig 3 browsing was sluggish, IE on a G138 almost felt like desktop speed (not now but back then) browsing was actually a real pleasure on it. Think I've got a video on YouTube of a G138 going to same pages as one of the CE5 netbooks will dig it out.

If Sig3 had 128mb ram and flash rom the ultimate would have been a custom rom set to run from ram. Yeah opera helps sig3 a lot but still not G138 fast.

Sure it's been said in here a few times G138 is blistering quick compared with most everything else CE based

Edited by mr-mac 2013-03-02 7:26 PM

Nah rich the gpu in the G138 isn't anything special compared to the imageon 3200 the one in the G138 is 2mb framebuffer with only very basic 2d acceleration functions.

Running os of good ram seems to be the key to the huge difference in performance I think even the stock IE is quick which is why we think ram gives it the speed 4.2 is a tiny but faster than 4.1 in the G138 but not enough to explain the difference.

The other advantage is 4.2 as a lot more apps can be hacked to run (modern satnav apps for example).

Iirc one if the tablets with ce4.2 had 400mhz xscale and imageon and 128mb ram so if it had flash rom it'd be interesting to cook a rom that runs from ram like G138 and see if that explains it.

Actually I lied sig3 was better at music as well due to a decent Wolfson DAC which either had or is connected to decent line drivers as the sound quality from good mp3's on decent schenheiser over ear phones is ridiculously good. Sees off most dedicated mp3 players with ease and drove the big phones very well.

John

Edited by mr-mac 2013-03-02 7:47 PM

If I could get a sig3 or slightly wider width, wafer thin device, with 6.5-7" widescreen and good arm cpu/gpu combo I'd consider an hpc again. Shame tegra didn't have anything as when they first showed tegra netbooks etc they ran CE and even had a Firefox build for it (reason ce allowed gpu acceleration and android didn't at time).

Even if I could pick up one of those early devices that never made it I'd have CE again. Though tbh with RT my ideal size and shape device is quite possibly around the corner (plus if I buy and rt app I get it for win 8 as well) it has printer drivers, good browser etc. etc. I'd happily take a razor thin RT netbook style device and feel RT does make it possible for HPC successor and resurgence in ultra portable and it has enough features and ability to be as productive and exceed what ce\hpc offered back in the day...

Please device manufacturers look at the Sig3 then re-imagine it with a bigger screen (flipable for tablet mode) and make it just a tiny bit sleeker with some aluminium construction but keep the thicker rear to allow a swappable battery module (doesn't need to be round or as big) hinge in middle and two single modules pop in from each end????

You know what I might just PhotoShop up a design idea using Sig3 as a base and see what it looks like

http://www.hpcfactor.com/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=13227&st...

That's link to tablet I was thinking of and it runs OS from RAM by looks of it

Edited by mr-mac 2013-03-02 8:10 PM