Technology Android

[dilla]

No worries about wireless charging unless you use quick wireless charging AND your phone gets really hot in the process. Wireless charging is very safe for the battery, I've been using it exclusively on my S6 for 2 years now. I even have a wireless charging power bank. My battery is doing good after those two years and yes, I havent used a cable to charge my phone in 2 years. I find cables super inconvenient compared to wireless charging.

My girlfriend has the S7 with Exynos (because Canada), her day starts before 8am and she charges the battery every night, sometimes evening. I guess she uses spotify for around an hour a day, uses the phone for browsing web for two or three hours, takes pictures and plays games, which always is the biggest battery hit. Sometimes it doesnt live until midnight with such usage but still she uses the phone a lot, probably around 5 hours of screen on time including games plus around 12 hours stand by is all together what it takes to kill the battery. Thats better than my S6 pretty consistently - when we do the same stuff on phones the S7s battery seems to be doing better by ~40%. Thats also probably better than any other smartphone except the S7 Edge.

Well, Qualcomm kind of admitted to Snapdragon 820 being a little of a power hog compared to others by dumping their own architecture and going for ARM's stock A73 for the SD835, even though the A73 doesnt perform better than Kryo. The SD820/821 not only had more power hungry big cores than Samsung's, but also lacked proper "battery saver" cores. That said, the total power drain difference wasn't that horrible as CPU is just one component and the rest of the 820 package, like the GPU and ISP were power efficient.

I feel like the glory days of Qualcomm were when they had the Krait architecture, which was mindblowing and unbeatable. The SD600/800/801 were beasts. These days Samsung makes better chips, Apple makes better chips, even Huaweii makes chips that compete well against Qualcomm, yet for some reason Qualcomm chips end up in phones sold in the US. That is weird, as it costs manufacturers extra money to support a second chip used just for the US market. And its not like Qualcomm has any kind of a better reputation there than Samsung's chips. Something must be going on, as Samsung uses Qualcomm in their Galaxy phones in the US in all of their phones unless Qualcomm REALLY messes up (like with the 810 where Samsung skipped it and showed it has no problems supplying all of its Galaxy S6 phones with its own chips). Since the S7, Snapdragons are only used in the US. That is weird. Back in the days I thought maybe modems are the point, but Samsung already has modems that are at least as good and offer the same capabilities as Qualcomm's best.

Wasn't there some drama a week or two ago with Apple and Qualcomm going at it for curbing the power of the chips? Apple said Qualcomm purposely curbed the power and QC responded by saying Apple actually asked them to do it?

Also QC was strong-arming OEMs to use the SD 820 in exchange for lower prices on other chips?

 

[masta247]

Wasn't there some drama a week or two ago with Apple and Qualcomm going at it for curbing the power of the chips? Apple said Qualcomm purposely curbed the power and QC responded by saying Apple actually asked them to do it?

Also QC was strong-arming OEMs to use the SD 820 in exchange for lower prices on other chips?

I wasn't really following but I just took a read about Qualcomm's history and it seems like they took a lot of inspirations from Intel. In Europe they were fined by the European commission for unfair competitive practices, in Asia they were fined over $800M and regulated by the fair trade commission, while the US is the last place where they are free to dictate their pricing terms and conditions freely. Thus manufactuters use them there, many probably "just in case".

Qualcomm has no superiority on the ARM field whatsoever though, quite the opposite - the competition is fierce and Qualcomm have nothing of their own that gives them a competitive advantage. They even went back to using stock ARM cores, thus they dont even have what the big boys Samsung or Apple have - a superior custom core. And everyone can piece a chipset out of stock parts provided by ARM. Qualcomm is in a club of Huaweiis and Mediateks, except in America and with their own (post-AMD) GPU, which at least keeps things interesting.

I was a fan in the Krait core days, I didnt know they were assholes but I knew they had the best mobile processor core, and by far, and superior graphics. Kryo was too little, too late, and it was a missed attempt as ARM already had an equally good stock core. Since then, they didnt come up with anything interesting, really, with ARM stock components being better and Samsung's and Apple's custom cores being even better.

 

[dilla]

If I'm not wrong, this was the article on Reddit. http://www.digitaltrends.com/business/apple-vs-qualcomm-news/

It sucks that some of the smaller, less known companies use the superior hardware and offer a lower cost. But at the same time, people don't trust those companies enough. Maybe not entirely for security reasons, especially Chinese OEMs, but just for support of the device after the sale.

It was good Huawei got to make the 6P and it improved its image among people that followed tech news. But the average Joe doesn't know about Huawei or Xiaomi phones.

As Sprint has recently removed contract pricing for phones and now charges solely for data (other stuff is free or included in price as unlimited), my next upgrade will force me to use installment payments on my phone which are separate from the plan pricing, or to lease the phone and return it. Regardless of what carrier I go with. So this also opens up the possibility of switching carriers, which I will most likely do. Sprint is no longer the cheapest and Unlimited data is coming back, at least with VZW. T-Mo has the best pricing from what I've gathered so they may be a contender as well.

But all of that is important because a lot of those nice phones like the 6P, OnePlus 3, etc, aren't available through carriers. You have to buy them outright. On contract pricing, you'd still end up paying for a phone because the cost was incorporated into the monthly charge. But now that carriers have done away with this, buying your own device, especially an older device secondhand, can save a ton of money. I likely wouldn't buy second hand phones, but at the same time buying my own device would allow me to upgrade whenever without a penalty from the carrier. It would just be a huge upfront cost of $700+ every time, but I could also sell the phone afterwards and recover the money.

I'm sure this is business as usual for EU and Asian folks, but this was a big hindrance in getting some of those good phones with a lesser name in the US. There's still the issue of a lot of those phones being GSM only with no support for LTE bands on carriers like Sprint or VZW. And that's where TMo furthers its advantage because it's GSM and the cheapest and tradeoffs are minimal for those that use a lot of data.

So that's something to think about for me for the next year.

 

[dilla]

The S8 reviews are starting to roll in after the embargo on reviews ended today.

People love to shit on TouchWiz and I guess I haven't used a Pixel or 6P to compare, but many cite the lagging between apps. I notice it a little bit but it doesn't seem to be too bad from what I saw on my S3 when I used CM on it. I know it's not a legitimate comparison, but first off, I have to actually be looking for the lag to see it. I have animations turned off and it still feels fast. I rarely feel like I'm ahead of my phone when going through menus or apps. But for some reason Reddit loves to shit on TW for just that and compare it to their Pixels and 6Ps. They praise the hardware specs/design but rag on the software.

Whatever floats your boat, I guess. My issue with the S8 is the location of the fingerprint sensor. So many reviewers said they couldn't get used to it even a week after using the device. I hope Samsung changes that. I haven't read what the advantages are for putting it there, other than maybe more screen space? I'd rather lose that space and have an intuitive sensor.

 

[dilla]

lol I love threads like this on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/66bsor/we_need_to_seriously_talk_about_touchwiz_lag/

I experience some of the issues people are complaining about. But ultimately there's no clear cut solution to the problem. Some are blaming QC for fucking with the SD version's internals (DAC, etc.) and some blaming TW.

I really need to try a Pixel or other Nexus phone. But I'd only see demo units at stores, at best, and of course they would be lag free since no one actually uses those units like a phone.

 

[masta247]

I heard the term before, but thought Touchwiz was getting hate back in the Galaxy S3 days only, so this is very surprising. I do respect XDA as they come in with lots of knowledge, but frankly, I'm still on the S6, my girlfriend is on the S7 (both with Exynos) and I honestly have no idea what to look for. The UI seems buttery smooth to me, and I assume the gif in that reddit was an extreme example - still, I have never seen anything like this ever on any Samsung phone I had. The last time I had the UI stutter was on the original Nexus 7 tablet, due to its slow internal storage. Or when I played Pokemon Go and the phone heated up making the CPU throttle.

 

[dilla]

Yeah, same here. I think it's just a Reddit circlejerk to just say TW is crap now and slows the device down. It truly did back in the S3 days which is why I rooted and had CM on it. But I have yet to have the urge to root my S7 because with some minor tweaks, I've gotten it to be just right.

Reddit has a habit of forming a hivemind and I think the TW hate has been around since the S3 or S4 days. That's 5 years, almost.

 

[masta247]

Samsung gets a lot of hate these days somehow. I read the comments sections and its baffling. There are imperfections on their devices but people hate on the company without even educating themselves about those imperfections, thus they often hate for all the wrong or obsolete reasons. I think Samsung became so big that its like the new Apple - the new cool guy to hate on.

Its kind of sad as despite me not being much of a fan of the S8, Samsung still makes the most complete phones that are the best at the most things, if not all if you think about it actually. I really wish there was good competition. There used to be HTC, now HTC is making potato phones. LG has a mid ranger that is priced like a flagship. OnePlus might be worth looking at just because of great value for almost best with some corners cut. Still, I wish there was more competition which would make the Samsung hating justified, now it isnt as they simply have the best phones, no matter how little progress went into the S8, the S7 was already the best phone around even by the time the S8 was about to come out.

 

[dilla]

Yeah, it's been a fad to pile on Samsung after the Note 7 fiasco because the company was also dealing with faulty dryers and then the SmarTV microphone thing.There was a thread in the Apple sub about ex-Android users and many people said they switch from the Galaxy line to the iPhone7/7+ and enjoy more battery life and some of the responses on there were along the lines of "duh, it was Samsung."

And while that seems par for the course for a sub of a rival, the Apple sub has been level-headed in the past, relatively speaking. But I think this one was a major thread since the Note 7 and even the S8 announcement so that hate had to pile on somewhere and some time.

I enjoy my S7. I do feel my battery has degraded considerably since getting it and I know apps like AccuBattery aren't that accurate but I still rue for the SOT a lot of people are getting that I'm not. But aside from that, I guess my phone lasts 12 hours which is all I can ask for on LTE.

 

[dilla]

lel

Masta's prophecy is coming true.... https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/20/intel-basin-falls-may-coffee-lake-august/

 

[masta247]

lel



Masta's prophecy is coming true.... https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/20/intel-basin-falls-may-coffee-lake-august/

Of course, very predictable
The problem Intel has is that Coffee Lake is just a Kaby Lake refresh, in best case with more cores if Intel really wants to compete with Ryzen. An interesting possibility is that it just comes with quad core mobile chips to prevent AMD from getting their chips inside of high profile mobile devices, as Ryzen is expected to be quad core on mobile across the board (there is no way to have a dual core Ryzen as a very basic building block for Ryzen is a quad core complex).
Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X are based on their super expensive enthusiast platform. Kaby Lake-X is essentially a Kaby Lake chip with no GPU and surprisingly not any better than current offerings, while where it's interesting is Skylake-X, which is a Skylake chip with more cores, basically a direct competitor to Ryzen, except on a more expensive and likely short-lived platform, as mentioned. Still, it's a direct and rushed response nonetheless.

 

[dilla]

I'm sure we'll see the consequences of the rushed release after Ryzen lit the fire under Intel.

We talked about AMD possibly in Macs, especially the Ryzens. I asked on Reddit and someone said that it would be a challenge since Thunderbolt is an Intel IP and so it would only work with Intel chipsets. At least that was my understanding. I don't use TB but I imagine people have TB accessories that need to work so they would need an Intel chip while those with an AMD chip would not support TB.

Fucking Intel.

 

[dilla]

S8 reviews have been rolling in for over a week now, I think. I like GSM Arena and find them reputable so this review was interesting http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s8-review-1603p11.php

Same observations as Masta about the device being so similar to the S7. I guess that's good for me as an S7 owner in terms of performance.I wonder what the S9, or whatever the next iteration of the Galaxy line is, will bring that's different.

As much as I love my S7, I've been seeing my sister use her 7+ and the battery life she gets and it's pretty insane. She uses about half the LTE data that I use, which is still about 20 GB a month, and her battery life is through the roof. That, and my paranoia about a possible unhealthy (sub-70%) battery life less than a year in to ownership have me looking at the next iPhone.

I know, I always say this, but I probably have more brand loyalty than I do OS loyalty so I own only Apple and Samsung devices, mobile or desktop.

As I mentioned a few days back, my next contract won't incorporate the cost of a phone in to it so I may have some freedom in buying my own device. I just have to make sure that it's compatible with Sprint's LTE bands. I would love to try a Xiaomi or Huawei phone if I stick with Android.

 

[masta247]

Good point about Thunderbolt. It might be Intel's main card now against AMD when discussing this with Apple. It's a thing on the Apple camp that people care about from what I understand.

As far as the battery and the S7, whoa man, 20gb of data a month?! I use up around 1gb and I feel like I use my phone a lot outside. I wouldn't be surprised your battery dies fast, that's a lot of data. Even on Wifi I use maybe 3-4gb s month on my phone. And Wifi is much more battery efficient than LTE.

 

[dilla]

Yeah, I made some changes in using my phone the past week. As I mentioned above, I enabled mid battery saver settings but customized the settings so that only the CPU limiter is active and so it's capped at 70% of CPU power. That has helped a lot. I now get just over 4 hours of SOT despite always being on LTE now. I streamed about 1.5 GB worth of video on HBO and FX apps on my phone the other day and got the 4 hours of SOT with about 10% battery remaining.

20 GB was last month's usage because I was doing some classes so I wasn't watching my TV shows as much. But it would consistently be over 40GB and a few months last year I was nailing 70 GB between streaming TV shows, sporting events, music, and background sync of Twitter. Twitter would easily be 500-800 MB of data daily and I didn't really mind it. But now it makes sense how much of a drain it was because I made Twitter sync only when I open the app, which is maybe a dozen times throughout the day and my data usage for Twitter is about 50-100 MB now.

So my SOT isn't the 5-6 hours a lot of people were getting. Definitely not the 7+ Exynos Edge users were getting. But 4 hours is fine for me. I'm not worried about my battery when I go out now. Nor am I paranoid about the battery deterioration. I tried AccuBattery again (lol) this past week to monitor my usage better and it still says my battery is at about 1900 mAh out of the 3000 it started with, but that's OK. If it's wrong, it's wrong. If it's right, I'm getting 4 hours of SOT on a ~2000 mAh phone. I'm good.

 

[Casey]

S8+ looks amazing.

Holding out for the Pixel 2 though. Word from the inside is that Google is bringing their A game and also being a little secretive (more than usual) about Android O. Although I expect a lot will get shown at IO this year which is almost upon us.

 

[dilla]

How are you optimistic about the Pixel 2 after all the supply issues that plagued the first one?

Weren't there quality issues too? I feel like I read something where people were complaining about it and a lot of "Google should stick to software" was thrown around because the hardware wasn't up to snuff. Maybe not power wise, because it's a powerful phone, but more about build quality.

 

[masta247]

Schedule for 7nm chips: http://www.anandtech.com/show/11337/samsung-and-tsmc-roadmaps-12-nm-8-nm-and-6-nm-added/3

It is important because in 2H 2018 we will see a similar performance increase we did when chips shrank from 28nm to 14nm, which was huge and enabled Samsung to dominate performance for a year when the S6 came with the first 14nm chip, and last year's GPUs which offered 700$ of 2015 performance for 200$ in 2016.

It also shows further problems at Intel, which will hit 10nm only when others will be moving on to 7nm, and then even worse, it is scheduled to be still rocking 10nm in 2021(!) when others are scheduled to be at ~5nm. The Galaxy S8 already has Samsung made 10nm chips in it.

AMD will be moving their Ryzen processors to 7nm in a year or two and that alone will give them a 60% power /30% performance boost, along with twice as much die space to work with on a chip the size of today's processors for other improvements. For desktop users that's super cool as those chips will come on the same AM4 platform that you can buy today for the first gen Ryzen, and then just swap the processor. That will also be the first time in history that a much smaller AMD will also have a more advanced manufacturing node than Intel on their chips. With the first Ryzen they just caught up to 14nm, as they were still at 28nm just last year. That's going 28nm to 7nm, or quadrupling the shrink in mere 2 years, lol.

 

[dilla]

I just may switch back to Windows soon. If Apple continues to suck the teat of Intel and not diversify its offerings, I'm not paying $1700 to get the perks of the proper MBP model but was upcharged for the Touch Bar gimmick.

I hope Apple understood the kick in the pants it got earlier when review sites knocked the 2016 MBP for its pricing and lack of ports, etc. Mainstream sites like Consumer Reports knocked it and proper tech review sites knocked it. They need to make a big refresh for their entire Mac lineup. Maybe they put all their eggs in the iPad basket and now that sales for tablets in general are lagging, they're reverting back. Tablets were supposed to be the future of computing, right? I think the iPad is still the best selling tablet but sales have still decreased. Who's going to upgrade every year or two on a tablet, though?

 

[dilla]

I understand why it's done, but it's so shitty that the S8 and S7 had different variants that gave vastly different experiences for their users.

This UFS stuff seems pretty important in regards to read/write speed https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s8/how-to/ufs-2-0-2-1-identify-flash-chip-s8-t3601656