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Samsung {...} Sony, and everyone else have their stuff made by Foxconn too.

Not every single company manufactures its stuff exclusively in China.
For example, Sony still manufactures in Japan.
(And Samsung obviously manufactures a lot in South Korea)

Those non-China-made products include their smartphones (and other high-tech, hi-priced gadgets), they'll prefer outsourcing less sensitive accessories (wall wart charger).

disclaimer: both of my latest two smartphones are Japan-made Sony Xperias. Though I still flashed an entirely different OS (not Android) on them.
So it's not *China*'s spyware you're going to find installed in there.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn if there's some dedicated hardware that's been added to the SoCs in the latest phones that enable doing this on the device itself.

Yes, just like Apple has the Neural Engine, Google has the Pixel Visual Core

The name is misleading because from what I can tell (and what the article says) it is like the Apple chip, and can help with arbitrary neural network processing.

What I'm not sure of is the speed of the iPhone chip compared to the Pixel one, the iPhone chip took quite a leap in speed this year...

If it's such a big consideration, perhaps you could spend, say, 5 minutes looking for them? Best phones with a physical QWERTY keyboard, which shows three phones with an 'old fashioned keyboard' (two blackberries, one motorolla) and notes that the Samsung S8 has a keyboard case option made by the manufacturer. Also there are plenty of small bluetooth keyboards and third party case options, yet I've never seen one 'in the wild'.

Whenever this topic is broached there is always someone who complains about the lack of physical keyboards and claims that it's the option they are willing to switch for, but the reality of it seems different.

Is Apple their largest customer? Foxconn manufactures for practically every major player in the industry. Apple is their most visible customer.

Well, I don't know for sure (I didn't look at financials) but Android Authority claims so.

And Foxconn might be Apple's largest manufacturer.

Same disclaimer as above, but CNBC says so.

There's a whole bunch of them. What can you do on whatever you're terming to be "higher end" that you can't do on these? Most manufacturers' flagship phones don't have them but why do you feel the need to buy those?

The most popular one is probably Netflix. If you use Netflix on an Android device you have used WideVine.

Or Google Play video, or Amazon Video, or Hulu, or basically any Android app that plays commercial content. Maybe even YouTube; not sure.

I believe that Android and ChromeOS devices these days are required to provide L1, while desktop Chrome and Firefox provide only L3. L2 pretty much doesn't exist. You can tell easily what your device has: If your Netflix (etc.) streams are limited to 480p, then the device supports L3. If you can watch HD (720p, 1080i/p, 4K), then the device supports L1.

More detail: https://www.androidauthority.c...

I've no idea why this post keeps getting modded insightful because it sounds like bullocks. Let me explain:

Very few cheap modern Bluetooth headphones support AptX and even fewer smartphones even in 2018 support AptX out of the box (a lot of them do however this codec is not enabled by default and on Android you have to enable developer options). This codec is currently the only way to listen to music at maximum fidelity (no, the original poster wasn't talking about dynamic range compression - he meant lossy data compression).

The default Bluetooth audio codec is SBC (Subband Coding) and its default bitrate is close to 200Kbit/sec (my 2017 Google One smartphone has a bitrate close to 100Kbit/sec) and let me tell you that it sounds like pure shit where high frequencies (>12KHz) are completely cut off.

More on it here: 1 2 3 // Artem S. Tashkinov

Google Fi uses eSim to access T-Mobile and Sprint, starting with the ancient Nexus and xconttinuing through the Pixel.

The pixel 2 eSIM will not work *at all* on t-mobile, let alone at slow speeds. I've heard the same complaint regarding verizon as well.

So yes, this is totally a t-mobile/verizon problem.

If as you say the pixel 3 fixed this, then that's great - but I do have my doubts.

This article from 5 days ago says pretty much the same thing:
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-3-esim-918312/

However, the three major U.S. carriers which have stated they will support eSIM tech - Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile- do not currently have systems in place to support eSIM, at least not yet.

For the time being then, the Pixel 3 eSIM will only work with Project Fi and other select global carriers which support the tech. But at least you can rest assured that at some point in the future it will work here at home on at least three of the Big Four carriers.

There is just an endless supply of hardware to play with, which is all basically free. I myself have a perfectly functional Nexus 4 sitting here, useless because Google refused to provide an update to fix the notorious navigation button touchscreen bug. So that makes it a toy to play with custom roms, nothing to lose, and a functional phone to gain.

The vast majority of people don't want to play with old hardware or play with custom roms to try and achieve a functional phone. They're happy to pay a bit on top of their phone service contract to just get a new phone every 2 years and now there are even popular leasing options so you return your old phone to be recycled and get a new one each year.

A big part of the appeal of devices like the iPhone (and even Windows Phone when it was around) is that you don't have to think about whether your phone will get updates and/or how it will be supported. The reason this is appealing is that most people would much rather spend their free time doing things other than messing around with software updates for their phone. Android is a crapshoot because you have Google, OEMs and Carriers all involved, as a result if you look at the top 10 manufacturers time for getting OS updates out it ranges from 2 months to 6 months (and that's the top 10 fastest).

https://www.androidauthority.c... 31 billion made from Android. That was brought up by Oracle in the suit about the programming language. Guess you aren't to smart are you

I bet that you can't name one modern chip design firm designing new 32 bit SOCs.

You lose. Qualcomm's latest smartwatch SoC uses Cortex A7, a 32 bit processor.

Proving once again the Qualcomm is a fucking joke when it comes to microcontrollers/SoCs.

If A35 really is more power efficient than A7, other things being equal (cache, frequency, process) then why did Qualcomm go with A7 and not A35 for their new power efficient smartphone SoC?

I bet that you can't name one modern chip design firm designing new 32 bit SOCs.

You lose. Qualcomm's latest smartwatch SoC uses Cortex A7, a 32 bit processor.

But wasn't one of the main selling points of ChromeOS the fact that it's seamlessly self-updating?

Chrome OS seamlessly updates its userland. For comparison, Android has been working toward this since version 8 "knOckoff of Hydrox". Just as Android 4.x largely separated Google Play Services from AOSP to update the former faster, Android 8 introduced a frozen kernel and device driver ABI called Project Treble to separate AOSP from the hardware support to update the former faster.

Why does that not include the kernel? [...] I guess the OEM's would have to get involved to do a kernel upgrade

Bingo.

The following applies to both Chrome OS and post-Treble Android: Because hardware manufacturers customize the kernel with custom device drivers, kernel upgrades require more cooperation from each hardware manufacturer than userland upgrades. Manufacturers would prefer to sell a new device. And in markets where cellular ISPs use different mutually incompatible cellular air interfaces, such as CDMA2000 vs. GSM/UMTS in the United States, kernel upgrades on devices with a cellular radio additionally require cooperation from each cellular ISP. Cellular ISPs would prefer to sell a new device with a new 24-month service commitment.

It also wasn't a security disaster waiting to happen. The same can't be said about the Tizen OS.

https://www.androidauthority.c...

IS five layers, with two digitizers.

Yes, it can be scratched, but they sell replaceable top layers for the beasts...

Much better than this gorilla GLASS thing. I mean, IS GLASS!!! By definition GLASS BREAKS!

More info here:
https://www.androidauthority.c...

Google's Android operating system doesn't allow updating to new versions. Again, that is an extremely destructive way of manipulating people to buy new phones.

Google is trying to fix this situation with Project Treble.

tl;dr, Android's architecture is more abstracted now, so new versions of the system will remain compatible with old drivers. Which makes much easier to develop updates.

Samsung missed no deadlines in the similar case over the iPad's design. So they were able to successfully argue that the concept of a tablet existed long before the iPad, and that the Samsung Galaxy Tab's design actually borrowed from their digital picture frame which pre-dates the iPad (and the iPhone for that matter). And the jury ruled for Samsung in the tablet design patent case. They weren't jerks about it either - they didn't sue Apple for stealing their picture frame design for the iPad.

What a stupid claim. There are several Slashdot stories even from before the release of the iPhone about an "Apple tablet" that link to articles with photos of the design of the iPad. And those articles were all over the world back then. https://hardware.slashdot.org/... https://hardware.slashdot.org/...

FYI, the center pic in your link should be of an LG Prada, not an iPhone. The Prada was the first smartphone to go without a keyboard or keypad, not the iPhone. As I keep telling people, just because the first time you saw a feature was on an Apple product, does not mean Apple invented it.

The pics on the left and right are also cherry-picked to make it look like the iPhone was the progenitor of the modern smartphone design. Here's what the pic looks like if you cherry-pick phones to make the comparison favorable to Samsung.

Samsung already had phones in their internal design pipeline prior to the iPhone's release which looked very iPhone-like. They just weren't allowed to present them in court because they missed a filing deadline. The judge in the case opted to prioritize a legal deadline over the truth, which makes sense if a lawyer is exhibiting a pattern of missing deadlines, but not when potentially a billion dollars is at stake. The truth is the industry was already transitioning towards touch and away from physical keyboards by the time the iPhone rolled out. The iPhone did not create this new paradigm, it just happened to make the biggest splash with it.

Samsung missed no deadlines in the similar case over the iPad's design. So they were able to successfully argue that the concept of a tablet existed long before the iPad, and that the Samsung Galaxy Tab's design actually borrowed from their digital picture frame which pre-dates the iPad (and the iPhone for that matter). And the jury ruled for Samsung in the tablet design patent case. They weren't jerks about it either - they didn't sue Apple for stealing their picture frame design for the iPad.

Should be this one: https://www.androidauthority.c...

That links to the more interesting: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co...

I was wondering this, too. Why build the US version with one SoC and the rest of the world version with another SoC? Moreover, why would Samsung build a version for the US with Qualcomm's chip, and for the rest of the world version with its own chip?

Android Authority has an article comparing those two with the Kirin 970. https://www.androidauthority.c...

"There actually won’t be any divergence in 4G LTE speeds. All three of the chips feature integrated Category 18 LTE modems, boasting up to 1.2 Gbps down and 150 Mbps upload speeds on compatible networks. Importantly, these chips’ modems support global network compatibility, so we can see them in multiple regions."

"Support for HDR-10 and 4K video recording is common, although Samsung [Exynos 910] boasts up to 120 fps video recording at this resolution, Qualcomm [Snapdragon 845] has just moved on to 60 fps, and the Kirin 970 only offers 30 fps 4K encoding. All of these are still boons for high quality video enthusiasts though. Similarly, Huawei and Qualcomm have packed in a 32-bit 384 kHz capable DAC into their latest products for HiFi audio, but those numbers have little meaning on their own."

User replaceable batteries or at cost battery replacement of non user replaceable batteries prolongs cell phone life. Which is good for consumers and bad for the manufacturer's profits.

Same with user upgradeable Ram and storage.

Of course this is why Apple and Samsung have moved to non user replaceable batteries. And Apple have moved to soldered Ram and SSD on laptops. Of course neither has been exactly open about the reasons for this and the effect it has on total cost of ownership for users.

Presumably Windows laptop vendors would have moved to soldered everything if they had as much of a market share as Apple have with iOS (100%) and Samsung have with Android.

The interesting thing is that Samsung isn't as dominant as you'd expect

https://www.androidauthority.c...

They used to have 65% of the market

http://info.localytics.com/blo...

Now it seems like they're more like one of many vendors than a near monopolist

https://www.idc.com/promo/smar...

Hopefully this will make them produce some phones I'll actually want to buy when my LG V20 wears out.

I think that note has already gone out.

Other than the fact that it has been extensively security reviewed by independent people...
https://security.stackexchange...
https://www.androidauthority.c...
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux...

No water resistance. Pass.

Because you love biking under rain right?

No, he has just dropped too many phones in the loo while wanking off to pornhub.

No water resistance. Pass.

"Linux distro" and "GNU/Linux" are NOT synonymous.

Like any complex question, the answer is not black and white.

Is Android really just Linux?

Depending on your definitions, one can say "of course it is" or "of course it isn't."

Of course Android outsells everyone, they're still selling brand new phones that run old Android versions from several major versions ago and marketshare is nothing near the latest OS version.

Can you? It's specifically talking about that OS and the phone hardware. Is the phone hardware rootable so that installing another OS image can be done?

Not that this takes away from the seriousness of the tracking issue, but on this one specific point not only can you root OnePlus phones, OnePlus provide information on how to do so.

Stories like this and fscking Samsung ruining Galaxies by removing removable batteries, switching from Qualcomm to Exynos etc makes me wonder if there's a gap in the market for a new phone. It would be like this

1) Qualcomm reference design
2) Removable battery
3) SD card slot
4) Enough onboard flash and SDRAM that people won't complain
5) Headphone jack
6) IP67 or better

Incidentally all this was possible when Samsung build the Galaxy S5. And in fact the Galaxy's 1080p display is fine for most people. Though I suspect you'd go for IPS rather than OLED because more people sell decent IPS displays than sell decent OLED ones.

For software you'd aim for stock Android. Or this

http://www.androidauthority.co...

The idea is that rather than selling a mix of hardware and software like Apple, Samsung and OnePlus you're building hardware to run industry standard software, a bit like PC OEMs do.

Which means no spyware. And no bloated crap like TouchWiz. You'd have to make sure you made money on the hardware alone.

Actually there are lot of Chinese and Taiwanese OEMs selling devices like this cheaply. The problem is that they haven't made the leap from selling mix of hardware and software to being purely hardware OEMs and depending on open source software. Well that and most of them are terrible at software.

But people still buy them, despite their amazing prices tags.

Marketing people would say people buy them not despite their amazing price tags but because of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Veblen goods are types of luxury goods for which the quantity demanded increases as the price increases, an apparent contradiction of the law of demand. Consumers actually prefer more of the good as its price rises, and the result is an upward sloping demand curve. For example, in the 1990s when "fashion" jeans became popular, one retailer found that he could sell more when he raised the price. Also functioning as positional goods, they include expensive wines, jewelry, fashion-designer handbags, and luxury cars which are in demand because of, rather than in spite of, the high prices asked for them. This makes them desirable as status symbols in the practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure.

Veblen goods are named after American economist Thorstein Veblen, who first identified conspicuous consumption as a mode of status-seeking in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).[1] A corollary of the Veblen effect (where goods are desired for being over-priced) is thademand.

The iPhone X is a classic example of a Veblen good - it wouldn't surprise me if Apple announce that it has sold more than the iPhone 8, just like Samsung once announced the Edge versions of their devices were being pre-ordered more than the non Edge versions 'much to their surprise'.

http://www.androidauthority.co...

Which was a wonderful piece of marketing spin in of itself - it's no surprise that people keen enough to pre-order buy the Veblen good version of the product because they are True Believers in the brand.

The S6 and S6 Edge weren't regarded as a success once the non pre-sales numbers came out

http://www.independent.co.uk/l...

What Apple are good at is getting people to pony up $1000 for an ultra premium handset. Samsung's marketing people spin each new Galaxy as selling much stronger than expected (or the Veblen good version selling better than expected) but Samsung are not seeing people keep buying a premium handset every year. Or even every two years - I've still got an S5 which does everything I need it to. And unlike the newer Galaxy models has a user replaceable battery. Probably when it dies I'll just get a non flagship Android device with the same sort of performance level and a replaceable battery.

You make a good argument, but it has been proven that T-Mobile has been gaming the system of speed tests.

Not that Verizon is any better by going through National Advertising Division (NAD), which belongs to the BBB. Verizon is rated A+ by the BBB and T-Mobile is rated F. And I'm sorry, Better Business Bureau, but if you're going to lie for your paid member, you should at least try to make your lie somewhat halfway believable.

There is no way in hell that anyone would believe Verizon Communications would be rated A+. I would know. I was a Verizon customer for a bit. The coverage was great, but the nickel and diming, the bait and switching, and the fraudulent charges. There is no possible way that they could get a higher rating than T-Mobile (which is what I am currently using right now and which has never tried to rip me off like Verizon was doing).

Which sales numbers? For devices, or for apps? There's a big difference there. Despite the fact that android marketshare is almost a magnitude greater than Apple's, iOS app store revenue still wins.

http://www.androidauthority.co...

They're targeting a different market. The AtGames portable has the emulator market tied up. I'll bet they're taking an early swipe at the NES Classic but with an online market. The guts of the machine will most likely be AllWinner Android box with modified version Android 6. So you can also get streaming services and use prebuilt dev tools and games already on the Play Store. Version 2 or 3 is where they'll go after the the Switch market once that shakes out.

http://www.androidauthority.co...

While C is faster in some cases, java is faster in other cases starting with Android 6.0.

Personally, I think Java is the way to go until we invent another language which is clearly better and can easily and automatically be converted to from Java.

I saw the value of Java when it first came out. And I've seen many other languages come and go since which are less mature and frequently lose support after you commit to them. I know of more than one multi-million dollar application written in hot new languages which were subsequently end of life'd.

In one case, it also failed to replace the java application successfully and was tossed. The millions of dollars spent on the new application could have been spent polishing the java application- but our arcane tax rules favor new development over maintenance. In any case, 7 years later the java application is still being used.

Like Cobol, java is well suited for a wide range of applications but not all applications. And we have the potential to use the same code and programs 30 years from now without rewriting them again and again.

Guess someone was able to remap the Bixby button on demo S8 unit in Best Buy. So it isn't that Samsung blocked it from the beginning , they explicitly removed right before launch which is d-bag move.

http://www.androidauthority.co...

And some fanbois only concentrate on one or two things for "better". It would be a shame if the A10 processor beat out the Snapdragon 820 in multiple performance tests.

Strangely, this comes after Samsung denied plans to sell refurbished Note 7 devices. Maybe they weren't planning to do it at the time, hence the denial, but the reports in the news got them thinking that selling the old ones off might not be such a bad idea after all?

Because its always nearly a full 18 month behind Qualcomm. There's a reason the Exynos models mostly stay in S. Korea.

Bzzzt! Wrong. The Snapdragon 835 uses Samsung's 10 nm process (roughly 13 nm by Intel's yardstick) while Samsung's own Exynos 8895 using the same process was reportedly already in testing last summer.

I don't want an super thin phone, why not make it bit bigger to have an better battery / one you can swap!

Here you go: http://www.androidauthority.co... ... Now stop complaining.

This article tells where different phones are made. I don't buy anything that was made in China, unless I have to.

You literally have no idea what you are talking about. I'm surprised someone with such a low ID is spouting such nonsense as fact. It doesn't take 12 hours to wirelessly charge.

http://www.androidauthority.co...
Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge battery size: 2600mAh, charging time on WIRED cable: 80 minutes 0-100%
Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge battery size: 2600mAh, charging time on Samsung Wireless Qi: 160 minutes 0-100%

http://bgr.com/2016/10/12/ipho...

Just for comparison the iPhone 6s plus (2750mAh which is the closest to the above), it takes 168 minutes to charge 0-100%. So basically it takes roughly an equal amount of time to wirelessly charge an S6 Edge as it does to charge an iPhone 6s plus using the wired charger.

I see a lot of people here who are repeating the "why would you use fingerprints for authentication when your fingerprints can just be lifted off of any nearby surface?!" line, which is ignorant of how fingerprint scanners in modern cell phones actually work. Read up on it a bit: http://www.androidauthority.com/how-fingerprint-scanners-work-670934/

The short version is that no, the police will not be able to fool your phone's fingerprint scanner by using a print collected off of something else you've touched. Modern scanners do not record visual images of your fingerprint and match against that; they measure either changes in capacitance associated with the ridges of your finger touching the phone or your finger's response to an ultrasonic pulse. Both forms are incredible hard to fool with a prosthetic (and probably won't even work if your finger has been severed, although I don't know if anybody's tested that).

Most industry standards I know are patented to hell and back. About 30% of every smartphone's cost is from patent royalties. If the patent is on some good technology, other companies will pay the royalty. Not all IP is rounded corner bullshit.
http://www.androidauthority.co...

There's actually a pretty good writeup on this: http://www.androidauthority.co...

Basically, the TL;DR; version is that the most likely cause for Snapdragon 800/801 phones not getting Nougat is that they likely cannot pass the Android compatibility tests for Nougat for AES performance. They can't pass because the minimum specs are likely higher and they lack the necessary dedicated encryption hardware.

Nobody wanted to point fingers at Google, but the evidence seems to implicate them. Google needs to relax the compatibility specs for upgrading existing devices. Any device which passed the specs at release for a previous Android release should be grandfathered in as much as possible. We have enough problems with Android fragmentation from carriers and manufacturers--Google needs to help, not hurt.

Umm three pages of complaints. Not exactly a groudswell of anger.

Whatchoo wanna bet that I can find similar forums for iphones.

Except the ones for iPhones won't be threatening class-action suits based on fraudulent "Water-resistance" claims.

Oh, and that Forum was in ADDITION to several ARTICLES regarding "failed water-resistance" tests. Here's one, for example. And here's another. And here's Samsung's obsufcated response.

Want me to keep going (I can)?

Yup, it's true. That's why it's still very easy to buy a high-end phone with user-replaceable batteries.

Indeed. There are dozens to choose from. Here is a list. Here are many more.

supports UFS and microSD

“The new UFS cards are not compatible with the current microSD card socket. However, we have developed a socket design that can support both UFS cards and microSD cards. We are working with different partners in the industry on this integration for next-generation devices.”

On the topic of leveling up (link after the jump):

“Once you hit [the] mid 20s, you will start to notice even the most common of Pokémon have an abnormally high chance to evade capture. In no scenario should a 10cp Pidgey/Ratatta/Weedle be able to avoid capture from a lvl 29 Pokémon trainer, much less avoid it 5-8 times in the same battle (no exaggeration).Considering the need to use such large numbers of Pokeballs to capture even the most trivial Pokémon, combined with the “astronomically high” XP required, Riggnaros states “From level 29-30 I went through over 1000 Pokeballs. Literally. I cannot stress how ridiculous this would be for someone playing w/o spending coins on Pokeballs (ie playing the game f2p – which is the majority).”

So I guess that the game is specifically designed to suck you in, get you hooked on it like a drug, and then start smacking you hard so you have to pay-to-play. ...like most smartphone "games" which let you "cheat" if you pay up really.

And you'll never catch them all. Why would they ever let you do that? To kill the goose laying the golden eggs?

http://www.androidauthority.co...

If Apple gets away with this, everyone else will follow.

Actually, it seems that only Apple has ever been able to get away with this.

http://www.androidauthority.com/first-phones-without-headphone-port-run-android-687910/ - isn't it odd that a 2 year old rumor that failed to happen on 2 generations of iPhones (3 if you count the SE) still has you so riled up, while you actually manage to ignore reality of it actually happening.