AlienBabelTech uncovered some benchmarking results for an as of now unannounced HTC handset called the HTC Glacier. The handset scored very high in the benchmarking tests and while there are no specific details about the device other than the name and the score it got, some research and educated guesses point to the Glacier being T-Mobile USA's Project Emerald device.

AlienBabelTech did some more researching and came up with some interesting findings regarding the profile of the tester, devices tested, and the CPU scores of the handsets tested.

To start off, HTC is known for their use of Qualcomm chips in their Android phones. What's more, they announced that their first shipment of dual-core processors went out at the beginning of June, so whoever got them should have had some time to work on them since then. The tests, which were submitted at the end of July, don't seem to be out of the realm of possibility.

The profile of the person conducting the tests that AlienBabelTech sources appears to belong to Mike Bibik, who describes himself as a "Senior Interaction Designer at T-Mobile." Even more damning is that all the other phones on his profile are phones that T-Mobile has offered.

Now comes the math from AlienBabelTech's article. They assumed that "the score would increase linearly with clock speed of the CPU and would double for 2 cores.":

Score from a 1 GHz core = 516 frames

Assumed score from a 1.2 GHz core = 516 x 1.2 => 619.2 frames

Assumed score from a 1.5 GHz core = 516 x 1.2 => 774 frames

Assumed score from two 1.2 GHz cores = 619.2 x 2 => 1238.4 frames

Assumed score from two 1.5 GHz cores = 774 x 2 => 1548 frames

The score for the HTC Glacier, according to the images, was 1432 frames. That strikes a middleground between the dual-core 1.2GHz and 1.5GHz processors. However, they contend "that the benchmark might not be able to take full advantage of both cores and might need some work on optimizing it for dual core architecture."

Digging a little deeper, we can also see that in the above screenshot, the phone is sporting an 800 x 480 display, so no innovation in that sector. Apple's iPhone 4 will likely keep the resolution crown for some time to come.

The fact that all the phones tested by the individual were T-Mobile phones, and that the profile of the person's test belongs to a "Senior Interaction Designer at T-Mobile" seem to strongly hint that the HTC Glacier may be the Project Emerald we have heard so much about.

Phandroid adds that "the pieces fit wonderfully, but we still have to actually see the device in question. Hopefully those tidbits start to roll out sometime this fall as we expect this device near the end of the year (”Glacier” during the winter months? Hey, I can be quite the analyst, too.)"

Other Sources: Android Central, Engadget, Phandroid

Image from Engadget