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Apple iPhone 7 Plus Packs 3GB RAM, Early A10 Fusion Benchmarks Look Very Strong (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes from a report via HotHardware: Apple's A10 Fusion processor, paired with the iPhone 7, is already making its mark on benchmark circuit. Although you may or may not be impressed with Apple's new handset, as usual, Cupertino's latest smartphone is looking very strong performance-wise. According to Geekbench numbers, which showcase the iPhone 7 Plus running iOS 10.0.1 (Golden Master), the 5.5-inch smartphone has 3GB of RAM onboard (the iPhone 7 reportedly contains 2GB RAM). Compared to the previous generation iPhone 6s Plus, this is an increase of 1GB. Compared to Android flagships, which come with 4GB or even 6GB of RAM, 3GB might seem paltry. However, benchmarks show time and time again that Apple's SoCs are among the fastest in the industry and simply do more with less resources. Apple says that the advances it has made with the A10 allow the processor to be twice as fast as the A8 in the iPhone 6 Plus and 40 percent faster than the A9 in the iPhone 6s Plus. The iPhone 7 Plus received a Geekbench single-core score of 3233, while its multi-core score comes in at 5363. For comparison, the beefy A9X processor in the iPad Pro -- also paired with 3GB of RAM -- puts up scores of 3009 and 4881 respectively. Likewise, these numbers far outpace those of the iPhone 6s Plus, which delivers 2407 and 4046 respectively.
Failure of a device. Nobody cares how fast the processor is if they can't plug their headphones in.
See, this would impress Android users because they care about this stuff. Apple users on the other hand, just want an extra shiny Apple symbol on the back (preferably glow in the dark and glowing). And that it's the latest model so they can post "omg I got this phone" on Facebook with Selfies.
My cheap One Plus X offered the same over a year ago.
Isn't A10 Fusion a bit of a weird name? AMD called their APU's "Fusion" when they first came out and gave them model numbers A6, A8, A10.... Even though they dropped their "Fusion" branding, I am sure I am not the only tech guy who upon hearing "A10 Fusion" thinks of an AMD APU. And it's been just five years since they came out, it is not like you have to be an old geezer to remember.
Unless I've missed something and Apple now uses AMD APUs on their iPhone...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
The processor benchmarks are pointless, what matters is how fast stuff actually happens and Android is generally faster at opening the same app etc. Probably because Samsung flash memory is quicker or something, or maybe it's just the massive amount of RAM in high end models. Having a dual core CPU probably doesn't help either.
The 3GB of RAM is welcome, but I wonder if iOS can make optimal use of it. My current phone has 3GB and I never, ever close anything. My GF has an iPhone 6 with a rather pathetic 1GB of RAM, and she is constantly "cleaning" by closing apps manually to avoid it getting slow. Considering everyone else's flagships are moving to 4GB and 6GB now, 3GB is still rather low for such an expensive device.
Oh, and Belkin have released the dongle you need to charge and listen to wired headphones at the same time. It's $40 and huge. And you need the Lightning to Audio adapter that comes with the phone, so actually you need two dongle chained. It's going to be hard not to laugh the first time I see someone with that setup.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Because bluetooth audio sounds terrible. Because it runs down your battery on your phone. Because bluetooth headphones need to be charged. Because bluetooth headphones are more expensive. Because you have your phone in your hand already checking Twitter/Facebook/etc. Because only hipsters have bluetooth headphones. Because you can't change the album, find songs, without taking your phone out.
Actually, bluetooth is quite capable in terms of achievable fidelity. The spec allows for 768kb/sec, and can transfer CD-equivalent sample bit resolution.
This is pretty good, in terms of human hearing, because bluetooth compression isn't just randomly lossy, it's a lot smarter than that. It's both predictive and takes into account human hearing characteristics.
Where the most serious problem lies is the common tendency to use too much compression on music. Once that's done, there's no fixing the result.
Here are two simple rules:
1: Use the highest bitrate your compression software will allow you to.
2: Remain close to the transmitting hardware when listening. Bluetooth degrades with range.
If you follow those rules, odds are excellent that you are among the vast majority of humans who could not pick out any flaws in the resulting playback.
Having said that, removal of the headphone jack is, IMHO, a massively unfriendly move by Apple.
--fyngyrz
(anon due to mod points)
I'm fighting what seems to be the majority opinion with this ... but I really don't take issue with Apple ditching the headphone jack on the iPhone 7.
For starters? It's always been a troublesome connector when dealing with phone cases. Many of them didn't allow you to push a given 1/8" jack far down enough into the phone to make a connection. (Always depended on how much plastic material someone happened to put around the metal part of the jack and so forth.)
When using a $100 extended battery case, such things become serious problems, because you're losing the functionality you paid that much to add, every time you have to take the phone out of the case to use a set of wired headphones, or to plug it into the AUX jack in a car, or ?? That was the problem that initially drove me to start using bluetooth stereo earbuds. (I have pretty good results and sound quality with the LG Tone Infinum.)
Besides that, though? I'm already attaching my iPhone to my Alpine stereo via a USB to Lightning cable in my Jeep. Not using the headphone jack at all for that. That allows the stereo to control much more on the phone than if it was just using an analog audio plug connector.
There have been some good arguments made against this change and DRM, arguing that eliminating the 1/8" stereo jack in favor of something like Lightning connectors amounts to finally plugging the "analog hole" that ensures non DRM access to audio content. But I think it's VERY far-fetched to suggest the entire industry would ditch the analog audio jack. The connector is so prevalent because it's very inexpensive, as much as anything else. It's so easy to implement an audio jack in a circuit and the cables for it are about as cheap as they get. This is just something Apple sees benefits to doing (a way to ensure all the gadgets attached to the new phones use a digital audio pathway with power and control channels as part of the standard). It means more profits for Apple too, certainly. But Apple doesn't make these changes JUST because they can charge more afterwards. They only do it when they see a way to improve the user experience.
Apple has a long-standing fascination with changing around connectors and jacks when they think they have a superior way to handle one of them. The "mag-safe" charging connector on their laptops is a good example. Yeah, it's proprietary and costs more than a barrel plug, up front. But it sure did put a stop to all those costly laptop repairs when someone breaks the charging jack loose inside of it.
People like you would support an Apple edict that humans have been breathing air for tens of thousands of years and "times change" so now we're all going to live underwater and install iGills.
Floppy drives were, even when Apple decided to abandon them, becoming relatively useless thanks to low capacity and speed vs increasing capacity requirements. They took a risk by being the first to abandon the device, but it was inevitable that it would have to be abandoned sooner or later.
Ethernet jacks have been replaced by sufficiently high speed Wifi for mobile devices, although wired still has way better speed+latency and remains appropriate for fixed devices.
ADP was a proprietary Apple standard limited to Mac peripherals superceded by the more open and functional USB.
Analog headphone connectors are sold by dozens of low, medium and high end manufacturers, since the de facto standard is simple, open and has existed for nigh on a century. They still offer the best possible sound quality for the application - any alternative which converts to analogue close to the ear can only be as good or worse. They form a solid, dedicated connection, with sturdy waterproof variants having existed for years, and do not get in the way of other functionality, e.g. charging.
The iPhone 7 is the Windows 8 of phones: some incremental updates plus the removal of a feature that a huge proportion of users enjoyed. Sure, we could all install the slightly kludgy ClassicShell, but it's just another thing which takes up space and can go wrong and mysteriously stops working at the next update. Although at least ClassicShell didn't stop people charging their Windows 8 tablets, so there is that.