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Cellphones Graphics Handhelds Apple Hardware

Galaxy S7 vs iPhone 6S: Samsung Has the Upper-Hand, For Now (hothardware.com) 131

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.
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Galaxy S7 vs iPhone 6S: Samsung Has the Upper-Hand, For Now

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  • I'm waiting the video!
  • Performance? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    What the people really want to know is how FBI Mode performs on new devices. -PCP

  • Battery (Score:2, Insightful)

    fast CPU, planned obsolescence with a soldered-in battery? Yeah, no. The LG G5 is supposed to be a solid choice.'

    • Re:Battery (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Mr. Droopy Drawers ( 215436 ) on Thursday March 10, 2016 @03:30PM (#51673821)

      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?

      • Re:Battery (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Thursday March 10, 2016 @03:45PM (#51673947) Journal

        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)

      • by slaker ( 53818 )

        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 ru

        • Re:Battery (Score:5, Informative)

          by Zak3056 ( 69287 ) on Thursday March 10, 2016 @04:19PM (#51674219) Journal

          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.

          • by slaker ( 53818 )

            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.

      • No need to break anything, a heat gun and a cutting wire and Bob's your uncle. But yes, I'll keep my S5 as well.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Probably never. Apple got it right the first time.

        100 bucks says there won't be a single flagship phone with a replaceable battery by 2017

        • 100 bucks says there won't be a single flagship phone with a replaceable battery by 2017

          I'll give you the flagship bit, but the phone stores where I live are getting full of fairly cheap, very nice Chinese Android phones. All of the features Apple and Samsung won't do, they do.

          Smaller screens, larger screens, dual sim, micro sd, removable battery, whatever you're looking for Huawei, or Meizu or someone else will do it usually for a good price too.

        • by KGIII ( 973947 )

          How do you define, for this purpose, the term "flagship"? Is "flagship" limited to only certain vendors, OSes, or?

          What, exactly, is "by 2017" supposed to mean? January 1, 2017 @ 00:00:01 or December 31, 2017 @ 23:59:59?

          'Cause I *am* a betting man and there are a few acceptable escrow accounts online. Depending on how you define it, I might just be interested. I will need to vet the escrow service but any reputable service that you can think of is fine with me.

          I'll be damned if I know what the future holds a

      • by Anonymous Coward

        When will they learn to stop following Apple's lead?

        As soon as Apple, you know, stops leading the market by producing an incredibly popular and profitable device.

        Why would they want to build their own kit, when they can produce shitty knock-offs that look the same as Apple's stuff?

      • Have you considered the FairPhone 2 [fairphone.com]?
        If I were in the market for a smart phone, it would be likely top on my list because of the modular design (the ethical sourcing is a bonus).
      • by Pulzar ( 81031 )

        When will they learn to stop following Apple's lead?

        When replacing a battery becomes a real problem?

        My kids are still playing games on my phones from years and years ago... maybe the battery doesn't last for days like it used to, but it lasts a full day without a problem. My nexus 6 is more likely to run out of juice on a fairly new battery.

        I would venture a guess that for the vast majority of people, being able to replace the battery is not a feature they even think about.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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.

      • Re:Battery (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Mr. Droopy Drawers ( 215436 ) on Thursday March 10, 2016 @03:43PM (#51673923)

        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!

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          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 fa

      • Re:Battery (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday March 10, 2016 @04:22PM (#51674233)

        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.

        • 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.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • planned obsolescence with a soldered-in battery?

      My Galaxy S1 still works. As does my S3, and S4. All are on their original battery. This isn't the problem it appears to be. Your phone will be "obsolete" long before the battery gives up.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • There are lots of reasons for sealing in a battery. Cost, size, durability, waterproofing, safety, weight...

      • Re:Battery (Score:4, Informative)

        by KGIII ( 973947 ) <uninvolved@outlook.com> on Thursday March 10, 2016 @08:43PM (#51675433) Journal

        > 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.

    • I got the S4 years ago loving the fact that I could swap out the battery. You know what? Years later the original battery is going just as strong as when I bought it. I just ordered the S7. I'm not worried about the fixed battery. Worst case, it is possible to pull open the back cover and swap it, granted it probably wont be perfectly waterproof once you do that.
    • Why would you want to replace the battery?

      The battery on my iPhone 3GS is still fine and that phone is almost 7 years old now.

  • by surfdaddy ( 930829 ) on Thursday March 10, 2016 @03:23PM (#51673771)

    ...touchwiz

    • Seriously? In android the phone is hardware and the software can be changed out. There are lots of launchers out there. From the old standby Nova launcher which mimics stock (Nexus like) to Buzz with its whistles and bells to CM which is designed for performance to Launch 8 that looks like a windows 8 phone (why you would want to do that is beyond me). Point is if you like the phone buy it, go to the play store and load the launcher. Touchwiz should not be a gating factor.
      • ..and also their uninstallable bloated software, and lack of OS updates. Nexus for me, instead.

      • That's pretty misleading. Changing out the launcher only gets you so far (there's still the navbar, status bar, stock apps, etc). What stock ROMs have that CM doesn't is stability and feature reliability. CM never gets it completely right. There's always at least one really annoying bug that never gets fixed because it's hard, and the developers move onto the newest version of android before totally fixing the previous ones. Nightlies are all the rage. I've gotten fed up with AOSP and always end up going wi
        • there's still the navbar, status bar, stock apps, etc

          None of which are a problem to the OS itself. The first 3 are essentially skins, the stock apps can be disabled so they're out of your way. And quite frankly none of what you mentioned comes anywhere close to the horrendously shitty bloated slow iPhone copying garbage experience that touchwiz provides.

          Throwing out Samsung's launcher is an experience changing process.
          Not having some random pre-installed app on the other hand doesn't even get noticed.

        • My reply was to Tochwiz, not other issues. I've used launchers, customer ROMs, and I have my phone rooted which allows me to delete bloatware. My point was if you like the hardware most geeks can have their way with the software - I know I do, so don't let Touchwiz stop you.

          Honestly it's kind of funny that no one mentioned the worst thing about Sammy phones and that is that rooting them has become a nightmare. That is what will drive me to Nexus, not Touchwiz. I run App Ops which is the best thing you can

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 10, 2016 @03:33PM (#51673835)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 )

      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.

      Has there ever been an Apple device that comes with a guarantee that it will run all future versions of iOS?

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci... [dailymail.co.uk]

      • by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Thursday March 10, 2016 @04:32PM (#51674299)
        Um your link has nothing about whether iPhones will run newer versions of iOS. And the answer is generally upgradeable within a few generations. For example iOS 9 which was released in Sept 2015 will run on iPhone 4S which was released almost 4 years prior. Is it slow? Probably. The OP made a claim which is generally true: On any Android device, you cannot be sure of future compatibility and are at the mercy of a number of factors including the device maker and the carrier.
      • by bigdady92 ( 635263 ) on Thursday March 10, 2016 @04:37PM (#51674341) Homepage
        Apple has done it's damndest to support hardware back as far as it can go, even the iphone 3GS was getting recent updates and that's 8 (?) years old.

          Google says "You COULD update those devices" and then leaves it upto the manufacturers to handle updates, which they only do if it suits them.
        • by KGIII ( 973947 )

          I have, in my hand now, an iPhone 4. It's a model md200ll/a which I think is the 4c from Verizon. It's peaked at 7.1.2 and the lady I got it from assures me that it was purchased, new in box from the cell company, about a year ago.

          How do I get the current version? I'm not using it as a phone or anything. I'm just playing with it before I donate it to Goodwill or something. I already have a phone.

          • I have, in my hand now, an iPhone 4. It's a model md200ll/a which I think is the 4c from Verizon. It's peaked at 7.1.2 and the lady I got it from assures me that it was purchased, new in box from the cell company, about a year ago.

            What does "new in the box" mean? The iPhone 4 came out in 2010 and Apple discontinued them in 2013. So I would say you were taken for a ride. The highest upgrade for the iPhone 4 is 7.1.2

            • by KGIII ( 973947 )

              No, it was new in the box from her cell phone company. I didn't pay for it. And yeah, she still has the box. Well, no, now I have the box. She bought it last spring. It's the 4c it would appear. She got it from the cell phone company, new in the box, a little less than a year ago.

              I've got ample compute devices, so it's not like I was going to pay for it. It was given to me as a gift because she thought I might like to play with it. She, and her two kids, are currently staying with my girlfriend and I. There

              • There is no 4c. There is the 4 or the 5c. If it is the 5c you can upgrade it to the newest iOS. You probably have to sync to iTunes once to get updates.
                • by KGIII ( 973947 )

                  Alright. The last time (about a week ago) I mentioned it, I was told it was a 4c. I'm only poking at it 'cause I'd never tried to play with an iPhone before and the lady wanted to give me something for other reasons and probably not reasons you might expect. (She knows that I'll almost certainly donate it.)

                  Whichever that model is, 4 I guess, is what it is and it was new in the package a year ago, slightly less. "Around last May." It's a Verizon phone. That much I know. Anything else and I don't have a clue.

                  • Unfortunately it is a 4 year old model and can't be updated any further. The phone you may have gotten may have never been used and still in the box for years but the last ones were made by Apple in 2013.
        • Not only that, but even Nexus devices don't get updated as much as Apple devices. I remember Google skipping on Kit Kat for the Galaxy Nexus, and there's some evidence there won't be Android N for the Nexus 5.

          Having said that, i don't like iPhones. No notification light, no removable battery , no microSD, battery doesn't last long, no AMOLED and especially i don't like that you can't install apps outside the App Store.

    • When you compare performance you ONLY compare the single-thread performance...

      I would go further and say that if you're comparing phones based on benchmarks, you're kind of missing the point. The speed and efficiency of the process matter, but only insofar as it lets you do something. Very few people are actually going to care about the raw processing power of their phone. They care about features and usability, and processing power only comes into play if it enables additional features, or if it's too lacking and the phone isn't responsive.

      A benchmark like battery lifetime matters to people. CPU performance largely doesn't.

    • Also the Snapdragon is a quad-core CPU but the cores are not all identical but 2 pairs of CPUs (2 + 2) designated as ARM big.LITTLE. Generally, 2 of the cores are for slower battery-saving cores with the other 2 are powerful and power-hungry cores. It is a different departure from Apple who uses different means of saving battery like a governor which lowers the clock in power saving mode to using motion co-processors to handle the inputs.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I see you didn't RTFA. Android properly multitasks, so four cores make sense. The thermal throttling issues with the 810 are fixed. Performance even with single threaded tasks is top notch. The GPU is as good as anything Apple makes in real world apps.

      Anyway, performance is good enough these days. Battery life and flash performance are more important. Features and usability of the OS etc.

    • ... and for most people that's the Apple ecosystem.

      According to ComScore, Android still has the lead in market share at 52%, compared to iOS at 44%. So most people don't pick Apple.

      While there are 1.5 million apps available in the Apple ecosystem, and 1.6 million in Android's, the vast majority of time (85%) is spent in 5 apps. Few people use more than 25 apps in any month. Those top apps are available in both ecosystems.

      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.

      That is quite some guarantee - "all future versions." I'm very frugal and don't abuse my phone. Even I don't think I'd be carrying ar

      • ... and for most people that's the Apple ecosystem.

        According to ComScore, Android still has the lead in market share at 52%, compared to iOS at 44%.

        The world-wide annual numbers are more like 80% Android and 15% Apple for the past 3 years (source: Gartner, IDC). Even in the USA 44% seems very generous for Apple, unless maybe if you cherry pick a quarter with a new iPhone launch.

    • 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.

      As mentioned in my reply to the battery complaint my Samsung Galaxy S1 still boots fine. Most popular apps still work. I can still browse the internet. Oh it's a phone so I should mention that calls still work too.

      What was it about not getting every single small upgrade that makes it "throwing money away"? I suppose everyone here's throwing money away as well since they are still using Windows 7 instead of the latest and latest too then right?

      As for the apps you want to use ... sounds like general hate from

    • To add on to PopeRatzo, the Samsung S6 compared to the iPhone 6, Samsung was the clear winner in battery life, I would expect that the S7 will similarly beat the iPhone 6S in battery life figures.

      http://www.trustedreviews.com/... [trustedreviews.com]

      All the rest of what you said was utter bullshit, yes you do compare the multithreaded performance between two devices, and the S7 came out the clear winner because it has more processor power.

    • Compatibility with all future versions of Android should not be a priority for consumers IMO. I have devices that probably will be stuck on 5.0.x forever, and I don't see a huge problem with that. The GUIs have matures, and I will still enjoy years of good application support. In fact, Kitkat should be also good enough for most people.

      On the other hand, I don't necessarily agree with apple's policy of always updating the OS, even on a four years old device to the latest version. Case in point is the iPhone

    • PS: in some ways the above also explains why people shy away from AMD CPUs. Nice multithreaded benchmark will show that a quad-core AMD CPU is about as fast as dual-core Intel Core i3. But AMD cores have much slower single threaded performance, while really sucking at energy efficiency. But for some reason, this logic does not seem to apply to the mobile world, with many consumers thinking that more cores is better. So the market is now filled with cheap and mid-range android devices that have way too many

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Quality news Timothy

  • Obviously it's unfair to pit a model 7 against a model 6! /sarcasm

  • by BarbaraHudson ( 3785311 ) <barbara.jane.hud ... minus physicist> on Thursday March 10, 2016 @03:47PM (#51673963) Journal

    Seriously ... words without meaning ....

    and perhaps a light rebuffing of the phone's design language.

    ... sounds like ad-speak.

    • Oh right - it's from hothardware.com. That explains everything ... including the juvenile attempt to sound more intelligent than they are. Gotta keep those free review units coming in ...
      • Doesn't rebuff mean to reject, not renew?

        http://www.dictionary.com/brow... [dictionary.com]

        Yeah...words have meaning, and they got that one way off.

        • Worse - what does it matter what design language the designer tools are running? You can't tell just by looking at the finished product, so the article is full of sh*t.
        • by KGIII ( 973947 )

          I presume they meant 'buffing' but that's because I'm in a friendly mood. I'm probably wrong and they're probably just friggin' idiots.

          They're probably assuming rebuff means to buff again. Buff meaning to polish. I'm going to presume that it was just a typo that got auto-corrected or overlooked. But no, I'm probably wrong and they are just stupid.

          Hmm... Now they've been rebuked! Their next article will tell about how they're going to buke someone or something. It could happen. I wonder if they rewaxed it be

  • I'm still really happy with my S5 after over a year. It will probably do for another year or two. It gets a bit hot sometimes but it hasn't melted yet. When they decided to be Apple they only really succeeded in becoming inapplicable. I didn't by the S5 because I wanted an iPhone that runs Android. Things like removable battery, SD card slot are important and the water proofing is just great. The only thing I really hated with the S5 was their stock distro which you couldn't strip down or remove crapware
  • *Multicore (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pushing-robot ( 1037830 ) on Thursday March 10, 2016 @03:57PM (#51674067)

    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.

    • Re:*Multicore (Score:5, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday March 10, 2016 @06:25PM (#51674947) Homepage Journal

      Android makes good use of multiple cores. The OS uses them for tasks like encryption and application optimisation (memory management, async I/O etc.) Many apps use them, like Chrome which does background opening and rendering of tabs, JIT compilation of JavaScript, decoding images etc. The Google keyboard uses threads to handle input, spell checking and prediction. Meanwhile another thread is rendering the UI.

      The iPhone looks good in synthetic benchmarks because they are mostly single threaded. For real world use where you are multitasking, opening multiple tabs, typing away, Android with four cores is what you want

      • In any case, it's not really as simple as "four cores versus two."

        IIRC the Snapdragon isn't symmetrical. Two of the cores are the power-hungry performance cores and two are low power cores that wouldn't contribute under performance conditions.

  • by Lothsahn ( 221388 ) <Lothsahn@@@SPAM_ ... tardsgooglmailcm> on Thursday March 10, 2016 @04:00PM (#51674085)
    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... [anandtech.com]

    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.
    • Despite your opinions, it is faster as shown in the benchmarks. You even start by admitting that fact and then ignore yourself. The anandtech benchmark you linked compares apples to oranges. "Safari running on a single thread on an 6s is faster than Chrome on a single thread on the S7" is an extremely cherry picked metric that completely ignores they are different browsers and that you are inherently deciding to ignore that multicore power of the S7. Strange fellow.
      • Did you even read the article I posted? By no means did I cherry pick a single benchmark.

        From Anandtech's review, the following benchmarks show the iPhone is faster:
        Kraken 1.1 (72%)
        Octane v2 (68%)
        WebXPRT (55%)
        Basemark OS II 2.0 System (47%)
        Basemark OS II 2.0 Web (7%)
        Basemark OS II 2.0 Overall (3%)


        The ONLY benchmark that showed it was slower were these two:
        Basemark OS II 2.0 Graphics (14%)
        Internal NAND Random Write (41%) -- It fared significantly better than the S7 on all other NAND performanc
      • by Anonymous Coward

        And there are the real world performance tests , where the 6S trounces the S7 http://bgr.com/2016/03/07/iphone-6s-plus-galaxy-s7-edge-performance-test/

        Android ain't helping . It's still java vs native after all and Android needs the extra hardware to keep up with iOS.

    • by Kartu ( 1490911 )

      So, if I buy iPhone I can watch 2 hour movie in, say, 24 minutes, as opposed to, say, 28 minutes on Samsung?
      That's a serious advantage.

  • The new iPhone 5E is going to rock serious phonage. Small like the 5 but better than the 6.

    All your future is belong to Apple fanboi

  • by wjcofkc ( 964165 ) on Thursday March 10, 2016 @04:44PM (#51674381)
    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.
    • I agree. In my household, all android phones are still based on the 2-3 year old Snapdragon 800/801 SoCs. This SoC is fast enough (the same used in LG G2, LG G3, Samsung Galaxy S5, Oneplus One, etc). And now I am thinking of picking up a Nexus 6 if the price drops below 300. The issues that concern me more right now are the battery life, audio quality, build quality, camera performance, the LTE performance, etc.

      As for iOS, I could live with it, but personally I prefer the Android way. iOS is too limiting in

    • Not entirely true; the single thread speed of the processor does matter for the crucial resource that a phone lacks - power capacity. If a core is more efficient per clock (energy wise) and it can execute faster, it gets double the savings in battery life because it can shut park the CPU core faster. Granted, all of these savings are almost immediately eaten up by the size of the screens on modern phones, but I guess you could, by the transitive property of power envelopes, equate better, more efficient s

  • Oh really.. some time in the future a more powerful phone will be made?!!.. well I'm in shock!!. Or is this just an iFanboi reluctantly admitting an Android phone is more powerful than the latest iphone (again), refusing not to have the last word?
  • "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."

    More processing power on a smart phone is just bells and whistles.

    Aside from the uber nerd who needs the latest and greatest gadget, who needs a faster smart phone nowadays? My S4 was plenty fast and I only got an S5 because it died on me. What are people doing on their phones that requires all this n

  • Marketing: "Let's add some extra cores that are only used by benchmark apps so we'll look better in reviews."
    Product: "Sure."
    Press: "wow, the Samsung he is faster! BuyBuyBuy it!"
    User: "bleh"

  • Last time I checked, a Snapdragon 820 was a System-on-Chip semiconductor.

    This is a picture of a semiconductor [starkinsider.com]

    This is a picture of a power plant [ucsusa.org]

    And another power plant, which is actually a power plant within a bigger... power plant [industrial...orsale.com]


    Its important that we all speak the same language. That or I'm gonna start calling every square computer I see a "Hard disk"
  • I was looking at the Nexus 5X with $150 off with Google Fi as being a very attractive service plan but I've grown to really like a lot of the iOS Apps and would miss them with a move to Android. We have several Nexus models and I really like getting the updates quickly in the Nexus program. I know many that are happy with their Samsung phones - and they're not really looking to upgrade. Phones seem to be mature devices these days and I think that upgrades will decline.
  • ...Samsung didn't completely cripple their amazing hardware with a godawful bastardization of the Android UI...

  • I wasn't impressed with my work's S6 edge. Bad battery life, its curved edge screen was too sensitive, etc.

  • I made the same mistake myself.

You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.

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