Technology Android

[masta247]

The comments in this thread seem to be pretty divided https://www.reddit.com/r/technology...yzen_7_1700_linux_benchmarks_great_multicore/

Some saying Ryzen is good for compiling stuff but gaming and editing is inconclusive or Intel is still better.

Gaming AT 1080p is where Ryzen isnt as good as the fastest Kaby Lake (by a little) and that's pretty much it, as at 2K and 4K it's faster or equal. Bear in mind gaming is a strictly single core performance thing and while AMD went for higher performance per clock and core count, with Ryzen 1700 being the low vpower Ryzen clocked at 3ghz, the Kaby Lake i7 i7700k is clocked at 4.5ghz. That's 50% higher clock speed. That's pushing your quad core for same power usage as AMD's more efficient octa core. And that same Ryzen chip loses by up to 15% in 1080p gaming, on Intel optimized games while scores same or higher on 2k and 4K resolutions where the important thing of how well the CPU supports the bottlenecking GPU shows, and it's more important as nobody is going to care about whether they get 120 or 135fps on 1080p with two Titan X cards.

I was afraid of some people rushing to discredit Ryzen for any "new architecture" perks and weaknesses based on the very first benchmark they see Intel being on top at. There were Intel fans and review sites spreading rumors and false theories so AMD even bothered to make a statement about it:
https://www.techpowerup.com/231198/amd-responds-to-ryzens-lower-than-expected-1080p-performance

Fact is, AMD has the superior, more efficient core at a fraction of the price. And their current processors have double the core count of Kaby Lake's best. It will score better unless the task is completely optimized for an architecture that has been here for many years or because it's testing a niche decoder. Additionally, double the cores always means each is clocked a little lower and doesn't overclock well. Having eight cores instead of four on the same die size does that, physics. For tasks very much tied to clock frequency, usually legacy tasks or games, it's better to go with a lower core count, high frequency processors, which AMD has scheduled for second quarter of this year with Ryzen 5 and for half the price too. Let's see what some people will say then.

So the Intel integrated GPUs are pretty shit? I think the 13" MBPs have the Iris but the 15" have the Radeon Pros, or something like that. I was looking at the 15" anyway for the better CPUs and 16GB of RAM standard. The GPU would be a nice bonus even if I don't use it to its max. It's the screen size that will be a bigger deal to me, namely because of the screen resolution. My 13" is still lagging behind with a 1200x800 from 2010. That's what I miss most about the newer machines, is the screen quality. I'm still living in pre-2009 as far as that goes.

Is Cannonlake due out after Kaby Lake? I thought Kaby Lake just got released and had another year or two in its life cycle.

Yeah, the Intel GPU sucks balls. It's terribly slow and has really poor drivers. Intel is not a GPU company by any means. Pretty much any AMD or Nvidia mobile chip is better in performance and stability, plus in turn here games and software are not optimized for Intel GPUs, so some games don't work on them at all.

And Intel had to cut Kabylake's life short, due to Ryzen. Their CEO announced Cannonlake at the same time Kaby Lake launched, which is kind of unprecedented, basically saying "hey so those are the chips we were planning to release, but we see the competition has something better so don't worry, we'll come up with something better too, it's just around the corner" knowing AMD will eat Kaby Lake's sales anyway so it's better to drown yourself a little more but with a promise of better.
http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/...l-be-more-than-15-percent-faster-than-todays/

"The first Cannonlake chips are scheduled to ship in the second half of this year. The chips – called 8th-generation chips on an Intel slide – could include Core i7 chips.

Intel showed a Cannonlake chip at CES. The chip will be the first made on Intel's 10-nanometre process, which will deliver a substantial reduction in power consumption, Renduchintala said.

Intel may be trying to catch up with AMD, which is boasting a 40 percent performance improvement for its upcoming Ryzen chips. Ryzen's numbers are based on IPC (instructions per cycle), an important performance metric."

Except AMD reached over 52% higher IPC and Intel failed to get Cannonlake fully operational on 10nm so they'll be splitting 8th gen between 10nm and 14nm:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3168...ss-as-other-core-cpus-ease-into-new-tech.html

 

[dilla]

I see. I temporarily forgot I have an NVIDIA 320M in my MBP. It's shit but it's not Intel. I was thinking strictly Intel vs AMD in terms of GPU and forgot about NVIDIA.

I have a feeling the next MBP refresh really won't have a chance to get AMD. I don't feel too good about the refresh after that (1.5-2 years from now) either but I feel better about it. But Apple seems too hard set in its ways to change. And someone will justify Cannonlake in a Mac over these new AMDs somehow despite having potential to lower the cost of a Mac. But I also doubt Apple would lower the cost even if they did go with a cheaper, more efficient AMD option too, so....there's that.

 

[masta247]

I see. I temporarily forgot I have an NVIDIA 320M in my MBP. It's shit but it's not Intel. I was thinking strictly Intel vs AMD in terms of GPU and forgot about NVIDIA.

I have a feeling the next MBP refresh really won't have a chance to get AMD. I don't feel too good about the refresh after that (1.5-2 years from now) either but I feel better about it. But Apple seems too hard set in its ways to change. And someone will justify Cannonlake in a Mac over these new AMDs somehow despite having potential to lower the cost of a Mac. But I also doubt Apple would lower the cost even if they did go with a cheaper, more efficient AMD option too, so....there's that.

Edit: My post turned into a long thingy, but I hope it also turned out to be a good summary, I added my more personal input at the end.

Intel actually postponed the successor to the Core architecture, making Tigerlake the last Core generation.. due around 2020, considering no delays which is unlikely considering the last few years of missing schedule and adding "refresh" generations in between. Yes, on Intel's road map that's after Coffee Lake, Cannonlake and Ice Lake, and Tigerlake will still be the last generation on "Core" architecture and on 10nm.
So it will be Zen vs Core for the next few years. I foresee Intel adding more cores soon to better compete with Ryzen. That means we could have pretty much equality between Zen and Core products.. except Zen will also move forward, and faster. It is a brand new core so improvements will be easy and they will be large, also now we know that AMD is targeting the 7nm node with future Zens, skipping 10nm altogether, which would overtake Intel even in manufacturing technology due to AMD licensing the manufacturing process from Samsung, which already manufactures on 10nm and has 7nm fabs set up, while AMD is already finalizing designs of the next, 7nm Zen that is apparently to be ready in 2018:
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/processors/41626-gloflo-confirms-skipping-over-10nm
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/processors/40945-amd-working-on-7nm-48-core-processor

Regardless, it means we will see huge competition with AMD probably extending the gap of having the superior processor in the upcoming years, it will be the easier choice for people who want the best processor for the best price, while Intel has money on its side, which means they won't immediately lose market share to AMD. Such competition is awesome for the end consumers.
It's super awesome also because Zen will last 4 generations, so we will see Zen competing with Core, and then a new AMD core competing with Intel's successor to the.. Core core, at about the same time. With what we know now it seems like the CPU market share will be divided between Intel and AMD again, for long years to come. That historically always meant progress and great products on both camps, and a lot of price wars.

Oh, and source about Tigerlake is below, which is hilarious as it's connected with news about Trump funding a new 7 billion $ Intel plant that Intel needs to actually catch up to 7nm, thus doing a "great job" at trying to handicap any competition by putting even more money at the dominating player who monopolized the market (through money they had in the first place) against their also American competition that has been struggling financially for years thanks to the former company being a nuclear douchebag and still managed to actually push better technology.
Even with this, Intel will not go 7nm until after 2020, while AMD will be on 7nm as soon as next year and on their own, through their own pockets.
Regardless, hosting that Trump rally at Intel really paid off and after all Intel always has some dirty tricks.

http://www.pcgamer.com/intel-is-pouring-7-billion-into-7nm-chip-production-plant-in-arizona/

Krzanich announced the $7 billion alongside U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House today. The accompanying press release puts added focus on American job creation, though looking beyond the politics of the announcement, the interesting thing here is setting up shop for 7nm semiconductors.
(..)
After the 10nm Cannonlake, the 'Process' part of Intel's three stage Process-Architecture-Optimization strategy, we'll have Icelake (Architecture) and Tigerlake (Optimization). 7nm is far enough out that Intel hasn't even revealed the codenames for the parts yet, so don't get too excited. The eventual 7nm transition will also lead to more sophisticated data centers and advances in artificial intelligence technology.

If you want something more to be sad or pissed off about, to add a little backstory, AMD will pay to manufacture their 7nm chips at GlobalFoundries, which belonged to AMD until they were forced to sell it to a Saudi company because of.. Intel. Before AMD managed to win their long lawsuit against Intel for anti-competitive practices, AMD had to sell their factories to survive, that's how GlobalFoundries started, moving American money to Saudi Arabia. AMD now has to pay them for every chip they make, and AMD also has to pay penalties for each chip they don't manufacture at GloFo, as AMD were financially forced to sign such contract back then. After winning the suit against Intel, they were merely able to use that money to pay up to slightly renegotiate the agreement, but they lost their foundries for good and will still have to pay them for years:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10631/amd-amends-globalfoundries-wafer-supply-agreement-through-2020

Intel had to pay $1.45 billion to AMD, but that money came in almost 10 years late. What Intel was found guilty of was..

"The EU found, in part:
That Intel paid rebates to manufacturers on the condition that they would buy all (Dell) or nearly all of their CPUs from Intel.
That it paid retail stores rebates to only stock x86 parts.
That it paid computer manufacturers to halt or delay the launch of AMD hardware, including Dell, Acer, Lenovo, and NEC.
That it restricted sales of AMD CPUs based on business segment and market. OEMs were given permission to sell higher percentages of AMD desktop chips, but were required to buy up to 95% of business processors from Intel. At least one manufacturer was forbidden to sell AMD notebook chips at all."
https://www.extremetech.com/computi...for-unfair-and-damaging-practices-against-amd

I think it's a lot of information to take in and also completes the story why I'm so happy AMD finally have great chips. It's not really simply vouching for the underdog. There aren't many cases when a great company competes with such asshole company that does so much nasty shit, while the world watches and allows that to happen. Especially if the douchebag company uses their monopoly to hinder technological progress and still make a ton of money, and gets additionally funded using big public money on top of that.
I really hated myself for buying Intel processors, having known all that. I wish everyone buying an Intel processor just knew that before making a purchase, I wish every person I see making a comment like "glad AMD finally has a great chip but I'll still buy Intel" knew all of this.
I'm happy I can finally build my new computer with the better processor actually from the good guys who deserve all the market share that they more than rightfully earned.

Edit: And I hope this time around paying off reviewers and businesses will not stop AMD:
https://www.techpowerup.com/231038/intel-plays-dirty-over-ryzen-attempts-to-manipulate-ryzen-reviews
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/intel-is-trying-to-manipulate-amd-ryzen-launch.html
http://segmentnext.com/2017/02/27/intel-email-amd-reviews/
https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/916373-pc/74985765

 

[masta247]

The greatest 250$ laptop ever made:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11161/the-chuwi-lapbook-141-review-redefining-affordable/9

If even this can have a 1080p IPS display, why is the MacBook Air on 720P TN?!

 

[THEV1LL4N]

The last computer I had with an Intel chip was in the 90's featuring the Intel Pentium - that computer had Windows 95 on it. Ever since then, I've always gone with AMD.

 

[dilla]

The greatest 250$ laptop ever made:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11161/the-chuwi-lapbook-141-review-redefining-affordable/9

If even this can have a 1080p IPS display, why is the MacBook Air on 720P TN?!

lol I'm more impressed AnandTech is still doing reviews of prebuilt machines and not just hardware components. I can't remember if they did an S7 review but it seems like all the big, flagship releases on Android and iOS haven't gotten timely write ups, or write ups at all.

 

[masta247]

lol I'm more impressed AnandTech is still doing reviews of prebuilt machines and not just hardware components. I can't remember if they did an S7 review but it seems like all the big, flagship releases on Android and iOS haven't gotten timely write ups, or write ups at all.

Their phone reviews are not really legitimate anymore. They're still good for charts and tests, but not interpretations and conclusions.
I was very surprised of how openly obvious and strong bias they have towards who pays them, and they're not hiding that one either.
That is sad because they have smart guys working there, who know their shit about technology, but went on the dark side. You can still appreciate great insights though here and there, especially with uncontested technology such as that laptop. What is worrying is that Anandtech is less and less active too. It used to be the best place for reviews just a couple of years ago, it fell off dramatically to being a hit or miss with whether they will cover something or not, and whether the coverage will be great or very biased with only interesting insights here and there that you have to seek for.

I believe they reviewed every Apple product, usually timely too. Those articles frequently contain insider additions which are interesting, but the tone is horrible. I swear I remember them writing something along the lines of "it is known by now that Apple is leaps and bounds ahead in mobile performance" on one of the first iPhone or iPad reviews since Anand joined Apple, and that was under charts that clearly showed otherwise. They also compare Android flagships to iPhones as if the iPhones were some sort of a measuring stick or something to live up to. They make decent test and then do a 180 in their writing quality at such times.

 

[dilla]

Yeah. Anand did end up leaving for Apple too, right? That was about 4 years ago, I think.

I would read the Final Thoughts of a review but I'd take it with a grain of salt. The good thing is they did provide the data in the preceding 8 sections of the write up so readers could still make up their own mind based off of stats, even if the concluding section was ripe with bias.

Since Anand left, it felt like the site was understaffed and was trying hard to pick up the slack for a year two before finally just giving up on devices and sticking just to hardware reviews. You gave me a list of sites for notebook and other tech reviews and they seem to be good enough. MKBHD seemed like he was heading down the Anandtech route but in video form, but it seems he hit it big and now his videos are just a few minutes long an full of opinions that may or may not be influenced by the company giving him the stuff. I mean, he has a Tesla which I think he got for free. Good for him, but he seems to be big on endorsements. DBrand being the big one for him.

 

[masta247]

Yeah. Anand did end up leaving for Apple too, right? That was about 4 years ago, I think.

I would read the Final Thoughts of a review but I'd take it with a grain of salt. The good thing is they did provide the data in the preceding 8 sections of the write up so readers could still make up their own mind based off of stats, even if the concluding section was ripe with bias.

Since Anand left, it felt like the site was understaffed and was trying hard to pick up the slack for a year two before finally just giving up on devices and sticking just to hardware reviews. You gave me a list of sites for notebook and other tech reviews and they seem to be good enough. MKBHD seemed like he was heading down the Anandtech route but in video form, but it seems he hit it big and now his videos are just a few minutes long an full of opinions that may or may not be influenced by the company giving him the stuff. I mean, he has a Tesla which I think he got for free. Good for him, but he seems to be big on endorsements. DBrand being the big one for him.

Yeah, Anand moved to Apple.
If you like videos, Linus tech is a great reviewer. He has a lot of knowledge and even though he does hardware reviews on a regular basis, he also reviews devices whenever they drop. I think hardware reviews are a side effect (for some) that is necessary to know that someone reviews devices well, it means the reviewer understand the underlying tech. I'm yet to see a good reviewer that doesn't do hardware component reviews.
Linus doesn't do phones much, though.

 

[dilla]

Interesting.

I get most of my tech news from Android and Apple subs on Reddit. The rest I get from Twitter, especially MKBHD whenever he posts something. I'll had Linus Tech to that list. A lot of the tech sites end up reposting the same story 20 times over the span of 2-3 days. I get why since not everyone is on Twitter 8 hours a day and might miss the story if they don't, but it seems individuals in the tech world, even personal accounts of writers for said blogs, don't spam my Twitter list with reposts for views and instead post OC with each tweet.

 

[masta247]

AMD dropped the bomb, they just announced Ryzen 5 to be out on April 11. Basically my whole newsfeed today was completely filled with Ryzen 5, and I got messages from people I work with at Intel sharing the news too, and for a reason.

A 6 cores, 12 threads Ryzen for 219/249$, a 4core/8thread Ryzen for 169$/189$. That makes the i3s and i5s completely irrelevant. You're getting tripple(!) the threads at almost the same clock speed each, at the same price and same power envelope. Also they benchmark at +~70% performance for the same price of corresponding Intel i3/i5 processors. Essentially you're getting a bigger potential performance jump of going Kaby Lake i5 to Ryzen 5 as opposed to upgrading from a 8 year old Core Quad to this year's Kaby Lake i5. We haven't had such shake-up in consumer CPU tech in over a decade.

AMD mentioned "Ryzen 5 in Q2" but those chips are incredible and they'll suddenly be out in just a few weeks. If that wasn't enough, they're essentially Ryzen7 8-core parts with 2 or 4 cores less, but cache and everything else preserved, including SMT/Hyperthreading (which Intel disables going down to the i5). As if the Ryzen 7 processors weren't amazing value, now you can get the exact same thing as the best Ryzen 7, but with 6 cores instead of 8 for exactly half the price! Wow.

Anandtech got excited too, surprisingly:

It is expected that for situations where a compute workload can scale across cores and threads that the AMD chip will wipe the floor with the competition.
(..) The key results here show that the 1600 and 1600X should sit way above the i5-7600K, and the 1600X should offer so much better performance per dollar than the Core i7-7700K.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11202/amd-announces-ryzen-5-april-11th

 

[THEV1LL4N]

AMD dropped the bomb, they just announced Ryzen 5 to be out on April 11. Basically my whole newsfeed today was completely filled with Ryzen 5, and I got messages from people I work with at Intel sharing the news too, and for a reason.

A 6 cores, 12 threads Ryzen for 219/249$, a 4core/8thread Ryzen for 169$/189$. That makes the i3s and i5s completely irrelevant. You're getting tripple(!) the threads at almost the same clock speed each, at the same price and same power envelope. Also they benchmark at +~70% performance for the same price of corresponding Intel i3/i5 processors. Essentially you're getting a bigger potential performance jump of going Kaby Lake i5 to Ryzen 5 as opposed to upgrading from a 8 year old Core Quad to this year's Kaby Lake i5. We haven't had such shake-up in consumer CPU tech in over a decade.

AMD mentioned "Ryzen 5 in Q2" but those chips are incredible and they'll suddenly be out in just a few weeks. If that wasn't enough, they're essentially Ryzen7 8-core parts with 2 or 4 cores less, but cache and everything else preserved, including SMT/Hyperthreading (which Intel disables going down to the i5). As if the Ryzen 7 processors weren't amazing value, now you can get the exact same thing as the best Ryzen 7, but with 6 cores instead of 8 for exactly half the price! Wow.

Anandtech got excited too, surprisingly:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11202/amd-announces-ryzen-5-april-11th

Do you think the Ryzen processors will be readily available in desktops anytime soon? I'm looking to buy a new desktop soon and am wondering whether or not to wait. My budget is around £500 though so nothing too expensive.

 

[masta247]

Do you think the Ryzen processors will be readily available in desktops anytime soon? I'm looking to buy a new desktop soon and am wondering whether or not to wait. My budget is around £500 though so nothing too expensive.

Yeah, they already are. The Ryzen 7 is out while Ryzen 5 will be out on April 11. 500 pounds will should get you a decent Ryzen 5 CPU, board and Ram, but not sure about the reset (PSU, GPU, disks, case).

 

[THEV1LL4N]

Yeah, they already are. The Ryzen 7 is out while Ryzen 5 will be out on April 11. 500 pounds will should get you a decent Ryzen 5 CPU, board and Ram, but not sure about the reset (PSU, GPU, disks, case).

£500 budget for the whole desktop. May just wait a few more months and see what becomes available.

I'm tempted by one of the computers I've seen that has an AMD A10 CPU:
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/comput...-550-103na-desktop-pc-white-10146658-pdt.html

 

[masta247]

£500 budget for the whole desktop. May just wait a few more months and see what becomes available.



I'm tempted by one of the computers I've seen that has an AMD A10 CPU:

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/desktop-pcs/desktop-pcs/hp-pavilion-550-103na-desktop-pc-white-10146658-pdt.html

I wouldn't get those now. There is a very, very large difference between previous gen AMD APU/CPUs and what is coming out now with Ryzen. If you're on a budget, you might wait a month or two to get one of the cheaper Ryzen 5 CPUs and one of the budget graphics cards (like the RX460) or you might as well wait until Q2 for Ryzen APUs and PCs built based on those APUs which will have integrated graphics and surely will save you a buck or two. The great thing about Ryzen is that it's out on the brand new AM4 platform. It means you buy it once, and then you can always switch to a brand new CPU for years to come without changing the whole motherboard/PC. It's much more future-proof. 500 pounds is a low budget, but later in the year there will be much better offerings popping up thanks to more and more builds based on value Ryzens and vendors slashing prices on Intel builds, trying to compete.

 

[dilla]

All this hype around the S8. Looks good but the fingerprint sensor on the back is a big change. At least for someone that's used to using the home button scanner.

I wonder if us S7 users will get Android O in a timely manner.

Masta, how does one check to see what their battery capacity is after one year of use? Is there a reliable method? AccuBattery told me I was at around 1600-1900mAh out of 3000mAh this January. I stopped using the app after that because I wasn't sure if it was accurate. I use my phone a good bit on 30 min train rides to stream Spotify while I browsing Twitter and links there. And that's on a moving train, with the phone switching towers the whole time on my way to the city. Between 8 and 5PM I check my phone randomly in between and I've usually around 40-50% at that time.

Using GSam Battery Stats, I can check wakelocks and what apps are using it and for how long it's kept awake. If I posted screens, would you be able to tell what's normal usage and what isn't?

 

[masta247]

As far as the S8, it's the one that upgraded by far the least out of all of the Galaxy S phones so far. They reduced the bezels which is nice, but camera sensor is the same for the very first time in history of Galaxy smartphones and processor gains went for power savings to make up for the fact that exactly the same battery that powered a 5'1 screen now has to power a 5'8 screen. It's essentially a S7 with small bezels and fingerprint scanner in a less convenient location, which is mitigated by an Iris scanner. Oh and there are no physical buttons. I don't get why some people were excited, I was looking forward to that phone basically needing to upgrade as my S6 has been damaged and only needed it to be a regular evolutionary upgrade, but it isn't. I thought it was such a mismatch between how I thought people would react (criticize, especially considering the price hike for no improvements and smallest battery per inch of screen ever) and how people actually reacted. It feels like nobody actually checked the spec sheet, everyone's just excited about a perspective of having a cooler looking phone. I feel like it's the best time to buy an S7 if you don't mind bigger bezels because you're otherwise getting a phone that will perform the same and might actually have better battery life.

As for the battery stats, there's no software that will tell you the "real" capacity of your battery. The only way would be with a hardware meter. The apps are bogus, don't worry about it. It's unlikely it's shrunk much yet. With regular daily charging you'd be at ~85% original capacity after a year, maybe 70% if you lived in the tropics with no AC and always fast charged it, but that's pretty much a worst case scenario.

 

[masta247]

Also, Ryzen 5 launched today, Anandtech called the Ryzen 5 1600X the best processor in over half a decade, AMD priced it at Intel's Kaby Lake Core i5 level and:

"You’re seeing roughly an 80-percent difference in performance when all cores are hot on Ryzen 5 and the Core i5. Let’s say that again: An 80-percent difference. That’s just a crushing blow to Core i5 and pretty much frames how this battle is likely to shape up: Give up a little single-threaded performance for a huge bump in multi-threaded performance."
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3186...1600x-wins-for-best-mainstream-power-cpu.html

AMD has all but the lowest end to itself (which AMD will address in 2h2017) and let's just say it would be very unwise to buy a laptop now without waiting a couple months for Ryzen mobile APUs which will also come with new Vega GPUs. Within a single year, an underdog is on a straight path to all out dominate a giant on all of its markets, or at least match it head to head wherever it doesn't. Right now it seems like the only use for an Intel CPU are legacy, single threaded programs and older games in low resolution (which doesn't matter as those already run at 100+fps on any of those processors) as the Intel processors are significantly slower at literally everything else, and now in in all price brackets above 150$.

It doesn't help Intel that their current platform will be discontinued after Kaby Lake while AMD's AM4 will be supported for many generations of Ryzens to come. AMD hit hard and with really great products, finally.

 

[dilla]

As far as the S8, it's the one that upgraded by far the least out of all of the Galaxy S phones so far. They reduced the bezels which is nice, but camera sensor is the same for the very first time in history of Galaxy smartphones and processor gains went for power savings to make up for the fact that exactly the same battery that powered a 5'1 screen now has to power a 5'8 screen. It's essentially a S7 with small bezels and fingerprint scanner in a less convenient location, which is mitigated by an Iris scanner. Oh and there are no physical buttons. I don't get why some people were excited, I was looking forward to that phone basically needing to upgrade as my S6 has been damaged and only needed it to be a regular evolutionary upgrade, but it isn't. I thought it was such a mismatch between how I thought people would react (criticize, especially considering the price hike for no improvements and smallest battery per inch of screen ever) and how people actually reacted. It feels like nobody actually checked the spec sheet, everyone's just excited about a perspective of having a cooler looking phone. I feel like it's the best time to buy an S7 if you don't mind bigger bezels because you're otherwise getting a phone that will perform the same and might actually have better battery life.

As for the battery stats, there's no software that will tell you the "real" capacity of your battery. The only way would be with a hardware meter. The apps are bogus, don't worry about it. It's unlikely it's shrunk much yet. With regular daily charging you'd be at ~85% original capacity after a year, maybe 70% if you lived in the tropics with no AC and always fast charged it, but that's pretty much a worst case scenario.

lol, that's the thing. I always had fast charge enabled but didn't fast charge too often. Usually just to top up during the day and not over night.

What was overnight was wireless charging. Every night before going to bed and then taken off 6-8 hours later. I don't know if that did any more damage than what would be considered normal "wear and tear." I have stopped doing that now as well and I usually just regular charge with the cable during the day and keep my battery between 35 and 85%. Overnight, I leave it unplugged and it may lose 5-7% over night. 10% at worst but GSam Battery says it goes as low as .9% an hour. I am always on LTE and I'm sure background apps wake it up and cause the minimal drain. Like Twitter syncing twice an hour in the background.

But that being said, I'm just worried at having used wireless charging nightly since March until January of this year. I haven't checked my battery stats on AccuBattery or something in two months, almost three. But my battery at least gets me through the day with normal usage. I'd stream Spotify on extreme quality on my train rides (45-60 mins total, round trip) and that would use about 100 MB of data. I'd be browsing and loading Twitter stories the whole ride too lol. Reading the news and listening to music. I'd lose about 13-15% on LTE with music and Twitter data alone including opening up websites in the browser.

It's just hard to gauge my usage with others on Reddit that claim they get 3-4.5 hours of SOT on the SD S7. Edge users gain 45-60 more minutes. Exynos users laugh at 6+ hours SOT and Exynose Edge show almost 7. The latest S8 Exynos seemed to show 8 hours of continuous stream with full brightness. So I can't tell if me getting barely over 2 hours of SOT with maybe 20% battery left at the end of the day is normal.

The good thing is during my 7 weeks of traveling to and from the city, I had a 15000mAH power bank with me that allowed me to top up and stay between 30-75% on my ride back home. I didn't stream much video because I was busy but I did stream music, which is close enough when Twitter is added on to it. I guess I can't be chasing numbers because I bet a lot of users do battery saving mode and stay on WiFi all the time while I am the exact opposite.

 

[masta247]

lol, that's the thing. I always had fast charge enabled but didn't fast charge too often. Usually just to top up during the day and not over night.

What was overnight was wireless charging. Every night before going to bed and then taken off 6-8 hours later. I don't know if that did any more damage than what would be considered normal "wear and tear." I have stopped doing that now as well and I usually just regular charge with the cable during the day and keep my battery between 35 and 85%. Overnight, I leave it unplugged and it may lose 5-7% over night. 10% at worst but GSam Battery says it goes as low as .9% an hour. I am always on LTE and I'm sure background apps wake it up and cause the minimal drain. Like Twitter syncing twice an hour in the background.

But that being said, I'm just worried at having used wireless charging nightly since March until January of this year. I haven't checked my battery stats on AccuBattery or something in two months, almost three. But my battery at least gets me through the day with normal usage. I'd stream Spotify on extreme quality on my train rides (45-60 mins total, round trip) and that would use about 100 MB of data. I'd be browsing and loading Twitter stories the whole ride too lol. Reading the news and listening to music. I'd lose about 13-15% on LTE with music and Twitter data alone including opening up websites in the browser.

It's just hard to gauge my usage with others on Reddit that claim they get 3-4.5 hours of SOT on the SD S7. Edge users gain 45-60 more minutes. Exynos users laugh at 6+ hours SOT and Exynose Edge show almost 7. The latest S8 Exynos seemed to show 8 hours of continuous stream with full brightness. So I can't tell if me getting barely over 2 hours of SOT with maybe 20% battery left at the end of the day is normal.

The good thing is during my 7 weeks of traveling to and from the city, I had a 15000mAH power bank with me that allowed me to top up and stay between 30-75% on my ride back home. I didn't stream much video because I was busy but I did stream music, which is close enough when Twitter is added on to it. I guess I can't be chasing numbers because I bet a lot of users do battery saving mode and stay on WiFi all the time while I am the exact opposite.

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.