Technology Android

[masta247]

It looks nice but it doesn't look to different from the S7, sans the fingerprint reader/Home button.

And they're forcing the Edge screen on all models now? I didn't think watching videos on a curved screen would be best, that's why I didn't get one. Why force it?

I think it looks much different due to tiny bezels. Additional size schematics apparently leaked (the design is a speculation based on those).
The screen is supposed to be 5.7 inch in a body about as large as the S7. So the Edge screen was considered a necessity to prevent the phone from going too wide (since the screen ratio has to be 16:9) and I can understand that, even though personally I also really don't like curved edges. The S8 Plus will apparently sport a 6.3'' screen in a phone sized similarly to the S7 Plus.
I'm quite excited, as I was a big fan of the Xiaomi Mi Mix design and was looking forward to Samsung coming up with their response.

 

[dilla]

Yeah I read that article too on Reddit. Same size as the S7 but with a bigger screen.

That'll be cool. I'll be eligible for an upgrade a year from now when my 2 year runs out in March 2018.

I would love to do Sprint's leasing plan where I can switch phones whenever, but the plans that support that don't have unlimited data. Since reception in my house is amazing, I stream 90% of my TV shows on LTE in bed. Sometimes sports too, but that I save for my laptop with a bigger screen and I can do other stuff at the same time. Sprint throttles after 23 GB on those plans although they also offer like 2 GB of tethering...which I wouldn't use, but it's still a bit sweeter plan in that sense.

Otherwise I'm hoping my phone lasts me until then. I downloaded AccuBattery and tried to get a read on my phone's capacity after nearly a year. It's telling me my S7 has ~2000mA out of the design capacity of 3000. I found that odd but freaked out. It's consistently sat at 2000ish since I downloaded it less than a month ago but my battery life seems to be about the same since launch day. However, I did start having battery drain issues earlier this month and that's when Reddit suggested Accubattery.

So it's saying 2000 mA for the most part but when I start charging and let it hit 100%, that number starts to increase. A few times it would come all the way up to 2700 mA capacity and I accepted it could lose 10% in a year. But last night i tried it and it went up to 3200 or 3400 mA capacity. Which is 200-400 more than what the battery probably is. And it was still climbing before I finally just took it off charger.

I think the app is BS and is just giving me unnecessary anxiety about my battery life. I did abuse the battery a bit because I would wireless charge overnight every night and left Fast Charge on for the few times a week I'd actually use wired charging. The wireless and pad and charger are all OEM from Samsung, so no third party, shitty accessories. I wonder if that still shortened the battery's life span.

I am always on LTE and if I were to use it normally during the day and then stream some video at night before bedtime, I'd get about 3:30 hours of SOT. On LTE and autobrightness and Bluetooth always on.

I don't know what the deal is with AccuBattery then. It can be off by 100 mA or so. But not nearly 500 mA.

 

[dilla]

S8 panel leak

https://twitter.com/dfordesign/status/820963608473509889/photo/1

I wonder how big of a jump from the S6 the S8 will be. A lot of people said the S4 wasn't too different from the S6 and the S5 and 6, both, weren't too far off from an S7. Still, I want to know what the big jump for S8 will be in. Smaller bezels is nice but not something that will make someone jump from a 7 to an 8, like many are suggesting on the S7 sub on Reddit.

 

[masta247]

Well, to me it seems like a big jump. I have the S6. I love the idea of small bezels and to me that's something I've been waiting for a veery long time. To me that's enough, combined with the regular generational progression in camera, processing and battery departments. Hoping it'll have the SD slot too.

Compared to the S7, we will see, since on the tech side the updates are not likely to be groundbreaking, just one generation apart, unless you're as much into small bezels as me.

As far as your battery issues, no software will accurately tell you what's your real battery capacity. The data is taken from software estimations of battery drain that never take everything accurately into consideration. It's just trying to make sense of the same data that the "battery" menu has to work with, just adding a guesstimate of battery capacity to it.

 

[dilla]

I see. I ended up doing some housekeeping on my internal memory. I had 6GB free out of 32, so I went ahead and deleted all the photos and videos I had already backed up to Google Photos. My free space went up to 13 GB. Uninstalled a few apps too, mainly games I didn't play anymore.

I'm seeing some improvement in battery life but...we'll see if it's all just placebo.

The phone is definitely faster. I was thinking about moving some storage to the SD card, but it seems the app still stays installed on internal storage and just data moves to the SD card. I can only think of Spotify that would benefit from that since it stores a lot of what I listen to in the cache. But that might also be on the internal storage for some reason, too, and the app itself is pretty big. But photos and video removal helped a lot, I think.

 

[masta247]

I see. I ended up doing some housekeeping on my internal memory. I had 6GB free out of 32, so I went ahead and deleted all the photos and videos I had already backed up to Google Photos. My free space went up to 13 GB. Uninstalled a few apps too, mainly games I didn't play anymore.

I'm seeing some improvement in battery life but...we'll see if it's all just placebo.

The phone is definitely faster. I was thinking about moving some storage to the SD card, but it seems the app still stays installed on internal storage and just data moves to the SD card. I can only think of Spotify that would benefit from that since it stores a lot of what I listen to in the cache. But that might also be on the internal storage for some reason, too, and the app itself is pretty big. But photos and video removal helped a lot, I think.

Yeah just store photos, videos and music on the SD. You can choose in camera's setting to automatically save it there. Some huge apps also frequently make it possible to store additional data on SD.

I'd use internal storage just for apps, they can really take advantage of its speed - Samsung uses UFS in the S6 and S7 which is by far the fastest mobile storage tech. For pics, videos, music it always feels like a major waste, as they don't care much about the speed of your storage and unless you watch 4K videos even an old school SD will do. Mp3 playback maxes out at like 50kBps (for a 320kbps MP3 file) read. UFS at any time delivers up to 10000 times that speed, while SD still delivers on average 100-500 times that speed. Pics will fully open slower but Android does nice things with buffering so it's not that painful.

Don't move apps to SD as storage speed is much more limiting in app launch and loading times than anything else, processor included. SD is terrible compared to UFS in loading many small files but the difference is less dramatic with larger files. Apps consist of hundreds of tiny files, while music, pics and videos are large and take advantage of SD card's full advertised speed if it's a good card.

 

[dilla]

Yeah I have a 64 GB card that came as a bonus from pre-ordering through Best Buy.

S8 news: http://venturebeat.com/2017/01/26/this-is-the-samsung-galaxy-s8-launching-march-29/

Looks good. This has that new SD chip, 835 I think? Exclusive to the S8 for a few months for "supply" reasons. It'll fuck over LG for the G6, I feel. Might be the nail in LG's coffin. We talk about exploding Note 7s and the S6 memory leak debacle but LG has been plagued with quality issues since at least the G4 and its boot loops. And people report saying LG support is horrid, especially over the phone.

Do newer LGs still use LG's proprietary charge ports, or are they micro-USB or USB-C?

 

[THEV1LL4N]

Yeah I have a 64 GB card that came as a bonus from pre-ordering through Best Buy.

S8 news: http://venturebeat.com/2017/01/26/this-is-the-samsung-galaxy-s8-launching-march-29/

Looks good. This has that new SD chip, 835 I think? Exclusive to the S8 for a few months for "supply" reasons. It'll fuck over LG for the G6, I feel. Might be the nail in LG's coffin. We talk about exploding Note 7s and the S6 memory leak debacle but LG has been plagued with quality issues since at least the G4 and its boot loops. And people report saying LG support is horrid, especially over the phone.

Do newer LGs still use LG's proprietary charge ports, or are they micro-USB or USB-C?

My LG G4 is Micro USB. I think the G5 was as well.

 

[Pittsey]

Got a 128GB Oneplus 3T in my basket.... Should I checkout?

Edit - Pick it up tomorrow

 

[dilla]

Got a 128GB Oneplus 3T in my basket.... Should I checkout?

Edit - Pick it up tomorrow

I've heard good things about it. These Huawei and Oppo and Xiaomi (basically Asian brands) are doing some good work with their phones.

Now that Sprint has stopped 2 year contracts completely, my next upgrade is next March and I will be looking to just buy my phones outright to preserve my 2 year contract pricing and Unlimited Data, minutes, texts, etc. And it sounds silly to buy a device and still pay contract pricing since it incorporates the cost of the phone into it so I may leave Sprint and look to TMobile or something. Someone that has Unlimited Data, still, or at least serviceable speeds after a certain point.

Then I can look at these GSM devices since Sprint is CDMA and still gives fits about activating phones not sold by them on their network. I think the Nexus and Pixel phones have this issue with Sprint.

 

[masta247]

Got a 128GB Oneplus 3T in my basket.... Should I checkout?

Edit - Pick it up tomorrow

I would wait a moment for the G6 and S8, which are around the corner. The leaks so far have not been fully plausible. The live leak from Evan Blass that every major website has been quoting has a shopped S7 back with Huaweii speaker grille facing bottom when the phone is facing both up and down, a power button that magically disappears when phone lays flat on its face, micro usb in one photo yet stretched to look like usb type c on another, an inverted shadow on the fingerprint sensor that apparently is deeply depressed compared to its frame which would make it not usable (plus its frame was copied from the heart rate monitor of the S7 and filled with generic rectangle, while the original filling which was the heart rate monitor itself was copied to the other side of the camera to make it seem more legit, except it misses any sort of frame or transition with the back casing now) and the logo that says "Samsuns", lol.

 

[Pittsey]

I have got it. But stupidly I forgot to get a nano sim and my G3 had a micro, so will have to wait 3-5 days for my new sim. In the meantime I have set it up and got 3 new USB-C cables and a case. So all in I have spent £500

 

[THEV1LL4N]

Also a tech side note that doesn't relate to Android but was just a "holy fuck" moment - AMD just finished their live event where they showcased their new Zen and Ryzen processors which are coming out early 2017 and I'm left amazed. I knew they were going to be exciting but I didn't know they're going to freaking beat Intel's fastest processor ever made AND at lower power consumption AND make it available to the mainstream. Intel was making ~5% improvements yearly for each of their architectures for the past 5 years or so. AMD doubled theirs and severely beat Intel. That's history right there.

Then, when I thought it can't get any better they did a surprise reveal of their new Vega graphics card that did over 60fps at 4K maxed out on Doom and the new Star Wars game, beating Nvidia's fastest card by more than 10%, which I would never think was possible this year considering how much of a leap the GTX1080 and Titan X Pascal already were for Nvidia.

In case that didn't sink in, AMD completely wiped the floor by showing their new processors to be the fastest and most power efficient in the world beating the giant - Intel. Then on a "by the way" note they did the same with graphics cards beating Nvidia. That is a historical moment for technology and huge, huge kudos to AMD. AMD was historically an underdog, working on a tenth of Intel's budget or less, doing both CPUs and GPUs, often losing to Intel's and Nvidia's asshole and unfair business tactics when they had a competitive or superior product. AMD was almost pushed towards bankruptcy by Intel and Nvidia, even when they were having better and cheaper products. I was hoping something great would come to them for their great work for pure technological progress over the years but wow, that exceeded my expectations. I just hope they won't get blocked out of hardware deals, which historically happened before, so I'd like to spread some awareness, in case you see the big hardware manufacturers still using exclusively Intel and Nvidia parts next year - AMD will have the better products and at lower prices.

On an additional note. There is a deeply underrated human being called Jim Keller. He's the person who started with AMD and have been responsible for more breakthroughs in computer technology than anyone else in history. He worked for AMD on their earlier processors that beat Intel back in the days, he worked for Apple where he set foundation to Apple's mobile processors that are now the fastest on the mobile scene, and now he works for Tesla where God knows what he will do, but it will surely be exciting and also for cause I couldn't be happier about.
Everything he touches becomes a technological breakthrough and while the world mourns the Steve Jobses, I believe people like Jim Keller should get more appreciation as it's the people like him that push our world forward and contribute greatly not by doing well in the current social system (by doing better at selling nice products) but by enabling true innovation and progress in critical fields to human growth regardless of how we shape our social/business systems.
The reason I mention him here is because before he went to work for Tesla, he briefly returned to AMD to work and lay foundation to the aforementioned AMD Zen processor showed today.

Are the new line of AMD processors for mobile platforms as well?

 

[dilla]

After seeing the battery life stats of the Exynos processor vs the SD, I really wish the US got the Exynos. It just seems so much better in every way.

 

[Casey]

Still very happy with my Nexus 6P. It's approaching the one year mark, but doesn't feel like it. The N5 and N6 both started to slow around this time, but this feels like I still have at least another six months of life in it, and maybe more.

By that time, the Pixel 2 will be near release and I'm sure I'll upgrade to that.

I also now have an iPhone 6S (yeah.....who would have thought?) - it's a work phone for my new job, and they also gave me a Macbook Pro. So I have to admit, I'm not as fervently anti-Apple as I used to be. But that's easy to say when you get given the stuff for free - I'm not convinced that I'd spend my own money on them.

iOS 10 is certainly a lot better than it used to be, but still nowhere near as flexible as Android, and the notifications are terrible!

 

[dilla]

Still very happy with my Nexus 6P. It's approaching the one year mark, but doesn't feel like it. The N5 and N6 both started to slow around this time, but this feels like I still have at least another six months of life in it, and maybe more.

By that time, the Pixel 2 will be near release and I'm sure I'll upgrade to that.

I also now have an iPhone 6S (yeah.....who would have thought?) - it's a work phone for my new job, and they also gave me a Macbook Pro. So I have to admit, I'm not as fervently anti-Apple as I used to be. But that's easy to say when you get given the stuff for free - I'm not convinced that I'd spend my own money on them.

iOS 10 is certainly a lot better than it used to be, but still nowhere near as flexible as Android, and the notifications are terrible!

It has gotten to a point now where only the most informed can notice a difference between OSs, be it mobile or desktop. I think we've gone long enough in the smartphone era where people pretty much are set with whatever OS they've been using the past 4+ years and something drastic would have to change it.

I got my MBP in 2010 when Windows 7 was around. I prefered OSX much more than 7, though I did appreciate what 7 had to offer. I am still using that Mac 7 years later with nary an issue. But I have always been looking around for upgrades because that time will inevitably come, sooner than later. And I've looked at Windows machines and it seems they have stepped their game up in build quality the past few years. They were always more powerful than an equally priced Mac but reliability was hit or miss, even from the more dependable brands like Dell and Lenovo. It seemed the list would flip flop every two or three years where they all took turns at the top and at the bottom and it just didn't seem consistent enough. Apple, however, always remained on top, be it customer service or reliability.

But now, OSX seems to have gotten a bit stale. Or Win10 has caught up in incorporating what made OSX so user friendly and then made it look even better than OSX. I've been using Win10 almost daily in the office and I feel like I can use it just the same as I use OSX, including the search feature, which is Spotlight on OSX. I don't encounter issues and Windows is pretty good about finding the correct drivers by itself for newly installed printers and scanners and other peripherals. OSX used to rule in that regard 5 years ago because setting stuff up was so easy.

So now I check computer news and prices almost weekly as I decide between giving up a left nut for a 15" TouchBar MBP or trying to find a more powerful PC for a few hundred bucks less. I really like the Dell XPS 13 or 15 and despite having an HP that took a shit after only 3 years of use, the Envys seem nice too.

Choosing between a Mac and those two computers comes down to price and reliability because the OSs are so similar and easy to use. If one sways me one way, it'll be the Mac because the last computer I bought from them lasted me seven years. That's a pretty strong statement to me, at least for reliability.

 

[masta247]

Are the new line of AMD processors for mobile platforms as well?

They are coming later this year, with a new range of their mobile chips packing their new Zen CPU architecture AND new Radeon Vega mobile graphics chip on one SOC. The new Xbox Scorpio will also pack a similar configurations, although custom and higher powered for real 4K gaming, unlike the fairly half baked PS Pro based on the much weaker Radeon Polaris. The price to pay to be first.
AMD is making a major comeback judging by all the leaks and teasers. They said it's their biggest CPU revamp in 10 years, same with GPU. Intel did not make progress in over 8 years. Since 2011 the best they did until the 2017 Kaby Lake was a 30% performance improvement. That is 30% over 6 generations. The least we know from their Engineering samples is that AMD is hopping by at least 40% compared to last year and leaps over Intel's best 8-core i7.

 

[masta247]

Still very happy with my Nexus 6P. It's approaching the one year mark, but doesn't feel like it. The N5 and N6 both started to slow around this time, but this feels like I still have at least another six months of life in it, and maybe more.

By that time, the Pixel 2 will be near release and I'm sure I'll upgrade to that.

I also now have an iPhone 6S (yeah.....who would have thought?) - it's a work phone for my new job, and they also gave me a Macbook Pro. So I have to admit, I'm not as fervently anti-Apple as I used to be. But that's easy to say when you get given the stuff for free - I'm not convinced that I'd spend my own money on them.

iOS 10 is certainly a lot better than it used to be, but still nowhere near as flexible as Android, and the notifications are terrible!

As far as I am concerned, I think it is not fair to hate on a company in general, unless there's something very wrong with it. There are things wrong with Apple probably more so than an average company, but I also learned to see them in fair light. For instance, they make many products that they make that are terrible value for money or that I simply don't like, but I grew to love the iPad Air that I used to hate on at the beginning. In large part due to its battery life, simplicity for content browsing and the software improvements in the iOS 8 or 9 I believe. Also the software support. I think the iPad has to be the best value offering from Apple.

That said, I also have work iPhones and I wouldn't be able to use one as a personal phone. Tiny part is due to terrible value and how old school it is, with huge bezels, no things such as wireless charging, fast charging, VR support, file manager and other things that I consider the basic way I use my phone. However, mostly due to how limited it is. I cannot imagine using a phone without a file manager and simple file transfer. I don't know how some people use their phones that they can live without it. It is fine on the iPad, as I can see it as a decent glorified web browser, but not on a phone that I always have with me and I need to feel comfortable that I could do anything on it without having to run home to use my computer, speaking of which..

Similarly I cannot imagine using the Mac computers. I used to have the MacBook Air, that I mentioned back in the days - I loved the hardware, I really did. I think it used to be a great laptop back in its glory days. However, I have no clue what do people do with their computers that they find Macs to be suitable. It is probably a personal thing, but I just can't imagine calling it a computer as to me I couldn't do anything with it, other than web and a select few programs that I used or found ghetto replacements for that actually worked on it. Other than the obvious quirks and differences coming from Windows, the biggest real problem is that I just couldnt do pretty much anything I wanted to with it, and workarounds I found to do some of the things are really way too much of a hassle.
I believe the above and Apple's stunts such as promoting the iPad as a serious work device (lol) that made me wonder what the hell do people actually use their computers for and wonder if a web browser is all that people need and spend big money on fancy processors to run.
I mean, I don't crunch multidimensional matrices or whatnot on my computer, I have my desktop PC for most of gaming and fancier works and I use a laptop for simpler stuff and even that I cannot do on a Mac, not to mention iPad Pro (lol) so It always made me confused that people seem to be fine with how those devices are targeted and that they are using Macs for work. Even putting aside the tech works, pretty much the whole world of business relies on Windows-oriented file formats, while self employment on a Mac could be limited to media edits and iPhone programming, and I am not mentioning worlds or niche options that are not viable on Macs, as even Excel Macros don't work well on Mac's Office.

In a perfect world, I wished to easily use only Windows on the Air, had it been optimized to easily handle it and not socially unacceptable Besides, I got myself the Surface which is better in pretty much any way. I do acknowledge when Apple makes something well, they have great hardware often times (the MacBooks and iPads) but some are really backwards and the software is way too limited.

 

[dilla]

As far as I am concerned, I think it is not fair to hate on a company in general, unless there's something very wrong with it. There are things wrong with Apple probably more so than an average company, but I also learned to see them in fair light. For instance, they make many products that they make that are terrible value for money or that I simply don't like, but I grew to love the iPad Air that I used to hate on at the beginning. In large part due to its battery life, simplicity for content browsing and the software improvements in the iOS 8 or 9 I believe. Also the software support. I think the iPad has to be the best value offering from Apple.

That said, I also have work iPhones and I wouldn't be able to use one as a personal phone. Tiny part is due to terrible value and how old school it is, with huge bezels, no things such as wireless charging, fast charging, VR support, file manager and other things that I consider the basic way I use my phone. However, mostly due to how limited it is. I cannot imagine using a phone without a file manager and simple file transfer. I don't know how some people use their phones that they can live without it. It is fine on the iPad, as I can see it as a decent glorified web browser, but not on a phone that I always have with me and I need to feel comfortable that I could do anything on it without having to run home to use my computer, speaking of which..

Similarly I cannot imagine using the Mac computers. I used to have the MacBook Air, that I mentioned back in the days - I loved the hardware, I really did. I think it used to be a great laptop back in its glory days. However, I have no clue what do people do with their computers that they find Macs to be suitable. It is probably a personal thing, but I just can't imagine calling it a computer as to me I couldn't do anything with it, other than web and a select few programs that I used or found ghetto replacements for that actually worked on it. Other than the obvious quirks and differences coming from Windows, the biggest real problem is that I just couldnt do pretty much anything I wanted to with it, and workarounds I found to do some of the things are really way too much of a hassle.
I believe the above and Apple's stunts such as promoting the iPad as a serious work device (lol) that made me wonder what the hell do people actually use their computers for and wonder if a web browser is all that people need and spend big money on fancy processors to run.
I mean, I don't crunch multidimensional matrices or whatnot on my computer, I have my desktop PC for most of gaming and fancier works and I use a laptop for simpler stuff and even that I cannot do on a Mac, not to mention iPad Pro (lol) so It always made me confused that people seem to be fine with how those devices are targeted and that they are using Macs for work. Even putting aside the tech works, pretty much the whole world of business relies on Windows-oriented file formats, while self employment on a Mac could be limited to media edits and iPhone programming, and I am not mentioning worlds or niche options that are not viable on Macs, as even Excel Macros don't work well on Mac's Office.

In a perfect world, I wished to easily use only Windows on the Air, had it been optimized to easily handle it and not socially unacceptable Besides, I got myself the Surface which is better in pretty much any way. I do acknowledge when Apple makes something well, they have great hardware often times (the MacBooks and iPads) but some are really backwards and the software is way too limited.

I think a lot of the true, power users of Macs do audio and video editing. I'm not in the field but it is what I have read but I am not sure what all of audio/video entails and what gives it a leg-up over Windows.

 

[masta247]

So, Intel moved next year's Cannonlake (the successor to the just announced Kaby Lake, which is basically renamed Skylake) to 14nm, due to failure in getting 10nm yields. That was supposed to be the "process" improvement generation of Intel's already terribly slow cycle, as it will still be the exact same core and the thing that was supposed to improve was just the process.
So since they know they won't be able to make it on the better process, they will still release the same cores, still call them Cannonlake and they came up with a name for the "new" process - "the new 2nd generation 14nm process", to call it an improvement.. So 2018 will be another year of "same stuff" from Intel, except even more.
They not only stopped their performance gains, prolonged their cycle to three steps last year, with any sort of architecture improvement coming in only once in three generations, but now they are also going to miss even those steps.

If the situation wasn't bad enough, I need to put in perspective that they are fucking up compared to what has been a terrible job in the first place. The tech forums are full of users of Sandy Bridge i7s - the processor that was developed in 2005, showcased in 2009 and hit the market in 2011 that.. there is no point to switch from because Intel's 2017 Kaby Lake is barely any faster, despite coming 6 years later, higher price, several chipsets (so you had to buy new motherboards twice since Sandy Bridge) and process improvements as well as moving to DDR4 Ram it is, well, mostly just more power efficient compared to the 2011 Sandy Bridge.

Meanwhile, the first AMD Zen is made on 14nm just like Intel, and hits the market in a month, while the architecture is already just so slightly better than Intel's best. Except AMD hired Samsung to move Zen to their 10nm process next year and 7nm in two years PLUS both generations are promised to come with significant architecture improvements, so by 2019 we would see a 3rd gen Zen architecture made on 7nm.

With current schedule at that time Intel would be hitting 10nm and making a ~3-5% performance increase compared to today's Kaby Lake. But since Zen is around the corner, Intel suddenly (and finally) started work on a new architecture, the successor to the "Core" architecture, that is to be finished by 2020, lol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigerlake
It sucks when a company doesn't do shit for years and rakes the profits on the same shit until someone else comes with something better to push them to stop fucking around, and they don't even have a plan. That's a company that could be changing the world with their insane margins and all the profits after years of abusing their monopoly. Instead, they are only doing a thing when their monopoly is threatened, just to get back to their comfortable position. That was the case with the Core architecture, and that seems to be the case now with its now planned successor. I really hope they don't catch up with AMD this time around.