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Futuremark Delists Samsung and HTC Android Devices for Cheating 3DMark
MojoKid writes "Benchmarks are serious business. Buying decisions are often made based on how well a product scores, which is why the press and analysts spend so much time putting new gadgets through their paces. However, benchmarks are only meaningful when there's a level playing field, and when companies try to 'game' the business of benchmarking, it's not only a form of cheating, it also bamboozles potential buyers who (rightfully) assume the numbers are supposed mean something. 3D graphics benchmark software developer Futuremark just 'delisted' a bunch of devices from its 3DMark benchmark results database because it suspects foul play is at hand. Of the devices listed, it appears Samsung and HTC in particular are indirectly being accused of cheating 3DMark for mobile devices. Delisted devices are stripped of their rank and scores. Futuremark didn't elaborate on which specific rule(s) these devices broke, but a look at the company's benchmarking policies reveals that hardware makers aren't allowed to make optimizations specific to 3DMark, nor are platforms allowed to detect the launch of the benchmark executable unless it's needed to enable multi-GPU and/or there's a known conflict that would prevent it from running."
On iOS benchmark scores do not change when you change the executable name...
When you ship with a fast enough system you don't need to cheat to look good on benchmarks.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I guess I'll have to buy that shiny brick then. Because I can't imagine Apple giving a rat's ass about any third party benchmark. It hasn't even been available for more than six months and I can't imagine Apple marketing quoting anything they didn't make themselves.
Part of the problem is that many of the latest 1080p phones are slower in games than their 720p predecessors such as nexus 5 vs nexus 4. When you double the resolution, you need to quadruple the pixels rendered. Consumers want longer battery life and games to run smoothly but the manufactures are pushing for these useless 1080p screens and cheating in benchmarks to make up for loss in performance. On 4" screen 720 is more than enough for normal eyesight.
If you believe Apple aren't doing precisely the same thing
You sing the sad song of so many other jilted lovers, who did not believe they were being cheated on... Because you knew other partners were stable and trustworthy you thought yours was too. And now you are aware of the transgressions of your chosen one, you think everyone must be cheating because how else could it be that *you* were the one cheated upon?
Hint: when your partner said they wanted an open relationship it wasn't because they wanted to spend *more* time with you.
Can you please stop dropping me in beta.slashdot for random articles ? It sucks to have 2 interfaces. Make up your mind. And please, don't let it be beta.
But we must have MOER 'P'. And with 4K being the new 1080p, you can in fact expect more of them to be here soon.
Incidentally, Skyfall would have been a better movie if it were about a plot to switch all smartphone manufactures to power draining 1080p displays without them realizing until it was too late.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple doesn't need to cheat because the last phone that was slower than its predecessor was the iPhone 4. Ever since then, every successor has had a faster gpu while rendering the same number pixels and therefore outperforms on the benchmarks and battery life. Above 300 PPI, you are just wasting battery life and hurting performance to display pixels the human eye can't even resolve. I wish more android manufactures had the guts to follow Apple's engineering wisdom here.
Ha Ha, you said "EPA" and "Integrity" in the same post!
Well I certainly wouldn't check back on this story or you'll be gone for five.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How dare you tell me that my particular hardware-centric algorithm doesn't precisely measure the quality and capability of your product!
Of course I jumped in to the top story, without regard for anything else.
The next thing to remember is to put next things next.
... they just obfuscate (or rather encrypt and then decrypt) everything, including every single executable, under the iOS.
In doing so, nobody could be absolutely certain what the fuck is going on within the iOS kernel and the Apple hardwares when the benchmark routine is being run.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
If you believe Apple aren't doing precisely the same thing, then I have a shiny white featureless brick to sell you
That is only speculation. Prove me that Apple does cheating. For Samsung and HTC their cheating has been proven.
And a ShittyPhone with a dual-core 1.8GHz each and no optimisations for battery life whatsoever.
That is an incredibly ignorant statement. iOS has been since the beginning chock full of battery life optimizations, with many API's oriented to help developers get the best battery life possible from the system, including very advanced battery consumption measurement tools shipped with XCode...
Your very terminology for the iPhone belies your complete inability (and unwillingness) to understand it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have not been here for 3 years. I left because it sucked really bad
Trust me, /. has gone from bad, to WORSE !!
Apple is listed in Android benchmark rankings?
Not true. It uses all the power of the S4s 8 cores. In the physics test. Compare physics test scores if you want to compare processor speed.
Graphics tests do not measure the performance of the 8 cores. They measure performance of the far less impressive graphics chip. 3DMark score is strongly weighted towards processor performance - it's a gaming benchmark. It's all in their documentation (which you obviously have not read)
If a dual core phone (I guess you are referring to 5S here) has a better graphics chip, it wins in gaming performance. 5S would score more if the processor was faster but it isn't, so it lags behind fastest Android devices in 3DMark. The methodology is easy to understand.
Anyway, all this Samsung move does is push the score slightly higher - with the cost of loss in battery life, giving them a small edge over other devices with same chip inside when looking at the scores. Problem is, it does this only for specific benchmarks which is misleading and goes against the policy that 3DMark has in place.
They could run the phone 24/7 like this and it would be perfectly okay. The users would complain about the temperature and battery life. So they... "optimize"... and detect specific benchmarks as to when not to try and save battery. Motive for doing so? Well, you figure it out...
"That is an incredibly ignorant statement. iOS has been since the beginning chock full of battery life optimizations"
Where did he mention iOS/iPhone? He could be comparing two Android phones, you know...
So, to paraphrase yourself: "That is an incredibly ignorant statement.".
Why, yes! I AM new here.
3DMark is multi-platform. Duh. Android, iOS, Windows RT and Windows
Buying decisions are often made based on how well a product scores,
That is an unproven hypothesis. Null hypothesis: Buying decisions are often NOT made based on how well a product scores on benchmarks. Evidence: iDevices. The burden of proof is on the claimant to provide GREATER evidence than the null hypothesis, otherwise the claim can be dismissed as confirmation bias, even if you find evidence in support of the orginal hypothesis: Stepping on cracks does not break backs, even if you observe it happening a couple of times. Nerds checking benchmarks before buying gadgets happens. Is this frequent enough to warant use of the word "often"? If so, where's the evidence? You haven't any.
Try this on for size: The niche market segment of geeks who care enough about benchmark scores and use Futuremark as a source for statistics occasionally purchase products based on those scores. It's hypocritical to hold Creationists to a higher standard of evidence than you do yourself.
Where did he mention iOS/iPhone?
He had a different name for it; he mentioned it frequently.
So, to paraphrase yourself: "That is an incredibly ignorant statement.".
To paraphrase you paraphrasing me - well you figure it out.
You just aren't up on reading comprehension for the stupidest of the Apple Haters.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I guess that it's easier to delist Android, especially when the US government is against them because Apple is paying for lobbying against them.
Benchmarks on buying decisions are for CPUs and GPUs. They are for people building high end machines, or people trying to get the best processing bang for buck.
These are phones. What sells is screen size, phone style, and feature list. No one cares how many points a phone has in benchmarks except for some reviewers. People want to know if it takes good photos, how well the hover features work, if it's 3G or 4G, hell most recently buyers have been more interested in if it comes in white or black rather than the processor.
My phone is pretty much the only "computer" in my entire house where I could honestly not tell you the clock speed. It runs Plants vs Zombies 2 as fast as just about any other phone.
Creators of 3DMark do not have a clue how to test modern multicore smartphones, but they do not care and release their product.
The real problem? People use this shitty benchmark and judge product basing on the meaningless score it produces.
Why should Samsung LOSE customers because 3DMark lied to them?
It's better to 'cheat' this crappy software into being at least a bit more FAIR in judging their products.
Sigh ... if a phone identifies that its running a benchmark application and changes its behaviour then the benchmark is of the maximum hardware performance rather than that available to a normal application. In doing so its not giving a real world measurement of the performance of the device.
By your argument all of the single threaded apps that run slowly on the S4 are at fault for slow performance because the programmer hasn't optimised their application for the S4 instead preferring to be compatible with all Android phones out there.
So, whilst the rigged S4 may be faster in raw power, its not what the end user is going to see. Which is cheating?
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
Above 300 PPI, you are just wasting battery life and hurting performance to display pixels the human eye can't even resolve. I wish more android manufactures had the guts to follow Apple's engineering wisdom here.
Yeah right, and then when they do the cries turn into, "But AMOLED's pentile display doesn't represent *true* resolution so Apple is so much better yadda yadda yadda." Which is incidentally exactly the complaints that were made a few years ago.
Some people are just never happy.
Quote :"Buying decisions are often NOT made based on how well a product scores on benchmarks. Evidence: iDevices"
Except that your evidence is patently wrong as iDevices are amongst the very fastest. I don't know where you got the idea from that iDevices are somehow slow. They are not. Probably from the stupid assumption that core number X and frequency Y automatically means faster. Which is wrong.
Although OP is borderline illiterate, and talks like a troll, and draws some ridiculous biased conclusions, he is none-the-less making some valid points here and doesn't deserve being modded all the way to zero IMO.
The extent to which 3DMark is a useful measure of performance is very much an open question. I just wish OP had given more details on that and less trolly bullshit about "ShittyPhone".
Then these phone companies are wasting perfectly good time and money by cheating on the benchmarks, and there's no harm in 3DMark delisting these phones.
(I'd say that if nothing else, these benchmarks generate news stories promoting the new, allegedly-faster device.)
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
No, I wasn't talking about iPhone. It was just an example.
Besides, iPhone is almost non-existent in the market, so who cares.
Given the tests 3DMark runs, if they're unable to effectively run on "modern multicore smartphones" then no other app is able to either. Rather raises the question of why you'd bother buying one.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You've got the same computational overhead drawing to a 1080p Pentile matrix as a 1080p RGB matrix, because the graphics hardware addresses whole pixels rather than subpixels. The only difference is that one's cheaper to make and looks worse.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Slashdot has not really changed in three years. You may have, so you may find it more tolerable/amusing to see what still goes on here. Of course, it's still mostly populated by college-aged kids who think statements of opinion gain validity by being syntactically coded as facts, and that showing up to half a course on basic economics is the same as studying economics. The same kool aid is still around, but fewer people are drinking it, and you can say something pro-IP without being modded down to hell now. People take Stallman way less seriously these days, I guess because a lot of them finally got jobs.
pay attention to the world. apple has been caught many times cheating.
so has nvidia. and tried to blame amd for doing the same thing but they werent.
so has ATI before amd bought them up.
so has intel. many many times over the decades. thats SOP to intel. cheating benchmarks. They've even been caught cheating with their own compiler doing the cheating.
and nearly all android makers cheat benchmarks as well.
Given recent (last 20 years) history. The only one that hasnt been caught red handed cheating so far has been AMD.
OK, I take 8-cored Galaxy S4 and other dual-core phone, both 1.6GHz, then I get exactly same score in 3DMark.
Now, how stupid I was I paid like 3 times more for the galaxy S4!
I could get the cheaper phone that works exactly the same (at least 3DMark says so).
3DMark is broken in the very design.
Customers, and most importantly, some websites are too stupid to understand this and trust its scores.
Samsung did he right thing: broke the thing that was broken already.
They did what they could to get the best result. Every other manufacturer can do the same. And that will be unrealistic, but FAIR score.
Every other score is simply unfair, because 3DMark is a wrong tool to measure it.
There is really no Right thing to do, apart from throwing 3DMark to the trash bin.
When Apple brought out Retina Display, that was 100% FAN BLOODY TASTIC according to Apple fans. Absolutely the best thing EVAR, and PROOF Apple are "innovative" by making displays finer in resolution than any other smartphone.
Nokia didn't count, since they were ~12ppi lower resolution! SHUT UP!
But now resolution is higher than Retina Display, higher resolution and better pixel count is BAD. Which, yet again, PROVES Apple are BEST EVAR because they don't waste time trying to get uselessly higher resolutions!
7" tablets were too small when the iPad was only 10".
But when the iPad mini comes out at 7", it's the best size for many many tasks!
Phones were too big if they had a 4.3" screen. Until Apple brought out a bigger screen, then they had many uses!
And so on.
3DMark is not a processor benchmark. It is a gaming benchmark.
Compare 3DMark Graphics score for pure graphics performance comparison
Compare 3DMark Physics score for pure processor performance comparison.
Overall score is weighted towards graphics (I think it is something like 80/20).
That's a "no" then.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Samsung might be bad. But apple is worse. Much worse.
At least samsung costs less.
And that's good enough these days.
Indeed.
The Apple fans are out in full force. They've been quiet since the TouchID fiasco. There isn't much sanity left here.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Yet it gets around the real limitations of OLED decay, hence the use of a pentile display to begin with. It's not price, it's longevity in the display thanks to allowing for a large blue pixel than red or green.
So since it looks worse they up the resolution, and now they get yet another complaint. One thing is certain, I won't ever consider buying anything other than OLED screens for mobile devices ever again, and I can't wait for the screen size to increase and become affordable.
A benchmark measures the performance of a machine while under that particular benchmark.
Otherwise, it's pretty useless. No benchmark has been able to be used for comparison purposes for more than a few months after release (and things like this are re-released once a year or more). Even back in the days of Dhrystones and Whetstones and all that crap - at best it benchmarks one particular run of code, and that's it. And in terms of general performance, it can do no better than guess.
Fact is, if anyone buys because of a 10% increase in a certain benchmark they are an idiot, unless the code they want to run *IS* that benchmark (to all intents and purposes). This is why the best "benchmarks" are things like how many FPS you get in the game you want to play. Because then you'll know exactly how many FPS you'll get in the game you want to play...
We haven't had highly-determinstic computer systems in our PC's for many, many, many years. Caches, bus speeds, interactions, multi-processors, etc. all throw benchmarks in the bin. And everyone's use case is different. Personally, I'd prefer 8 2GHz cores to any other configuration you could imagine at the moment, other people will have different ideas.
Benchmarks are a waste of time. It's like having stupid logic questions on a job interview. All that gets you is people good at answering those stupid logic questions, not at the job, or at worst someone who *appears* good at answering those logic questions.
Benchmarks on smartphones? It makes even less sense. I'm more shocked that Samsung think that anyone gives a shit.
It's not about decay: you can change the subpixel sizes while retaining an RGB matrix, as the current Galaxy Note does.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Posting an off topic comment in the top thread without reading TFA / TFS ?
You'll feel right at home :)
I also feel the need to point out that your last post was from 2011-01-09, so it's not been 3 years yet :)
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
"He had a different name for it; he mentioned it frequently."
Really? Sounds more like you misunderstanding what he meant.
"You just aren't up on reading comprehension for the stupidest of the Apple Haters."
Apple hater? Sounds more like your own reading comprehension skills could use a bit of attention.
Why, yes! I AM new here.
No, you just have such a little man complex you assume any negative remarks like that are obviously talking about your iOS.
When I read it I saw it as a cheap android device like those POS $89 Chinese tablets or something
Except the octo-core chip only ever uses the 4 fast powerful cores or the 4 low power cores at a time, not both sets at the same time
All phones are slow when they have been on the market for 6 months, there is no special magic pixie dust in the iPhones that makes them faster. But people still buy them, same with Androids..
Except that your evidence is patently wrong as iDevices are amongst the very fastest.
Only two core Apple has the slowest processors on the market for its none pemium model, and during its lifetime is outpased by the competition 2-3 times, and is considered dlow by Apple by the time its put into a plastic case (as opposed to simply discounting it).
The original poster is wrong though iDevices success is due to its Brand in countries where it is heavily subsidied in its country of Manufacture it sells only 1% of Phones.
That's funny because Apple seems to be the only smartphone maker paying attention to such laws, not building needlessly dense displays that suck power like a kid with a juice box.
I bought the Nexus 5 which comes with premium 5" 1080P screen and is half the price of the bottom end iPhone. There are phones that come with similar screens to the iPhone like the Moto G for instance which is a sixth of the price of the iPhone.
POS $89 Chinese tablets or something
Ironically for you the iPad is a POS $89 Chinese tablet with a massive mark-up. Although seriously Apples sales are not only destroyed by Android, they are flat(actually dropping) despite explsive market growth. Perhaps they should compete on price.
So why don't the games rename themselves to the name of the benchmark to get better performance? Is it a bug or a feature that Samsung/HTC's OS does this?
Then you'll have no problems naming many examples, then. No, showing benchmarks that show your product to be superior while...not publishing those that don't, does not count. When and where has Apple actively cheated.
They could do it.
It could cause the device to overheat and reduce the battery life hard. Benchmark runs are not that long and Samsung/HTC thinks they can get away with forced high clocks for the duration of the benchmark.
Above 300 PPI, you are just wasting battery life and hurting performance to display pixels the human eye can't even resolve.
This is a myth often repeated by Apple fans, but Apple themselves offer you proof that it is not true. Find some screenshots taken from Retina displays and zoom in on the text. Notice how it is still anti-aliased? If the resolution was high enough to be impossible for the human eye to resolve there would be no need for anti-aliasing. I don't think you can turn it off in iOS but you can make an image on your computer with both and try viewing it on the phone.
The simple fact is that the human eye does not work the way you think it does. It is particularly good at picking out edges and uses spatial and temporal over-sampling to increase the effective resolution. It is an analogue sensor, not digital. I can see the different between a Retina display and a similarly sized 1080p display, even if you claim you can't. Then again I'm one of those super-human freaks who can see a difference between 1080 and 4k, despite needing to get another prescription in the next few months.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If you buy a device based on benchmark scores, you're a fucking idiot. Period.
well, that is until the octa from allwinner.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
How hard would it be for Futuremark to disguise their benchmark app so as to fool the device? If it just looks for the package name it should be easy. If Samsung reverse engineered the exact workload being done in each benchmark then micro-optimized for that workload...that's harder to fix.
Benchmarks are serious business.
For a tiny segment of the population, maybe. For the rest of the world, raw benchmarks don't matter at all. It's all perception and other features over raw framerate. Normal humans can't really detect anything above 50 or 60 FPS. So if you are proud your phone gets 150FPS, congratulations! You got that going for you, which is nice. I guess.
OK, I take 8-cored Galaxy S4 and other dual-core phone, both 1.6GHz, then I get exactly same score in 3DMark.
Now, how stupid I was I paid like 3 times more for the galaxy S4!
I could get the cheaper phone that works exactly the same (at least 3DMark says so).
Well, it depends on how actual games behave. If they are programmed similarly and do not make use of the additional cores (which I guess might very well be the case, since devs usually do not spend much time on optimizing apps for hardware which is not widely in use yet), then yes - you COULD have just bought the cheapo phone and gotten the same performance in those games. Or the other phone which costs a bit more than the cheapo phone (but still less than the S4), which also has a dual-core CPU but a slightly faster GPU, which gives it a higher score in 3DMark than the S4.
Like I said, it depends. It would not surprise me at all if in actual daily use multi-core monster phones make no sense at all (yet), except for bragging rights.
Too stupid to use google huh. Need it handed to you.
No, he, like many of us that have been around for a while, are quite sure that Apple has never been caught cheating, because we remember these stories.
Or, perhaps, he, like me, even double-checked with google and came up empty-handed.
This bluff of yours is pathetically transparent. It's obvious you cannot quote a single instance, so, really, shut the hell up and go the fuck away, because at this point you're only embarrassing yourself.
Seriously, target-specific optimizations are as old as benchmarks themselves. If you're going to start penalizing companies for that, nVidia should've been delisted since 3DMark 99.
3DMark does not understand what it it measuring, gives scores out of thin air, and blames companies for trying not to LOSE points.
Imagine this situation:
Samsung Galaxy S4 with 8 cores 1.6GHz each: to say it simply: it has algorithms to suppress usage of all of them for 'normal' applications to save battery.
Note that the 8 core version has 4 cores at 1.6 GHz and another processor with 4 cores at 1.2 GHz. The quad core version has one processor at 1.9 GHz. The 8 core version only runs one of its CPU's at a time. When running a single-threaded benchmark it would be appropriate to only use one core. Other factors being the same, the one with the highest GHz should win that benchmark. If you use this one benchmark as the sole method to evaluate which phone is "better" then you don't really understand benchmarks.
And a ShittyPhone with a dual-core 1.8GHz each and no optimisations for battery life whatsoever.
Which one is better?
Wrong.
Why is this wrong? The benchmark detected exactly what it was designed to. The problem is not understanding the result and using the one benchmark as the overall indicator of quality. And what phone has no optimizations for battery life? (Other than the Samsung during benchmarks, that is...)
3DMark will give more points to the ShittyPhone, because as a single application it cannot utilize the power of Galaxy S4.
What does it mean? That 3DMark is just a shitty benchmark, and that's what it is.
This example is just for CPU power testing, but you can find such flaws in almost all 3DMark tests.
Creators of 3DMark do not have a clue how to test modern multicore smartphones, but they do not care and release their product.
The real problem? People use this shitty benchmark and judge product basing on the meaningless score it produces.
Why should Samsung LOSE customers because 3DMark lied to them?
It's better to 'cheat' this crappy software into being at least a bit more FAIR in judging their products.
Please cite how the creators of 3DMark do not have a clue how to test modern multicore smartphones. Saying "because I don't like the results" is not a citation.
Why do you think Samsung is losing customers because of this? Why should other cell phone manufacturers lose customers because Samsung lied to them?
Samsung cheats at benchmarks by changing the hardware behavior when it detects certain apps with specific names are running. Change the name, and the cheating stops.
That's the fundamental difference between Samsung and most of the rest of the Android devices. The name is the key to the cheat.
Funny how you're ignoring lots of detailed information about that. This has nothing to do with Apple, this has everything to do with Samsung/HTC/Android.
Great attempt to troll, though!
Selling a 4G/LTE tablet in Britain when the hardware inside was ONLY compatible in the states?
Putting a 3G test that loaded a full desktop page in under 3 seconds in an advertisement that didn't state it was only a simulation or accelerated?
Learning how to play a guitar with a voice assistant?
While those aren't benchmarks, they're much worse: they're presented to idiots who don't know the difference between marketing garbage and actual real world performance. I believe the last two had lawsuits targeted at them, so a quick google should back that up.
They've has gone on record in one of their statements in one of the lawsuits that only (paraphrasing here) idiots would believe their advertising. (I believe it was the voice assistant lawsuit, but don't quote me on this).
So then I guess you are having problems naming examples?
Above 300 PPI, you are just wasting battery life and hurting performance to display pixels the human eye can't even resolve. I wish more android manufactures had the guts to follow Apple's engineering wisdom here.
Says who? When people tell you that 300 PPI is the most that the human eye can resolve at 12 inches do you just accept it or do you question whether it is based on scientific fact? Some quick research indicates that this oft quoted "fact" is actually incorrect. It's closer to 1000 PPI.
http://www.cultofmac.com/173702/why-retina-isnt-enough-feature/
http://wolfcrow.com/blog/notes-by-dr-optoglass-the-resolution-of-the-human-eye/
That's some spectacular delusion there.
Only by interpolation.
The resolution of the eye is NOT constant. In fact, the highest resolution part of the eye is the central vision - quite a narrow part of the entire field of vision. Peripheral vision is horrendous, and really only optimized for one use case - motion detection.
It's possible to conduct a simple experiment to show this - simply have a friend show a photo of two people only about 3' apart while you stare at a dot 2' feet away (so the photos are about 1 1/2' away from the dot). Whilst staring at the dot, have your friend mix the order up and have you identify the people without moving your gaze away.
Most people can't tell much beyond color. A more "fun" version involves cheerleaders and people on a field, and half of the "cheerleaders" were dudes in a cheerleading outfit. The test subjects routinely weren't better than random guesses on picking the real cheerleader.
The reason the eye has such "high resolution" is because the eyes are always in motion - they're constantly scanning around and interpolating the image data.
The eye itself is a relatively poor image capture device - but when coupled with a VERY powerful imaging processor and VERY powerful image processing software, it can achieve super-high resolutions and very advanced processing including motion detection, recognition, and other things. Unfortunately, it also means it's easily fooled - see optical illusions and blind spot detection as ways to fool it.
Anyhow, ppi relates more to visual acuity which is a function of distance and density - and unless you're holding your phone to your nose, there aren't very many people complaining that a "retina" display has very noticeable pixels. Hell, the most common "retina" display one has is the humble HDTV - most people sit way too far back that 20/20 vision cannot resolve individual pixels, making even the low-dpi 1080p screen "retina" by definition. (Of course there are eagle eyes out there with 20/40+ vision who can benefit from being able to buy a cheaper smaller HDTV and still enjoy the high-resolution image).
I'm here. Obviously everything is better with me around. Examples include: /.
1.
2. Sex
3. Candy
4. Magick
5. Magic
6. Your sexual organs
7. Your SO's sexual organs (and/or the person who you wish was your SO)
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
Anyhow, ppi relates more to visual acuity which is a function of distance and density - and unless you're holding your phone to your nose, there aren't very many people complaining that a "retina" display has very noticeable pixels. Hell, the most common "retina" display one has is the humble HDTV - most people sit way too far back that 20/20 vision cannot resolve individual pixels, making even the low-dpi 1080p screen "retina" by definition. (Of course there are eagle eyes out there with 20/40+ vision who can benefit from being able to buy a cheaper smaller HDTV and still enjoy the high-resolution image).
Yes, the resolution of our eyes depends on distance. Most people hold their phones about 12 inches away from their faces, which is why Apple uses this measure. The rest of the comment is interesting, but has no bearing on how we look at phones nor does it invalidate any of the conclusions reached by the linked articles that around 1000 PPI is the physical limit of our eyes at, or around, 12 inches.
Buying decisions are often NOT made based on how well a product scores on benchmarks. Evidence: iDevices
Except they win most benchmarks handily.
Find some screenshots taken from Retina displays and zoom in on the text. Notice how it is still anti-aliased?
Yes, this is technically accurate evidence that Apple realizes that the human eye can distinguish each pixel. But, in practice, it makes no difference. Take the fact that your argument against the display resolution involves zooming in on the text...if you have to jump through these silly hoops to "prove" that the resolution should be higher then you are unwittingly showing that Apple's marketing term "retina display" is actually pretty accurate. The point is, that for practical applications, decent vision, and average arm lengths, it is good enough. The only real point where it makes any difference is if you are looking at pixels, not the picture. I have 20:20 vision and can't make out the pixels in any normal application. Any further resolution increases are so incremental they are probably not worth the battery/gpu tradeoff.
I can see the different between a Retina display and a similarly sized 1080p display...despite needing to get another prescription in the next few months
The placebo effect is strong in this one...
There's no resolution in the whole world that would avoid moire if you don't do any antialias at all. Read about sampling some day.
Partially correct and partially incorrect.
In reality, filtering/anti-aliasing should always be used when digitally sampling signals that could possibly contain information at more than half the sampling frequency. So if the display resolution is over 2x the resolution that the eye can perceive (already a foggy concept), then anti aliasing is not necessary. I guess this would happen somewhere in the neighborhood of 800-1000 ppi, but the thing is that the actual real world improvement between 300 ppi and 800 ppi is virtually nothing (esp. as anti-aliased text is already well implemented in ios).
Apple aren't delisted, because they are not cheating. It's very amusing to see all the Fandroids in full denial mode here, because their favoured Android shipping manufacturers have been caught cheating.
Then again I'm one of those super-human freaks who can see a difference between 1080 and 4k
When people claim they can hear differences between different codecs, they are asked by audio experts whether they have taken a double blind test. Often times, people who claim to be able to tell the difference between two codecs are blown out of the water when they do.
Unless you've done a double blind test between 1080p and 4K, I don't know that what you think is the case truly is.
What TouchID fiasco?
In reality, filtering/anti-aliasing should always be used when digitally sampling signals that could possibly contain information at more than half the sampling frequency. So if the display resolution is over 2x the resolution that the eye can perceive (already a foggy concept), then anti aliasing is not necessary.
I don't see how the second sentence follows from the first. A nonantialiased/unfiltered picture is simply not an accurate representation of the sample. Ideal things like lines and edges have theoretically infinite resolution and if you point sample them, then that infinite high-frequency data will alias all over the representable spectrum, including visible frequencies. Nyquist limit has nothing to do with this.
So your post is a non sequitur. Jobs was also a dick for screwing Woz out of royalties way back in the day - but that doesn't have anything to do with benchmarks.
Here you go
Browse at -1
Required reading for internet skeptics
Nothing about a fiasco there. Just a lot of credulous Android fans that will believe anything.
Thanks. Maybe I'll take an interest in the topics around here again as I descend into old age and infirmity.
The next thing to remember is to put next things next.
Then again I'm one of those super-human freaks who can see a difference between 1080 and 4k
Yet somehow you ignore the fact that that statement is utterly meaningless without specifying the PPI and viewing distance (not to mention the type of display, ie pixel layout). If it's on a 3.5" screen then you almost certainly can't at any viewing distance, if you're 2 feet away from a 50" screen then just about anybody would be hard pressed not to be able to tell teh difference.
And a ShittyPhone with a dual-core 1.8GHz each and no optimisations for battery life whatsoever.
That is an incredibly ignorant statement. iOS has been since the beginning chock full of battery life optimizations, with many API's oriented to help developers get the best battery life possible from the system, including very advanced battery consumption measurement tools shipped with XCode...
He obviously wasn't talking about iOS, firstly because of the clear battery life optimizations that have always been in iOS and secondly the fact that no iPhone ever used a dual core 1.8GHz CPU so your only link between them is that ShittyPhone somehow equals iPhone, why would you make that link? Does he specifically have to call out that the second device is Android or Meego or Windows Phone or something just so you don't take offence to it by automatically assuming that because he is criticizing something he must be criticizing iOS in spit of the fact that his description doesn't even match iOS at all?
This suffers from the same problem as a pentile display. The complaints are that the edges of certain colours are fuzzy. When one pixel is disproportionately larger than the others you will end up with e.g. a blue line down the edge of your white square.
Never mind, there's an easy work around for that. Just raise the resolution.... oh wait.
Too stupid to use google huh. Need it handed to you.
Yes, need it handed to me. You made the claims that Apple is cheating. Thus, you are responsible of providing the proofs. It is not our responsibility to browse Google to try to possibly find something.