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Nexus 5 With Android 4.4 and Snapdragon 800 Challenges Apple A7 In Benchmarks

Posted by timothy on from the so-you're-saying-you-liked-it dept.

MojoKid writes "One of the hallmark features of Google's Nexus 5 flagship smartphone by LG isn't its bodaciously big 5-inch HD display, its 8MP camera, or its "OK Google" voice commands. That has all been done before. What does stand out about the Nexus 5 is Google's new Android 4.4 Kit Kat OS and LG's SoC (System on Chip) processor of choice, namely Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 quad-core. Qualcomm is known for licensing ARM core technology and making it their own; and Qualcomm's latest Krait 400 quad-core along with the Adreno 330 GPU that comprise the Snapdragon 800, is a powerful beast. Google also has taken the scalpel to Kit Kat in all the right places, whittling down the overall footprint of the OS, so it's more efficient on lower-end devices and also offers faster multitasking. Specifically memory usage has been optimized in a number of areas. Couple these OS tweaks with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 and you end up with a smartphone that hugs the corners and lights 'em up on the straights. Putting the Nexus 5 through its paces, it turns out preliminary figures are promising. In fact, the Nexus 5 actually was able to surpass the iPhone 5s with Apple's 64-bit A7 processor in a few tests and goes toe to toe with it in gaming and graphics." Ars Technica has a similarly positive view of the hardware aspects of the phone, dinging it slightly for its camera but otherwise finding little to fault.

65 of 310 comments (clear)

  1. This is not a fair comparison by giorgist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is not a fair comparison, the iPhone is twice the price.

    1. Re:This is not a fair comparison by smash · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Possibly in some cases. But there are plenty of new iphone users. The original iphone caught on because it did stuff no other available device did (or at least not as well). Playing DRM content off iTunes was only a small part of that.

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    2. Re:This is not a fair comparison by Desler · · Score: 2

      Because we all know that the only people buying iPhones are original iPhone owners, right? Lame excuses are lame.

    3. Re:This is not a fair comparison by auzy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It kind of is. Of course, this excludes the fact that Android Apps are actually portable (unlike iPhone apps), and ultimately, when Google implements ART instead of Dalvik, Android will be significantly more competitive in performance (these benchmarks don't test the hardware exclusively, but the software environment also).

      We can also install other Android builds easily on the Nexus phones, and so are able to do things, which are impossible on Apple (without risking completely messing up the phone on upgrades, such as screen recording).

      Long term, Android is a better solution, and is is a more open environment, is less hostile to develop for, and I've found that my Nexus 5 is so snappy anyway, that the speed is irrelevent at this time. And yes, I have 3 other people in the office who are iPhone fans and my Nexus 5 has helped convert 2 of them, who are sick of all the small annoyances by Apple, such as getting cut by the broken glass backing of their iPhone (and the fact that on HSDPA/Wifi iPads for a very long time, we found they kept prioritising the HSDPA, making it painful for automation).

    4. Re:This is not a fair comparison by whoever57 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You've got a Quad-Core ARM running at twice their Ghz and you barely post benchmarks ahead of a Dual-Core A7, you know you're stupid for buying one.

      No. you are stupid for basing your decisions on factors that don't affect your usage of the device. All that matters is how fast it brings up web pages, runs apps, etc., battery life, size and other factors such as features the OS and ecosystem provides. The clock rate of the processor is not relevant to the user.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    5. Re:This is not a fair comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      E-peens, so keep everything nice and vague.

    6. Re:This is not a fair comparison by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful
      That's no different than claiming the A7 is pathetic for needing 64 bit registers to do what the SnapDragon does with 32. Which is to say, very silly.

      Now, if double cores and double the MHz give the Nexus 5 less battery life than the iPhone, then you have a leg to stand on.

    7. Re:This is not a fair comparison by MacDork · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You've got a Quad-Core ARM running at twice their Ghz and you barely post benchmarks ahead of a Dual-Core A7, you know you're stupid for buying one.

      Stupid for buying a faster phone at half the price? You have a strange concept of stupid :-)

    8. Re:This is not a fair comparison by smash · · Score: 2

      No. Some things are explained by reasons some people are simply unwilling to accept.

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    9. Re:This is not a fair comparison by smash · · Score: 4

      Not trolling. Pointing out that vast numbers of people buy the iPhone despite it costing 2x as much. And this is despite the fact that most people are cheap - hence VHS winning against Betamax, Hyundai being way more popular than BMW, etc. It's also why most android handsets are not Nexus 5s or Galaxy 4s.

      There are reasons for people buying iPhones despite all this. Chief amongst them is that the average Joe DOES NOT CARE about what the numbers are with synthetic benchmarks, number of pixels on screen, etc. They care about how well a device performance the functions they want it to do. Despite what many in the slashdot crowd may think, things like look and feel, UI consistency, battery life and integration with other devices and services is important.

      The raw numbers are pretty irrelevant for everybody outside a very small subset of the population. For so many people to be buying iphones despite being "2x the price", there must be something they value in the device, otherwise they wouldn't be buying it.

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    10. Re:This is not a fair comparison by smash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Also, i forgot another big reason: after-sales customer service. Apple does well at this, with OS upgrades, repairs and other support.

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    11. Re:This is not a fair comparison by AcidPenguin9873 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Quad core doesn't help you on single-threaded, lightly-threaded, or GPU benchmarks, which is most of the benchmarks that I saw in the article. That means you can't say that Krait sucks because it has four cores and barely beats a dual core, since the four cores aren't being utilized. The conclusion you can draw is that a quad core CPU isn't necessary for a good user experience on a phone.

      And needing a faster clock to reach the same performance levels isn't a meaningful metric either, at least not in a phone. In a phone that is power-constrained, the metric is performance per watt. If both CPUs burn the same power and give the same performance, they're basically equivalent. How each chooses to provide that performance is immaterial in a phone which is a power-constrained environment. Maybe the Apple CPU has some performance headroom at higher power budgets if it could run at a faster frequency (thus providing higher perf at the same freq as the Krait core), but that doesn't help you if it has to run throttled at all times so as to not blow through the phone's battery life and/or burn your pants.

    12. Re:This is not a fair comparison by NeoMorphy · · Score: 2

      This is not a fair comparison, the iPhone is twice the price.

      You've got a Quad-Core ARM running at twice their Ghz and you barely post benchmarks ahead of a Dual-Core A7, you know you're stupid for buying one.

      So, what you are saying is that the Nexus 5 is faster, but it needed twice as many higher clock speed processors, which is bad because it costs half as much or is it because it has a higher resolution display. And now that the iPhone doesn't have the highest resolution display, that's unimportant? Buying one of the fastest phones, that has a great display, has stock Android OS, and is cheap is stupid??? I do not think that word means what you think it means.

    13. Re:This is not a fair comparison by auzy · · Score: 3, Informative

      Portable to what exactly?

      Computers for starters.. Long term, we can run Android apps on Intel computers at full speed. On Apple, that won't be possible without an emulator, recompile, or switching the computer to ARM.

      Ah yes, the classic Fandroid response of "Just around the corner it's gonna get better!!!"

      Apple's program execution is nothing special. ART eliminates the disadvantages of using portable code, and allows the execution system to be far more flexible than Apple's. Android is using a slower system at the moment, but, better solutions do take more effort (one giant leap for mankind).

      99% of Android users don't install other ROMs on their phone.

      Where'd you get that figure? Anyone who purchased the humble bundles did. Part of the Apple Store's intention is to actively block competitors. That is even dodgier when you consider that Apple has stolen products in the past (which, after doing so, they will be competing against you). Also, if the hacker community wasn't there, we would have no good way to make videos of the product we developed for iPhone (we tried a video camera, it was terrible).

      That to get any visibility you have to go through Google Play which has many the same terms as the Apple App Store.

      Humble bundle gets plenty of visibility, and its a separate system. Also,if you spend 2 months developing software, you WILL be able to run it on the platform ultimately. On the Apple App store, you basically need to discard or Cydia the software if it isn't approved.

      Finally, in 2009, it was estimated that Cydia was installed by 10% of the iPhone userbase (could be biased, from the Cydia website). And so, their app's obviously do have PLENTY of visibility on iPhone. The fact though that Cydia constantly breaks though is "hostile" towards unapproved apps. It shouldn't be necessary.

      You can't afford $99? For any decent programmer that's not even 3 hours of pay.

      That's $99 without any guarantee you will ever be able to sell the software you are developing on another iPhone (unless you go to Cydia). That sounds fantastic! There are so many developers on Cydia, who have developed great Apps, that Apple has screwed. I'm sure many Cydia developers LOVE Apple as much as you do.

      Then maybe they should have gotten their phone replaced or put it in a case? How is it Apple's fault that someone drops their phone and is dumb enough to cut themselves on the glass?

      Why is it an airplane's company fault if a pilot accidentally hits the wrong button causing the plane to crash? In the Airplane industry, they call this "Human Factors". The glass backing is an inexcusably poor design. The guy who I saw was cut, was just picking up his dropped phone . Basically, if you drop it on its back, it is designed to shatter, and if you are lucky, there are sharp glass fragments on the ground for other people to step on. Apple must have known that making the back out of glass (instead of Plastic or other materials), but instead, they decided to use an extremely fragile material (obviously weighing up whether the Apple Fanbase would care or not), and they ignored human factors in the process of designing the phone (all for the interest of making a good looking phone).

    14. Re:This is not a fair comparison by Clsid · · Score: 2

      I don't agree with Google's octopus policies regarding privacy but you are very right about the Nexus 5. It has single-handedly managed to make any prospective iPhone buyer look like a complete fool.

    15. Re:This is not a fair comparison by ahabswhale · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, if you look at the benchmarks it loses in everything but the GL benchmarks. Then go and look at the benchmarks at phonearena and the 5S hands the Nexus 5 it's ass on pretty much every test. Personally I'll reserve final judgement until I see an anadtech comparison but looking at everything out there right now, the Nexus 5 doesn't hold a candle to the iPhone 5s. That's not to say it's a bad phone, because it isn't. I'm just saying you're buying a fantasy if you think this thing is on par with the 5S.

      Before I get called an Apple fanboy, you should know that I own two phones and they are both Samsung Android phones.

      --
      Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
    16. Re:This is not a fair comparison by prowler1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The most common reason I usually get from non-technical people on why they want or why they purchased an iPhone (or iPad) was because they are 'cool' or 'trendy'. None of them has been able to tell me why or what features it has or does better than any of its competitors. Simply put, they didn't give a damn about how well their device functions when they use it, just the image they can reflect or inherit by owning one.

    17. Re:This is not a fair comparison by Bogtha · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think I'm qualified to comment on this. I've been an iOS developer since 2008. My company makes iOS and Android applications. I used flagship Android phones from 2008-2012 before switching to the iPhone. So I've had a lot of experience with both platforms from both the user and developer sides.

      I think Android phones are terrible in comparison to iPhones. The reason why I started out with Android phones was for the reasons you outline - more open, and more flexible. I quickly discovered that wasn't all it was cracked up to be. The reason why I stayed with Android for so long was that a) I was holding out hope that it would be better in the long run and b) I wanted a hardware keyboard.

      Open: Android is "open" in the "open cathedral" sense. It's very difficult to just jump in, make a few alterations, and see the changes running on your device. Practically speaking, it's not developed in an open sense in the same way most open source projects are. You could write a book about the implications this has and how it undermines the benefits open source normally provides.

      Less hostile to develop for: not a chance. Yes, Apple have the ultimate say-so on what's allowed on the App Store. Yes, that's a big deal. But with Android, you have to contend with thousands of different models, each with their own shitty customisations that break things. We deployed an application last week for Android. It was finished weeks beforehand for iOS. Despite only having to target three recent Android tablets (it was an in-house project), each tablet was broken in different ways. iOS development is a breeze by comparison.

      The problem with producing applications for the iPhone is Apple's policies. That's not a development obstacle, that's a policy issue. As we are a digital agency, all this really means for us is that we can say "Apple won't allow that" to clients when they ask for us to do something that Apple won't allow. And you know what? 99% of the time, it's when the client is asking for us to do something user-hostile.

      The problem with producing applications for Android is development. The client asks for the feature, there's no intrinsic reason why it can't be done, but in practice you find that what should work and what does work on various devices differs radically.

      Then there's the upgrade issue. I've done a lot of web development. Android is the Internet Explorer 6 of the mobile world. Masses of people don't upgrade, and more than a quarter of Android users are still on Gingerbread, released almost three years ago. It takes less than a year for about 95% of iOS users to upgrade to the latest version.

      This isn't just a developer problem, it's a user problem as well. When I bought my last Android phone, it was a flagship Sony phone shipped with 2.3 that they had committed to upgrading to 4.0. That's the only reason I gave in and stayed with Android. The promise that I might actually stay up to date for once. Sure enough, they broke that promise. But they dragged it out for a year saying that they would do it. Meanwhile, the version of Android I was stuck on had a bug that rendered my SIP phone line useless.

      You lose features too. Remember when OTA upgrades were an advantage over iOS? The year before iOS added that feature, I got an Android upgrade that took that feature away. It was a shitty vendor customisation. I had to use a buggy desktop application that crashed my computer to upgrade Android. When I switched vendors? Same thing, but with a completely different buggy desktop application.

      Android's a mess. It was a mess for the fours years I was using it, with every single handset I tried, as I was hoping in vain for it to get better. It never got better, in fact the problems with the platform became more numerous over time. It's "openness" is an illusion and is not going to fix the problems it faces.

      I disli

      --
      Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
    18. Re:This is not a fair comparison by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

      And that fact is mostly irrelevant. Remember back when AMD started quoting their Athlon processors by speed rating rather than MHz because Intel went all out to get high clock speeds? I thought everyone knew that megahertz were not directly comparable between architectures these days.

      In this case Apple has gone down the more complex route with a processor that can do more per clock cycle at the expense of added cost and power consumption. The Snapdragon CPU takes the opposite approach with simpler cores that run at higher clock rates. Such cores are cheaper to manufacture and have power consumption advantages when not running flat out at their maximum clock rate.

      Also note that the benchmarks they ran don't saturate all four cores, and neither do most mobile games. The extra RAM helps the phone multitask, and no benchmarks or games use it all on either platform so it's meaningless.

      It's pretty amusing that Apple spent so much time and money to develop their CPU and it ended up costing far more than the much simpler and equally fast competition. 64 bit turned out to be completely irrelevant at this stage.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    19. Re:This is not a fair comparison by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      It's a question of marketing. Samsung and Apple spend by far the most and have the most brand recognition, and unsurprisingly sell the best as well. Google doesn't do much mainstream advertising of its hardware, which is a shame because people would buy it in droves if they knew they could get something as good or better than a Galaxy S/iPhone for half the price.

      It's only anecdotal evidence but I have seen people make this realization. The first time was when Apple sued Samsung over the infamous rounded corners patent, and suddenly people were asking why they were spending so much on an iPad when they could get a Samsung that was a third cheaper and by Apple's own admission the same thing. More recently a friend's daughter lost her high end HTC and the insurance money was only enough to get a Nexus 4, but once she could see how good it was (better than the HTC in some respects) she was sold on it and the other members of her family got Nexus phones when their's needed replacing.

      I think we may be coming to the end of the high price smartphone era, because much cheaper phones are just so good now the only real improvement will be incremental battery life extension and software.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    20. Re:This is not a fair comparison by rocket+rancher · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And the Nexus 5 has a SoC with 2 more cores, 80% higher max clock rate and double the RAM. That it can only keep up is pretty amusing.

      What is amusing is that the Nexus 5 costs half what the iPhone does. Apple's target demographic has always been people with more money than brains. Thwok....ball's in your court.

    21. Re:This is not a fair comparison by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Open: Android is "open" in the "open cathedral" sense. It's very difficult to just jump in, make a few alterations, and see the changes running on your device.

      Wait, are you an app developer or an OS developer? Most app developers don't try to patch the OS. At least on Android you can submit patches, on iOS there is no way to do that. AOSP isn't hard to interact with, compared to say the Linux kernel or BSD.

      Yes, Apple have the ultimate say-so on what's allowed on the App Store. Yes, that's a big deal.

      Apple can make you waste vast amount of money developing something only for it to be blocked, and then copied by Apple themselves. That's more than a big deal. It's hard to get projects approved when managers see this happening.

      But with Android, you have to contend with thousands of different models, each with their own shitty customisations that break things.

      Only if you are a terrible programmer. Like most operating systems Android runs on multiple platforms and offers stable APIs to interact with that hardware. Just like you wouldn't design your Windows or Linux app to run at 800x600 and then get upset when people find it looks crap on their 1920x1200 monitor you should not be developing Android apps that are tailored to specific hardware.

      Can you provide any concrete examples of standard Android API functions that are broken on popular Android devices? The worst I have seen is some flaky Bluetooth drivers, but those are down to the phone manufacturer in the same way you wouldn't call Windows broken because Dell ship broken drivers with some of their computers.

      99% of the time, it's when the client is asking for us to do something user-hostile.

      You mean like develop an alternative HTML rendering engine, or set up their own app/book/music/video store, or write a better SMS messaging system, or port their keyboard from Android, or some nefarious scheme like that?

      Masses of people don't upgrade, and more than a quarter of Android users are still on Gingerbread, released almost three years ago.

      31% of desktops are still running Windows XP, which was released in 2002. Of course that doesn't tell the whole story. .NET 4 is available for Windows XP, just like how many of the newer features in Android are available via non-OS updates that everyone gets via Play.

      This really isn't the big issue crap programmers make it out to be. The API is stable, it's easy to deal with the differences and if a feature isn't available in Gingerbread there probably isn't any point trying to hack around it because devices of that age won't support it anyway. Can you point to any specific functions that have caused you problems, or is this just a general rant?

      It takes less than a year for about 95% of iOS users to upgrade to the latest version.

      Yes, and now you get complaints that your app is dog slow because the OS runs like a dog on older hardware, but users were not clever enough to block the update and can't downgrade.

      It was a shitty vendor customisation.

      Simple solution, don't buy from shitty vendors. Really, your argument is that once you bought a gas hob cooker and it was awful, leaked gas and eventually exploded burning your house down, therefore all gas hob cookers are shit and electric induction is the only way to go.

      I dislike the controlling attitude of Apple and I dislike how much power they have in the mobile market.

      No, you love it. You want your hand held. You want everyone to have a practically forced OS update with no downgrades, even if it makes their phone terribly slow. You want strictly controlled hardware and no choice about it so that you don't have to use your brain when writing apps.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    22. Re:This is not a fair comparison by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The smooth scrolling on the iPhone is implemented by the scroll view instructing every view inside one to draw a larger region than is actually composited into the final image. It looks smoother because it's just compositing already-drawn data into the exposed region, rather than having to do all of the rendering on demand. It's a pretty neat trick, but this trick comes at the expense of making the CPU do more work to render bits of a page that may never be seen, and used-CPU means used battery life. I don't know what the total cost is, but Apple has obviously decided that it's worth it and you apparently agree, but it's not a question of CPU speed it's a question of what the widget set does with it.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    23. Re:This is not a fair comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Only if you are a terrible programmer

      Don't be a jerk, there are things outside your control. I still haven't found a video file format which works on all Android phones. On iOS it's an mp4, but on Android we always get the "hey, my phone doesn't play this" shit. Yeah, terrible programmer, those making Android suck so much.

    24. Re:This is not a fair comparison by jo_ham · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And the Nexus 5 has a SoC with 2 more cores, 80% higher max clock rate and double the RAM. That it can only keep up is pretty amusing.

      What is amusing is that the Nexus 5 costs half what the iPhone does. Apple's target demographic has always been people with more money than brains. Thwok....ball's in your court.

      That's not really an argument.

      Remove the word "Apple" from your argument and you're essentially saying that anyone who buys any product that costs more than the absolute cheapest product available in that class is an idiot.

      This sort of bell curve of product purchasing is totally accepted in everyday life (cars, food, houses, sports equipment, televisions, jewellery, books, entertainment, holidays...) but somehow when the same metric is applied to computers, unless you buy from the bottom of the discount bargain bin, you're suddenly an idiot.

      It's certainly a strange argument coming from the corner than claims to promote user choice. Or is it only the right choice if they make the same choice that you do? Anything else is the consumer clearly demonstrating they have "more money than brains"? Is it part of the Android experience to not just enjoy the phone and ecosystem you selected based on your own criteria, but also to insult anyone who had a different set of selection criteria to you? Put another way; I don't think all Android users are idiots for not choosing iOS, or OS X.

      As is predictable in this thread, when Apple is on top on benchmarks, suddenly they don't matter. When Apple is behind on benchmarks they get bashed for having "expensive, old hardware that can't keep up". In other words, the argument positions between the extremes of the camps swaps over. Still, the underlying "if you didn't buy an Android you have more money than brains" always persists.

      Thwok; ball is back in your court.

    25. Re:This is not a fair comparison by Bogtha · · Score: 4, Informative

      Open: Android is "open" in the "open cathedral" sense. It's very difficult to just jump in, make a few alterations, and see the changes running on your device.

      Wait, are you an app developer or an OS developer?

      I'm not talking about the technical difficulty in writing a patch. I'm talking about the difficulty in applying a patch in practical terms. If I want to, say, modify my Xperia Pro so that a particular application that is useless to me isn't forcibly bundled, it's far more difficult than it should be.

      Apple can make you waste vast amount of money developing something only for it to be blocked, and then copied by Apple themselves. That's more than a big deal. It's hard to get projects approved when managers see this happening.

      I deal with people who commission apps on a regular basis. Unless the entire concept of an application is forbidden by Apple (e.g. porn), it's never been a deal breaker.

      But with Android, you have to contend with thousands of different models, each with their own shitty customisations that break things.

      Only if you are a terrible programmer. Like most operating systems Android runs on multiple platforms and offers stable APIs to interact with that hardware.

      Which means nothing when vendors customise the implementations of those APIs and break them. It's all very well saying that, say, the API to draw a control on screen is the same across all devices, but if one device draws the control and another doesn't bother, that's kind of a problem.

      Can you provide any concrete examples of standard Android API functions that are broken on popular Android devices?

      I don't remember the full details, but the most egregious problem we had was that radio buttons simply weren't showing up on one device. At all. On another device, the rendering was completely fucked in some way, something like being a tenth of the size they should be or something. The code was right, and the application worked just fine on most of our test devices. But on some, they simply didn't work right due to vendor customisations.

      99% of the time, it's when the client is asking for us to do something user-hostile.

      You mean like develop an alternative HTML rendering engine, or set up their own app/book/music/video store, or write a better SMS messaging system, or port their keyboard from Android, or some nefarious scheme like that?

      Let's be straight here: I'm describing what Apple's policies mean for us in practice, and I'm reporting what clients actually ask us to do. You are scraping everything you can think of that Apple has ever rejected together. I'm sure there are lots of business plans that have fallen by the wayside in the five years Apple have been running the App Store. But that doesn't mean that they are a significant percentage of the apps people actually want to create.

      No client has ever asked us to develop an alternative HTML rendering engine. Why would they? Besides, Apple don't have a problem with an alternative HTML rendering engine.

      No client has ever asked us to set up their own app store. There are book stores on the App Store already, there's no rule against having a book/music/video store.

      Alternative SMS messaging systems aren't against Apple's rules. I've got one on my phone right now.

      No client has ever asked us to replace part of the system like a keyboard. If you have an application that needs a custom keyboard, you can implement one for your application, but you can't replace the keyboard in other people's applications.

      When I say that the things clients ask us to do are things that are user-hostile, I'm talking about things like hookin

      --
      Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
    26. Re:This is not a fair comparison by smash · · Score: 3, Interesting

      On the other hand I have plenty of Android owning friends who have sworn to buy an iPhone next time around based on severe dis-satisfaction with the Android device they have dealt with on contract for the past 2 years.

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    27. Re:This is not a fair comparison by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If I want to, say, modify my Xperia Pro so that a particular application that is useless to me isn't forcibly bundled, it's far more difficult than it should be.

      That has nothing to do with Android and everything to do with Sony not wanting you to modify their proprietary ROM images. Also, how is it any worse than iOS which provides no mechanism at all?

      Which means nothing when vendors customise the implementations of those APIs and break them.

      Can you point to a specific example of a vendor doing this? I don't know of any. In fact one of the requirements of shipping a device with "Android" on it (as opposed to some custom OS that can't be called "Android", like the Kindle Fire OS) is that you don't break the standard APIs. There wouldn't really be any point doing that anyway as you would just get complains that apps don't work on your phone.

      On another device, the rendering was completely fucked in some way, something like being a tenth of the size they should be or something.

      Definitely sounds like a problem with your code, The Android Compatibility Test Suite checks for things like incorrect rendering settings when using the standard APIs, and vendors are required to use it if they want to use the Android trademark. Otherwise it's not Android, it's their own concoction.

      No, not everyone gets via Play. You're confusing Play with Android. You don't have to license Play to deploy Android.

      99% of Android devices have Play. Those that don't are almost all locked down by the manufacturer so you can't install any 3rd party apps other than the ones on their own market anyway, so are irrelevant to you.

      You are repeatedly insinuating that we are crap developers simply because I am pointing out problems with Android.

      No, I'm insinuating you are crap developers because you think there are problems with Android when in fact they are problems with your code or it wasn't even Android you were running on. You might want to think about that.

      What are the non-shitty Android vendors? Because I was buying flagship phones with good reviews from mainstream vendors like Sony.

      Sony are kinda shitty, especially with updates. They have tried to do better lately, but it remains to be seen if they have really made progress.

      Obviously Google's devices are the best if you have a boner for running the latest version. Being a developer those would be the ones to go for. If you can stand to wait a few months for point releases Samsung are pretty good too.

      Which Google phone did you have? What are you claiming was wrong with it?

      Once you stop arguing against what I am saying, and put words in my mouth that are the opposite of what I believe, there really isn't much discussion to be had.

      I was pointing out that you say you don't like Apple's policies, but prior to that complained about all the things you think are wrong with Android that stem from not having those policies. Devices don't always run the latest version of the OS because Google doesn't force vendors to release it for all current models and then ban downgrades. You complain about hardware variations because Google doesn't mandate one hardware platform with no variations. You seem to be saying that everything you "hate" about Apple's control over iOS is what makes it superior to Android, and that you think it is a good thing.

      --
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    28. Re:This is not a fair comparison by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

      I have lots of iPhone owning friends who switching to Android. Sometimes it was simply because they saw they could have the same functionality for half the price, or because they wanted a bigger screen, or just didn't like Apple's policies and software.

      Anecdotes are worthless though, so let's look at the stats. Android is 80% of the market and on an upward trend. iOS is about 14% and falling. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Wide_Smartphone_Sales_Share.png

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    29. Re:This is not a fair comparison by jo_ham · · Score: 2

      People like you badly need for there to be products other than Apple products. For some reason it matters that you have a company's product-line to champion.

      It's really a strange phenomenon and Apple takes great advantage of it.

      I do?

      Or again are you just describing any company that makes a product that people like to buy.

      Do you say the same thing about people who like Fords? Or Kellog's Cornflakes instead of the store brand?

      What's wrong with having a positive opinion of a company? Other than the fact that you don;t like them of course.

  2. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well it's actually worse than that. A phone that has a SoC with double the cores, cores that have a max clock rate 1 ghz higher and double the memory is only able to win in a couple of tests and just keep up with the A7 in every other test. Sounds like pretty fail.

  3. Re:Keep In Mind by Desler · · Score: 2

    So the screen resolution is why it was faster in Sunspider and Browsermark? Also in the off-screen GPU test (of which screen resolution makes no difference) it was only 10% slower which makes sense since the GPU cores on the Snapdragon 800 are clocked faster.

  4. This is going to seem out of place here by symbolset · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They are both very nice phones. There. I said it.

    --
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    1. Re:This is going to seem out of place here by davidhoude · · Score: 2

      As far as we're concerned!

  5. You still don't get it! Specs do not matter... by bogaboga · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Qualcomm's latest Krait 400 quad-core along with the Adreno 330 GPU that comprise the Snapdragon 800, is a powerful beast.

    If they had not focused much on the specs, but rather on battery life that can last a day of average use, I'd be happier. I ask my self: -

    "Of what use is having the"latest and greatest if by mid-afternoon, I will be holding a brick in hand?

    This is what I do to these good phones that are limited in the battery department. I underclock them with acceptable results.

    By the way: Can one explain to me how Motorola was able to cram a 3000mAH into a phone smaller than this but Google and its LG partner cannot?

    1. Re:You still don't get it! Specs do not matter... by NeoMorphy · · Score: 2

      The LG G2 has a 3000mAH battery, so I am assuming it's an issue of keeping the cost down.

    2. Re:You still don't get it! Specs do not matter... by iONiUM · · Score: 2

      It would seem, the mAH doesn't seem to matter: KitKat (and presumably, with ART as well, as people have reported, but not the example I'm about to cite) have improved battery performance immensely. Here is one example of many.

      Personally, I am getting 4 hours screen-on with 16 hours standby, and still have 15% battery left, using Dalvik, Google now (all options on), WiFi+LTE (but GPS and bluetooth off), which is more than acceptable IMO and great.

      So maybe, much like the CPU MHz, we should stop concentrating on the numbers so much, and instead concentrate on the actual results.

  6. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by Desler · · Score: 2

    The physics test is quite telling and shows just how limited the low speed, dual core

    The physics test seems to have little relevance to actual gaming performance since even against the Note III in offscreen tests the iPhone 5S was pretty much neck and neck on rendering rate.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/7376/samsung-galaxy-note-3-review/4

    In that review the iPhone 5S won 4 of the 7 CPU tests that it was in. It won 3 of the 6 GPU tests measuring FPS rendering speed. In 2 of the tests that it lost it only lost by 1 fps, in the other offscreen test that it lost at it was 57 fps vs. 69 fps. Which means the 5S was only 5% slower than native refresh rate.

    dual core? really? that is fucking ancient) CPU in the iPhone is.

    And yet it beat the quad-core in both of the CPU tests. Can't even beat an "ancient" CPU? Pathetic...

  7. Can't I just have (cheap android phones) by Jonah+Hex · · Score: 2

    ... something better than my old HTC 3G EVO that runs latest android for a decent price? I'm switching to Ting and don't mind buying behind the curve, but it's not easy to get something at the same budget I'm used to when I get the phone(s) mostly subsidized from Sprint. Maybe I'm looking at the wrong review sites to find a peppy cheap android.

    --
    Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
  8. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by MacDork · · Score: 5, Informative

    New phone almost as fast as month old phone.

    Xperia Z1 was released same day as iPhone 5s. It is faster, waterproof, and has higher res 1080 screen. It also has a 20.7MP camera with a much larger 1/2.3" sensor.

  9. Breathtaking Ignorance by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The original iPhone caught on because it could play DRM iTunes.

    You know, I don't think I've ever seen as horribly misguided a reason for the adoption of the iPhone as that one.

    By your logic, the Motorola ROKR would have been a smash hit.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  10. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by Lluc · · Score: 4, Informative

    the article doesn't touch on this, but I wonder how much untapped power is in that 64bit processor in iPhone. what's cool is, that's dormant in my phone right now, but will be unleashed next year so it will be like getting a new phone.

    Please tell me you're being sarcastic... Even if all your apps get recompiled to 64-bit versions, you are not going to get a massive performance boost. Have you ever tried running a 32 vs. 64 bit install of Windows or Linux on the same hardware? Not too much difference for average use cases...

  11. I was testing my N5 against a 5S at lunch today by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We ran Sunspider (1.0.2).

    The iPhone 5S (and a Nokia Lumia 920) pasted my Nexus 5 on Sunspider. Both were about twice as fast as the Nexus 5.

    I like the Nexus 5, it's very snappy. But when using it, it doesn't feel faster than a 5S.

    The N5 is a heck of a value.

    Now, about the awful pictures it takes... Is there any chance a better camera app (which also sucks) can improve them some?

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  12. Implementation is real weakling by SuperKendall · · Score: 2, Informative

    iPhone 5 got its ass handed to it due to the weak CPU in it.

    Weak CPU, or weak physics engine that didn't use OpenCL or the Accelerate framework...

    In fact the benchmark technical guide says explicitly:

    The GPU load is kept as low as possible to ensure that only the CPUâ(TM)s capabilities are stressed.

    Which is a really stupid way to compare things as anything that relied on advanced physics would be using some kind of accelerator for computation other than the CPU. It also means it's not using any of the real-world physics engines a game would be using.

    Sure the iPhone Physics score will be down a lot if you tie both hands behind its back and throw it in a river.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  13. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by binarylarry · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah but that phone is half the price of the iPhone.

    Pretty impressive to me.

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    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  14. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by binarylarry · · Score: 4, Funny

    yeah but if you use your iphone as a media transcoding server, the gains with be iMazing!

    --
    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  15. Re:Is it a phone ? by smash · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah because when I am out and about, i much prefer to carrry a map, a compass, a walkman, a mobile phone, a laptop, a pager, a camera, a tape recorder and a gaming console. Fuck those integration guys in the neck.

    --
    I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
  16. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by smash · · Score: 2

    I've heard people claiming "oh but wait until XXXX, you won't need to write native code anymore!" regarding Java performance for ages. Since 1996. Java still sucks compared to native code.

    --
    I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
  17. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by smash · · Score: 2

    Not really. They still had to do an SDK for the phone, they could just as easily written an SDK for native code rather than Java. I suspect use of Java was a hedge against either ARM or Intel providing the better mobile CPUs, whereas apple made the decision and bet on ARM.

    --
    I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
  18. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by smash · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sony could release a phone that claimed to cure cancer, solve world poverty and establish peace in the middle east. They're still not getting a cent of my disposable income.

    --
    I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
  19. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by stenvar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yup, because burning CPU cycles at twice the rate to run "fast enough" is the way to awesome battery life.

    It makes no difference to battery life; almost all the battery usage on Android phones goes to the display and the radio. And CPU-bound applications (e.g., PhotoSphere) are written using native code anyway.

  20. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by citizenr · · Score: 2, Insightful

    whereas apple made the decision and bet on ARM.

    Apple has experience and proven track record in quickly changing archs. If anything new cpu arch would mean more money for them - forced upgrade cycle in ecosystem where users currently upgrade almost only when old stuff breaks or new one looks nicer.

    --
    Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
  21. Really Awesome Phone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    I have owned iPhones since the iPhone4. I currently own the iPhone 5. My wife owns the Nexus 5. I can tell you that there is *** NO LAG *** on either the Nexus 5 or the iPhone 5. They are equally fast, both very smooth and instantaneous response times. Both phones are very, very sweet.

    The iPhone 5 presentation is slightly nicer, but for the price??? The Nexus 5 is king. There is NO comparison. When you consider the cost difference, Apple gets kicked to the curb.

    My initial thoughts? I love the new IOS7 - particularly the new control center - where I can easily turn off my WIFI when away from home, to save battery life. But I love Android's ability to just copy your song collection where you want, when you want. I FUCKING HATE HATE HATE iTunes with a passion - it makes Windows 8 look like an Adonis. If they made a vaccum cleaner suck as hard as iTunes does, you'd have cornered the market and destroyed all competition. It really is that much of a steaming pile of shit. Kill it with fire. iTunes is about the only Achilles heel left for Apple.

  22. Re:Can I get kitkat on all the past versions of Ne by dottrap · · Score: 3, Interesting

    an 18 month update window

    The iPhone might not be any better (I don't know and don't care) but that's fucking pathetic.

    iPhone 3GS shipped with iOS 3.0 in June 17, 2009.
    Final iOS update was 6.1.3 in March 19, 2013.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history

    That is 45 months. (Past performance does not guarantee future results.)

  23. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by stenvar · · Score: 2

    I doesn't have "2x the CPU hardware"; the number of cores bears little relationship to the amount of "CPU hardware" a chip has. For mobile systems, people often use more cores but slower cores to save battery life, because for most tasks only one core needs to be activated. You'd use all cores only on compute-intensive tasks. And for benchmark comparisons, it gets even trickier because some benchmarks may be able to take advantage of lots of slow cores, while others prefer fewer faster cores. In the end, what really matters is the price/performance on real software, and the Nexus 5 certainly "beats the crap" out of the iPhone in that regard, giving you similar performance at a fraction of the price. (FWIW, I think both Java and Objective-C suck, but that's an entirely different discussion.)

  24. You're forgetting the emotional dimension by residents_parking · · Score: 2

    Every purchase has an emotional dimension. Judging by my friends who own iPhones, I'd say it is considerably higher than average in this case. One even said he decided not to buy another iPhone, but went ahead and did it anyway. He couldn't explain why, and seemed totally happy with that.

  25. Re:Is it a phone ? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2

    No, it's not a phone. It's a pocket-sized computer that can also make phone calls. We call it a smartphone for historical reasons. Do you also complain that we say 'computer' as shorthand for 'electronic computer', when we all know that a computer is a person who prepares logarithm tables?

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  26. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 2

    Sony could release a phone that claimed to cure cancer, solve world poverty and establish peace in the middle east. They're still not getting a cent of my disposable income.

    Well aren't you a selfish bastard. We must think of the children!

    More importantly, will it run Linux? And for how long?

  27. Re:Is it a phone ? by dreamchaser · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am curious...

    Before the 20th Century did the average person drive an automobile?

    Before the Industrial Revolution did the average person have access to cheap, mass produced good?

    Before the Agricultural Revolution, did the average person have access to plentiful grain?

    Before the Paleolithic, did the average person have access to crafted stone tools?

    Don't get me wrong, I'm just curious...

  28. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by gnasher719 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The main advantage of 64 bitness is access to a far larger memory address space. Yes there can be a few minor performance improvements with proper use of larger registers, but it's really not that big an advantage. Until smartphones and tablets start exceeding 4 gigabytes of RAM there is really not much point other than marketing to use 64 bit code on such devices.

    That has been debunked again and again and again.

    There has been iOS code that was measured to be 45% faster just by being recompiled to 64 bit. There are plenty of tricks in the Objective-C runtime and the C++ libraries that make it _significantly_ more efficient when running on a 64 bit processor. For example, a std::string up to 22 chars doesn't allocate any memory on the heap in 64 bit code but just uses three 64 bit words.

  29. Re: New phone almost as fast as month old phone by Tynin · · Score: 2

    Where is the Nexus 5 half the price? Everyone is selling the Nexus 5 for $350 with contract while the iPhone 5s is $200 with contract.

    Incorrect.

    The Nexus 5 is $350 for the one with 16GB of space, $400 for the 32GB one, and that is with NO contract.

    iPhone 5s is only $200 with a contact, if you want to buy it outright without a contract, it costs $650 for 16GB and $750 for 32 GB.

    In other words, about 1/2 the price.

  30. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by maccodemonkey · · Score: 3, Informative

    The main advantage of 64 bitness is access to a far larger memory address space. Yes there can be a few minor performance improvements with proper use of larger registers, but it's really not that big an advantage. Until smartphones and tablets start exceeding 4 gigabytes of RAM there is really not much point other than marketing to use 64 bit code on such devices.

    Oh c'mon. Slashdot is supposed to be the smart nerds.

    One advantage of a 64 bit architecture (such as x86_64 or the A7) is that in order to hold 64 bit data. But if you're still working with 32 bit data (and most of us are), you can simply load each register with two 32 bit chunks, basically doubling the amount of data you can hold on chip, and the processor has functions to support this.

    And if you look at what Apple did with the A7, not only does their 64 bit chip do this, but the new ARM64 specifications double the number of registers in general:
    "The ARMv8-A instruction set doubles the number of registers of the A7 compared to the ARMv7 used in A6.[13] It now has 31 general purpose registers that are each 64-bits wide and 32 floating-point/NEON registers that are each 128-bits wide."
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A7

    So basically you now have an crazy amount of registers, and an insane amount of registers if you are dealing with 32 bit data still. The NEON registers are 128-bits wide and there are 32 of them. If you have 32 bit data, you can process 128 chunks at a time! If you're working in float_16 with NEON, you can work through 256 chunks at a time. That's crazy good compared to ARM32. That would really speed up anything that works with media, images, video, animations, etc, most of which a modern window server does.

    But that's not really the end of optimizations. If your registers are large enough, why bother using pointers? And that's what Apple did with the Objective-C runtime on ARM64.
    http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2012-07-27-lets-build-tagged-pointers.html

    Basically, if you've got a small enough object type, like an object that holds an 32 bit type, you can skip the allocation of extra memory to hold this data, and just store it in the pointer itself. A lot of the low level and frequently hit methods in Obj-C (like the entire memory allocation tracking system) have been optimized for this, so you should see a speedup in even basic applications.

  31. Re:Is it a phone ? by smash · · Score: 2

    Whoosh. But no, I had to deal with paper based maps, guess at direction, not be able to check on things at work away from my desk, fail at documentation (convenient video/audio/photos = awesome) and basically be bored out of my brain on public transport.

    --
    I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
  32. Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone by smash · · Score: 2

    More importantly, will it run Linux? And for how long?

    Exactly. Until a mandatory firmware update some time after purchase.

    --
    I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
  33. Re: New phone almost as fast as month old phone by melchoir55 · · Score: 2

    Nexus 5 $350 no contract, direct from google:
    https://play.google.com/store/devices/details/Nexus_5_16GB_Black?id=nexus_5_black_16gb&hl=en

    iphone5s is $650
    http://store.apple.com/us/buy-iphone/iphone5s

    The only real comparison is to compare phone prices without contract, because on contract the additional cost of the phone is included in your bill which you pay over the term of the contract.

    The N5 is so close to half price of the iphone5s as to make no difference. I used to grudgingly admit iphones could beat out androids back in the G1 days. The only thing apple has left these days is brand.