You can find Cortex A15 processors in the Samsung Chromebook. According to anandtech ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/6422/samsung-chromebook-xe303-review-testing-arms-cortex-a15/6 ):

"The Cortex A15 is fast. Across the board we're seeing a 40 - 65% increase in performance over a dual-core Atom. Although it's not clear how performance will be impacted as companies work to stick Cortex A15 based SoCs in smartphones with tighter power/thermal budgets, in notebooks (and perhaps even tablets) the Cortex A15 looks capable of delivering a good 1 - 2 generation boost over Intel's original Atom core.

The IE10 browser tests tend to agree with our JavaScript performance tests, although the CSS Maze Solver benchmark shows a huge advantage for ARM over Intel's Atom here."

More info at http://ruedigergad.com/2012/12/21/plasma-active-for-nexus-7-running-the-touch-optimized-plasma-active-linux-distribution-on-nexus-7/

According to a study of power efficiency focused in tablets with different CPUs (nVidia Tegra3, Qualcomm Krait APQ8060A, Samsung Exynos Cortex A15) from anandtech.com ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/6536/arm-vs-x86-the-real-showdown and http://www.anandtech.com/show/6529/busting-the-x86-power-myth-indepth-clover-trail-power-analysis ), nVidia Tegra3 is less efficient than Intel Clovertrail platform:
* Intel Clovertrail vs nVidia 3: "Ultimately I don't know that this data really changes what we already knew about Clover Trail: it is a more power efficient platform than NVIDIA's Tegra "
* Intel Clovertrail vs Qualcomm Krait: "We already know that Atom is faster than Krait, but from a power standpoint the two SoCs are extremely competitive. At the platform level Intel (at least in the Acer W510) generally leads in power efficiency. Note that this advantage could just as easily be due to display and other power advantages in the W510 itself and not necessarily indicative of an SoC advantage."
* Intel Clovertrail vs Samsung Exynos Cortex A15: "The Cortex A15 data is honestly the most intriguing. I'm not sure how the first A15 based smartphone SoCs will compare to Exynos 5 Dual in terms of power consumption, but at least based on the data here it looks like Cortex A15 is really in a league of its own when it comes to power consumption. Depending on the task that may not be an issue, but you still need a chassis that's capable of dissipating 1 - 4x the power of a present day smartphone SoC made by Qualcomm or Intel. Obviously for tablets the Cortex A15 can work just fine, but I am curious to see what will happen in a smartphone form factor"

According to the Verge (see http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/27/3698060/nintendo-wii-mini-no-internet-no-future ), ", the Wii Mini comes with some unfortunate compromises, most notably the lack of any sort of online connectivity. Instead of being a media streamer-killing Netflix box that can also play a huge library of games, the Wii Mini feels more like a missed opportunity."

Anandtech has a better article:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6420/arms-cortex-a57-and-cortex-a53-the-first-64bit-armv8-cpu-cores

According to them, ARM Cortex A57 core is a tweaked ARM Cortex A15 core with 64 bit support. And ARM Cortex A53 core is a tweaked ARM Cortex A7 core with 64 bit support. It is possible to mix A57 and A53 cores in the same die to improve efficiency.

What I would like to see is this kind of approach in the x86 world. Imagine having an AMD processor with two fast cores (Piledriver's successor, Steamroller) for heavy processing and two lower cores for longer battery life (Bobcat's successor Jaguar).

Or Intel with their future Haswell and Silvermont architectures...

According to Anandtech, Intel Core 2013 ULV processors will start from 10W

See http://www.anandtech.com/show/6355/intels-haswell-architecture/4

" Finally, at IDF Intel showed a demo of Haswell running the Unigen Heaven benchmark at under 8W.
The chain of events tells us two things: 1) Intel likes to play its cards close to its chest, and 2) the sub-10W space won't be serviced by Atom exclusively.
Intel said Haswell can scale below 10W, but it didn't provide a lower bound. It's too much to assume Haswell would go into a phone, but once you get to the 8W point and look south you open yourself up to fitting into things the size of a third generation iPad. Move to 14nm, 10nm and beyond then it becomes more feasible that you could fit this class of architecture into something even more portable."

AMD allowed websites to publish a preview of the benchmarks before the estimated date if they only focused on graphics performance. This is an unfair move by AMD.

Read http://techreport.com/blog/23638/amd-attempts-to-shape-review-content-with-staged-release-of-info for more details

(maybe in a couple of weeks you will find that AMD Trinity APUs have abysmal x86 performance compared to Intel CPUs)

Disclaimer: I own a laptop with an AMD cpu inside

... and I could continue with differences in the gpu (nvidia Tegra vs unknown gpu)

These things matter for a videoconsole

I think that what is really awesome is that adding just 23k lines of code gives you support for a new CPU architecture!

According to wikipedia, there are frameworks (like Open CL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL ) in order to program in high level languages and have compatibility through various platforms

Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3774/welcome-to-valhalla-inside-the-new-250gb-xbox-360-slim/3

Is it a viable alternative against flash? According to http://gnashdev.org/ last version is 0.8.9 published in march 2011.

You can find an ARM vs x86 power consumption at:

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2011/5/19/the-coming-war-arm-versus-x86.aspx?pageid=6

"The chart below contrasts power consumption between the Intel Atom N450 and the ARM Cortex-A8 while running miniBench. The power curves were generated from system power usage adjusted downwards so that idle system power was discarded. For the Atom, idle power was 13.7W with the Gateway netbook’s integrated panel disabled while the idle power for the Pegatron system (ARM Cortex-A8) was only 5.4W."

I agree with you. It's ridiculous to even imagine that you could combine them into one device given the consumer technology right now.

However, the phone can be connected to a dock so that:
b) Can be used as a tablet: see the Asus Pad Fone http://event.asus.com/mobile/padfone/
c) Can be used as a computer: Motorola Atrix has a dock with HDMI port and USB port.
d) Can be used as a game console. Let's compare the specs of an iphone s against a xbox 360:
    * RAM Memory: xbox360 512MB RAM. iphone 4s 512MB RAM
    * Triangles/sec: xbox 360 500 Million. iphone 4s 68 MPolygon/s.
    * Filtered Texture Fetch: xbox 360 8.0 Billion Texels/sec. iphone 4s 1000 MTexels/s

iphone A5 cpu is manufactured using a 45nm process. intel is producing its Ivy Bridge processors using a 22nm process right now (see http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ivy-bridge-processor-release-22nm-3d-transistor,13753.html: "CEO Paul Otellini confirmed that Ivy Bridge 22 nm processor volume production has already begun, which is a rather significant achievement as there have been apparently no major hiccups in the implementation of its 3D transistor technology")

Of course, the next xbox will be more powerful than any smartphone, but think about having current xbox 360 games in your smartphone in 2013 or 2014.

sources:
* Xbox 360 http://www.pvcmuseum.com/games/vs/ps3-vs-xbox-360-gpu-specs.htm
* iphone 4s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5

Just imagine: in 2013 having a windows phone that:
a) Can be used as a phone (of course!)
b) Can be used as a tablet (windows 8 with the Metro UI)
c) Can be used as a computer (windows 8 with the Classic UI)
d) Can be used as a game console (it is rumored that the next xbox could run in ARM processors a variant of the windows 8 kernel).

Microsoft is known for improving its products version after version... Everyone thinks that Windows Phone 7.5 is a very goog start: just read the reviews:
- Engadget ( http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/27/windows-phone-7-5-mango-review/ )
"While Windows Phone still needs a glass of water to get rid of a few hiccups -- and let's face it, every mobile OS has plenty of their own -- it ironed out a lot of the wrinkles from earlier versions and made it a much more feature-laden, user-friendly experience. With Mango, WP7 has caught up with Android and iOS in nearly every way, and in some areas it's even surpassed the other two in functionality. Despite a grim first year, the bright future of Windows Phone is forcing Ballmer to wear shades."
- The Verge ( http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/24/2509332/windows-phone-75-mango-review )
"Put simply, regardless of your preconceptions, Windows Phone finally deserves an honest look the next time you’re ready to buy a phone — particularly as we start to see new devices come to market over the next few weeks."
- gsmarena ( http://www.gsmarena.com/windows_phone_7_5-review-655.php )
"WP7 lacked key functionality, which deterred potential consumers. Version 7.5 however brings things that will appeal to businesspeople, social networking buffs and people who like a novel software experience. If you're using Microsoft software (chances are you're using at least Office at work), WP7.5 offers the smoothest, most well-rounded experience. The rich bundle of several social networks and IM clients and emails and texts is beautifully organized too. And let's face it, the Windows Phone interface is the only UI around that's truly different - iOS, Android, even Symbian are becoming harder and harder to tell apart. The only thing that held it back was the lack of multitasking and now that's been sorted out."