Motorola Droid Gets Pumped Up To 1.1 GHz

by Rob Jackson on January 26th, 2010 at 11:29 am

Overclocking. That’s exactly what the folks at AllDroid did and they pushed the Motorola Droid to its limits, eventually getting it to perform at 1.1 GHz processing speed. A dangerous task indeed given that it normally runs at 600MHz, but they found a suitable middleground at 800MHz and you can root your phone to accomplish the speed burst for yourself.

1.1-ghz

Today 1.1 GHz… and hopefully tomorrow 1.21 Gigawatts so we can send our Droids BACK 2 THE FUTURE

[Via MobileCrunch]

  • G8D

    Is the HTC Hero underclocked at all?

  • ccongdon

    Wonder how that affects battery life…

  • Casper

    Keep in mind, the Droid is unique in that (for some reason) it was relatively underclocked from start of. It features, if not the same, then a similar Snapdragon/Scorpion ARM CPU as the Nexus One.

  • Jason

    Just make sure you have your AD/BC set right before you hit 88 mph…
    http://shirt.woot.com/friends.aspx?k=11565

  • Terry

    I might just have to root my Droid now to do this.

    Now if we could adjust the Ram.

  • espiritiv

    Of course it affects the battery life!!!

  • http://www.needfultoyz.com espiritiv

    Its definately not as fast as a snapdragon processor. 800MHZ is probably about right where it should be. They just wanted to extend the battery life to something reasonable and keep battery size thin

  • Wilco

    Curious, does the Droid get laggy at times, under stock conditions? Does it seem obvious that it needs more memory?

  • Ron Amadeo

    The droid normally runs at 550MHz. 600MHz was an earlier overclock. At 1GHz my droid does more flops than a nexus one.

  • Jesse

    ooo I wonder what we could get the Samsung Moment up to considering it was released at 800MHz

  • Dianne

    You are really dumb to do this. Seriously. The CPU is not rated to run at that speed. Even if you don’t immediately fry it (and just because others haven’t doesn’t mean you aren’t going to be the lucky one who does), you have a good chance of significantly reducing the life of the part.

  • http://menthix.net/ Menthix

    @Wilco: No, and no.

  • Abrown

    Exploding Droid anyone?

  • The_Omega_Man

    just keep it plugged in and cyro-cooled!

  • Car Control

    Obviously some of you haven’t overclocked a PC before. The life of solid-state devices (barring flash memory) is so long that you’d be unlikely to an reach overclocked chip’s end of life if you ran it for ten years, let alone the two years of a cell contract. As long as the vcore stays the same nothing bad is going to happen.

  • tristan

    so does it have to stay submerged in coolant now?

  • timmyjoe42

    I think you mean 1.21 Jiggawatts. ;)

  • Jeremy

    Timmyjoe42, the proper pronunciation of gigawatts is jiggawatts, though spelled with a G.

  • Robert Jones

    good luck 800 mhz has already been warned about by the chip company as dangerous and could severly damage the chip. 600 was the safest setting to keep it at. yes guys the hero is under clocked too and can run at 800 mhz too but also runs the issue of possible failure. this is nothing guys just a bunch of moto droid fanboys trying to one up everyone. watch everyone will laugh when people start blowing up their droids. yes i have overclocked my pc and it’s always recomended to have more cooling when doing it cause of heat issues. what we’re talking here is not just overclocking. we’re talking about taking it way out of spec. 600 mhz was the limit for a reason.

  • Tomyg3

    Actually the Cortex A8 is designed to run up to 1GHz so im not sure where you got that from….

  • Carlos

    I’m gonna take mine up to 1 million dollars!!! …Wait, what are we talking about?

  • Cooolone2

    Car Control, you have no idea what you’re talking about. PC/Mobile handsets = Apples/Oranges… There are heat sinks, fans, etc. in a PC and components not so close to the heat generated by the overclocking. HEAT kills! Simple as that… Heat generated through lowering voltage, increasing amperage draw and changing clock cycles will fry chips, components, battery, etc. That not to say if the software, OS or others will operate correctly, potentially bricking the phone too. So, if you have a few at $100 maybe it’s worth it to play around, but I can see all the forums already – “I over clocked my phoen and it won’t work now, please help”!!! lmao…

  • Adam

    It’s a Texas Instruments OMAP 35x series processor, with a similar ARM Cortex A-8 core as the snapdragon (Snapdragon is based on the Cortex A-8 core). For these parts, TI will test each die and bin them based on speed. They list their max speed at 720Mhz on their site, which means they if they are sold at that speed, TI claims they will run at 720Mhz for the life of the part with no issue. I believe the Droid uses parts that are binned and guaranteed at 600Mhz. That’s the safest speed you can be guaranteed to run at.

    You can always overclock any CPU, but it is a risk of damaging the part, but mostly instability will occur before permanent damage (unless you are stupid, and jump straight to a high clock rate). Always a risk though, and you certainly will drain your battery.

    One thing unknown to me is the utilization of the DSP (and truly the benefit of the OMAP over any other ARM Cortex A8 based core, other than the GPU). This is clocked separately on the chip – anyone know if this has been overclocked as well? I doubt if this would help much, since it’s most likely only used for video decoding (just a guess)…

  • Question

    Carlos, you are the only one here that really gets it. Besides me.

  • Mensahwatts

    Stupid risk always end in stupid outcomes

  • Jonathan Hamilton

    I overclocked my Droid last night, and my wi-fi service wouldn’t start anymore. No thanks.

  • Gunner

    But will it run Crysis?

  • fails

    so the comments here are relatively counter-productive. multiple people have ran the 800mhz overclock with little to no heat increase. as long as the vcore of the proc stays the same (and it IS) there should be no issue with your phone. the person who stated they did the OC and their wireless broke…there is a new wifi patch that came out yesterday that works fine with the kernel. http://www.droidforums.net and alldroid.org….READ BEFORE YOU POST.

  • Bean

    Keeping the vcore the same and increasing the clock speed WILL increase the temps. Increasing the clock freq will increase the current draw (which increases nonlinearly with an increase in frequency). The vcore might be held at a certain temperature but the overall power consumption will increase. Power is a function of voltage and current. Save your comments and let the adults finish talking unless you have a small iota of electric circuits.

  • Robert Jones

    @tommyg i’d make sure you got the right cortex a8 before saying it’s rated at 1ghz cause the a8 the droid is using is the same one used by apple in the iphone only apples is a hybrid clocked at 660mhz. it didn’t take too much trouble you find clock info on the droid processor since the iphones uses a similar one. yes i’ve been to the TI site and there are 2 sets of chips both branded cortex a8 one that runs at 1 ghz and the other at 600mhz so good luck hope i misstaken and moto used the 1ghz on insted of the 600.

  • Brett

    Umm…nothing special. Just about 90% of cell phone processors are underclocked. If you run it at 1100 you’re going to boil it. and

    @Casper. You’re dumb…no way in hell it’s “similar” to the snapdraggon. Stop trying to put the Droid on the N1 level.

  • Felix

    Actually Brett, your quit wrong in your assertion that you think the snap dragon is a vast improvement of the cortex a8.

    The snap dragon as a whole is a down grade in refined cpu cycles, however it has a much faster clock speed at much lower power consumption ratio.

    For example, how the droid out preforms the Samsung Moment and Xpire in various application both of which uses snap dragon platform.

    I think what you are confused about is the memory/ram difference between the droid and the nexus one because that is the major field of focus. And the FIP-rom allocation overclock for the nexus one proves that.

  • Greg

    I overclocked my droid about 2 months ago it is very very fast now. No more lag or freezing up! I always had problems with my droid till I made the change I haven’t had a problem yet. My battery life is almost the same I maybe loose 1 hour of battery life. I recommend it to everyone who has the droid!

  • matthuntdaug

    This and the Barnacle wifi tether is making the droid the best thing to ever happen to me….i think this is the first time i’ve experienced tears of joy!

  • matt m

    My Droid is overclocked to 1ghz and its blazing fast. I’m not interested in any others device! Also I’m on the cricket 3g network 40 a month unlimited everything. Can’t beat it with a ball bat



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