Fishlabs: 'Satio and Xperia X10 got even more steam for games than iPhone 3GS'
Mobile developer loves the iPhone, but has its eye on other devices
Fishlabs loves to chat about the mobile and handheld games industry over on its blog, and has been taking a look at the hardware likely to sport its hot games in the near future.
Naturally the iPhone is high up the list, but its roving eye has landed on Sony Ericsson's long awaited entry into the smartphone wars.
The developer has just got hold of a prototype Xperia X10: A Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered beast with a 1GHz processor, OpenGL ES 2.0 support and an 800 pixel-wide screen. The Fishlabs team hasn't had chance to push all that pocket power to its limits yet, but is expecting big things for this mini-computer.
"We have to convey it looks stunning, indeed," the Fishalbs boys blog. "As the X10 is an Android based phone it will take a while until we have our first game running on it. But one thing is for sure... it promises high-end smartphone gaming on the big screen."
More immediately, Fishlabs has been dabbling with the Symbian-powered Satio, which uses the same PowerVR SGX graphics chip as the iPhone 3GS, coupled with an even faster ARM11 600MHz processor.
"We have ported Rally Master Pro from iPhone to Symbian featuring almost the same functionality on Satio," Fishlabs explains. "Although the resolution of the Satio display is quite higher compared to the iPhone we experience a stable frame rate of 30 frames per second on both devices running identical game code and graphical assets. Thanks to the better screen resolution of Satio, it is stunning how much more details can be rendered in the scene."
Not to put too much of a downer on things, the Satio has also experienced problems lately, having been pulled from the shelves after a slew of customer complaints and returns.
But clearly the next generation of power-processing smartphones is coming. Fishlabs won't be the only developer that can see the massive potential of feature phones equipped with PC-comparable silicon, and it seems games are at the top of the list for smartphone software.
