Motorola virtualized smartphone will kill iPhone price: OK Labs

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 31 March 2009 04:04

Business IT - Technology

Motorola's new Evoke QA4  is the world's first commercially available virtualized handset capable of running multiple operating systems, including Android, on a single ARM processor and will be hundreds of dollars cheaper than the iPhone and other smartphones. This is the claim of Open Kernel Labs, the company that provides the OKL4 hypervisor that the new smartphone will use.

OK Labs told iTWire the new touch screen slider Motorola phone, available in Q2, will be able to run a Linux OS (possibly Android) and another real time operating system (RTOS) side by side on a single ARM processor, dramatically reducing its cost.

According to OK Labs, this will enable Motorola to offer the Evoke QA4 to consumers at a feature phone price, hundreds of dollars cheaper than most smartphones like the iPhone and Blackerry.

"OKL4’s mobile virtualization solution enabled Linux and an RTOS to run side by side on a single ARM processor, offering decreased bill-of-materials (BOM) costs and separation of GPL and proprietary software code as required by companies’ IP policies," according to OK Labs.

"The isolation provided by OKL4 when running concurrent operating systems on one processor is the same as running each operating system on a separate processor."

OK Labs CE Steve Subar told iTWire last week that while the user experience would be seamless for users, the range pf applications available through the Evoke QA4 interface will actually be provided by the concurrently running operating system.

“OKL4’s high performance communication mechanisms enabled Motorola to provide a seamless, integrated graphical user experience, bridging new Linux applications and existing legacy RTOS applications,” said Subar today.

According to Subar the Motorola Evoke QA4 heralds a new era of low cost smartphones, made possible through the use of mobile hypervisor technology.

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