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Galaxy S7 vs iPhone 6S: Samsung Has the Upper-Hand, For Now (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: To look at Samsung's new Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartphones, on the surface, one might mistake them for only a modest uplift of bells and whistles, and perhaps a light rebuffing of the phone's design language. However, one of the primary new features of the US-targeted Samsung Galaxy S7 is its underlying power plant — Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 system-on-a-chip (SoC). The Snapdragon 820 is based on Qualcomm's new, custom ARM-based core architecture called Kyro. Kyro marks an evolution beyond Qualcomm's venerable Krait core architecture that the company claims offers 2X the performance and power efficiency of their previous-gen Snapdragon 810. In addition, the quad-core Snapdragon 820 has a beefed-up Adreno 530 graphics engine on board as well. In performance testing versus Apple's potent A9 platform in the iPhone 6S Plus, Samsung's Galaxy S7 with the Snapdragon 820 generally outpaces the iPhone in multithreaded performance as well as graphics. The Apple A9 still does a lot of work with just two cores, but overall it looks as though Qualcomm has a highly-competitive SoC and Samsung put it to good use.
...touchwiz
Agreed. I'm sitting this generation out -- again. iFIXIT's teardown of the S7 indicates that it's virtually impossible for those like me to replace the battery without damaging the back cover. I'll stick with my S5 until they come to their senses or, I'll have to look at that LG G5.
When will they learn to stop following Apple's lead?
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
See the problem here is that it's not an even comparison.
When you compare performance you ONLY compare the single-thread performance, because that is most reflective of real-world performance. Multi-threaded performance is seldom a useful metric, and is rare used properly, especially on Android devices. That's why Apple gets by with smaller batteries and balanced CPU's, while Samsung sticks undersized batteries for the CPU they use.
But when you then look at GPU performance, Samsung rarely puts a powerful GPU part in their devices, and that is reflected by devices that appear to nudge out Apple's devices in raw performance, but under synthetic benchmarks, the power management throttles back the GPU more on the Samsung devices, thus the real performance is less.
Ultimately you pick the device that will last you the longest, or use the apps you want to use, and for most people that's the Apple ecosystem. The average person shouldn't be buying an Android device without getting some guarantee that it will run all future versions of Android, otherwise you're just throwing away money.
Phones are already obsolete by the time the battery goes bad. If you have a reasonable provider, you can upgrade once or twice a year. They'll refurb your old phone, including a new battery, and sell it to someone who doesn't want or can't afford the latest and greatest. I haven't had battery problems until year three or four, so that's never a problem. If I were poor, I wouldn't have a smart phone.
Breaking news! Last year's product slower than this year's product. Film at 11.
End of Line.
Glad that works for you. I like having the ability to refresh the battery in year 3/4. I may be a cheapskate. But, hey, at least I know it!
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
LG G5 - now physically bigger, with a smaller screen and smaller battery, and the opportunity to spend an extra $600 on accessories (ahem, "friends") you'll use only once.
(NB: I'm a current G3 & G4 owner, really not impressed with the G5)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Seriously ... words without meaning ....
and perhaps a light rebuffing of the phone's design language.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
It's new and improved with force touch. If you hit it hard enough the information just falls right out.
Unfortunately apps that fully utilize 4 cores are few and far between, so take these numbers with a grain of salt, but the 820 seems to handle single-threaded applications better than its predecessors, putting real-world performance on par with the (admittedly 6 month old) Apple A9.
In any case, it's astounding how ARM designs have gone from a decade behind to modern PC level performance in the space of a few years—and they're not done; performance leaps year after year and for once Samsung and TSMC may beat Intel to 10nm. Intel should be worried, especially if AMD manages to become relevant again with Zen.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Okay, so graphics and Multithreaded are faster. But watching videos and web browsing are for more typical usecases for most people, and the Samsung loses heavily.
Look at the browser benchmarks in the page here:
http://anandtech.com/show/1012...
The iPhone 6s is almost twice as fast as every other phone out there, and it came out nearly 6 months ago. I don't view the S7 as competitive, let alone faster. Other companies need to prioritize single-core performance as much as Apple. Multi-threaded performance isn't that big of a deal. This is a phone, not a server*.
-Android Fanboi and proud owner of a Nexus 6
*Yes, I know some power users out there utilize >2 cores on a regular basis. But most users (including myself) do not.
-=Lothsahn=-
I have an LG G4. Not long after I got it, I was in an automobile accident that damaged the screen. The phone was insured from the carrier, but the carrier insisted for no reason I can think of that it should be an issue for my auto insurance policy.
So I bought an aftermarket screen and fixed the damned thing myself. It takes about two minutes to strip all the components off, using only a small philips scewdriver and no other tools, and other than the TINY trick of knowing that you have to remove a little rubber grommet around the light sensor, the fix was incident free. The whole affair took less than five minutes.
Compare that to the Galaxy S6, which has a glass back that requires a heat gun or a hot pack to remove and adhesive strips to put back. Even though I have the tools and I've taken plenty of phones apart, I'd infinitely rather have the thing I can fix easily, especially when it's also the thing with a replaceable battery and a card reader.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
I have an LG G4. Not long after I got it, I was in an automobile accident that damaged the screen. The phone was insured from the carrier, but the carrier insisted for no reason I can think of that it should be an issue for my auto insurance policy.
On the plus side, you got a fairly cheap life lesson: never provide more information than necessary. "The screen on my phone is broken" was sufficient to have the phone insurance take care of the problem. "The screen on my phone got broken in a car accident" made it someone else's problem. Pretty much every insurance policy you'll find in almost any area you can buy insurance says something to the effect of "if you have other insurance that covers this, we won't." Since the property was damaged in the accident, your auto insurance would likely have covered the damage, had you submitted that as part of your claim.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
I have a smartphone. Now call me crazy, but I don't want to be perpetually paying for a phone, year after year.
As long as this phone continues to do what I need it to do, I plan to stick with it.
#DeleteChrome
If you want a phone that is good in the sun, buy a phone designed for that. My Kyocera Brigadier works just fine in the sun.
https://www.kyoceramobile.com/...
Not sure why the screen works so well outside, but the backlight is amazingly bright. Other phones with OLED screens seem to work well in the sun as well.
Just because the phone isn't made by Apple, Samsung, or LG, doesn't mean they don't exist.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Wanting to 'field replace' your battery easily doesn't make you a cheapskate. The battery is extremely important but also fundamentally the easiest part to replace...or at least it should be. I've had phones/devices where the battery 'mysteriously started dying' (e.g. noticeable decrease in battery life far quicker than I'd have expected). I have no desire to have my 'phone upgrade cycle' dictated by the whims of the battery and I can afford to buy a whole freakin' new phone every month if I wanted to.
In fact I have yet to see a phone come out in the last 3 years that has significant new features that would drive me to buy it...I'm not talking 'faster', there's always 'faster' but I dropped out of that type of replacement cycle LONG ago...the single feature that would make me run out & buy a new phone today is a screen I can easily read in sunlight/outdoors. Everything else can be done in software...seriously the marketing for the iPhone 6 used 'O look you can make a still photo move' as some kind of revolutionary 'feature'...its a gimmick...cool for about 2 seconds...
As far as I can tell there's nothing new in the iPhone 6 series that I don't have in my Galaxy Note II (e.g. 'size of screen', 'sufficient processor speed', RAM, SSD card support etc. etc.). And it now looks like these Galaxy S7 series devices aren't going to be much different and if they have a soldered in battery that is WORSE than I have today!
We have long since reached a point where smartphones are so blazing fast, the latest hardware means little. We need to be comparing the functionality and efficiency of the operating systems themselves. Hardware be damned. The point of a smartphone is getting shit done. At least on the Android side, people are carrying around phones that are years old because they are still super fast and in most cases getting OS upgrades that don't slow anything down to a notable degree. Someone will have to school me on how this works with IOS devices. While I admit to have until recently been an Android user since 2008, I play with iOS devices every chance I get. Personally, as a matter of getting things done, exploring iOS had continuously reaffirmed my usage of the Android platform. Why? Sorry but I am not here to give a review, only to point out reviews of the latest hardware make little sense. I did say I am a former longtime Android user. As someone who is not OS bigoted, playing with different platforms is me giving a fair shake. I even had a Windows Phone for awhile bust decided it was a mistake for me personally. I recently switched to a Blackberry Classic in all of its "antiquated" hardware glory. Why? Because of love the interface and am able to "get shit done" with it faster and more efficiently. How and why? Again, I'm not here to give reviews just point out that at this point we should be looking at things differently.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Of course, I wasn't aware of it at the time. The damage manifested as a hairline crack at the corner of the screen and didn't become significant for another few days, after which my car had already been totalled.
Yes, I could've amended the claim, but $80 to buy a new screen + dropping the monthly insurance fee for my phone vs. the $15k I got for my wreck just didn't seem worth the hassle.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Agreed. Apple is way ahead of Qualcomm, and has been for a number of years now. The 2.7 CPU in my Nexus 6 was barely competitive with the iPhone when it came out--with a 145% clockspeed advantage! With that clockspeed advantage, you'd expect the CPU to be way way faster.
There's also something to be said for Safari's performance relative to Android Chrome. The Nexus 6 beats the iPhone 6 in the BaseMark II OS - System benchmark by a good margin, but then loses in Sunspider by a factor of 2. There's obviously some significant room for improvement in either the Android or Chrome software stack (or both).
-=Lothsahn=-
It kind of sucks the battery isn't replaceable, but surely it will last longer than a year. I've never noticed battery degradation with cell phones. Maybe after 5 years it's a problem? I'd guess not, though.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
> I'd be in support of a law in Canada prohibiting the sale of consumer devices with non-replaceable batteries.
Really? You'd disallow others to make the choice to buy one because you, yourself, don't like it? You'd impose your will on the rest of the Canadians and take away their liberty to purchase the product?
I am a Canadian citizen by grace of heritage. I spend quite a bit of time there and I'm normally within about 40 minutes from being on the Canadian side of the border. (My home is in NW, Maine and not far from the border.) Fortunately, I know zero Canadians who think like that.
I'm gonna give you a hand, however... I see you used "unique" in your username so I'm inclined to presume you believe yourself special. Seeing as you're so special, I've decided to help you out.
You can't just unilaterally take away people's liberties. They want the iPhone and that's got a sealed case. No, you have to convince them to change their mind. So, what you do is you point out all the evidence that shows (and this is easy enough to find) that a whole bunch of electronics don't end up being properly recycled, that they use rare Earth minerals in their construction, that they're bad for the environment so should be kept as long as possible, and things like that.
You convince them that they need to put a stop to the vendors who are perpetuating these abuses on Mother Nature.Nominally you've a liberal government right now, unless I missed something. I don't vote in Canadian elections even though I'm eligible to - I don't live there, it's not my call. You get a few pictures of the various disassembly processing plants (buildings in the slums) down in India, you get some stats about the concentrations of lithium, you point out the health-hazards as that can leech into the water supply, and you paint consumerism as bad and destroying the planet and that Canada needs to be first in the world to lead the way towards a cleaner, recycled, and reused future.
Now, normally I'd not help you out with this but my country's being really retarded on the whole liberties front. If you can just go ahead and get moving on that then it might take away some of the attention on my country and maybe we can get things settled down a bit down here. That way you can be the bad guys for once and take the heat off us.
So, there you go cupcake. Knock yourself out and take as many choices away from your fellow citizens as you can. You just gotta to it with a non-geeky way - it's very important to be environmentally aware. You can probably tie it in with GHG and climate change - the mining, shipping, and all that are increasing the levels of CO2. If people have batteries that are easy to replace then they'll be more inclined to keep their phone longer. Hell, for good measure, maybe you should limit them to buying a new phone only once every four years, just for that extra bit of authoritarianism. You'll do your country proud and maybe we can start having serious discussions about liberties down in the US.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."