" I would likely recommend either importing a Snapdragon unit, or just outright skipping this generation altogether. "
Its really the best advice out for the S20 series, especially when samsung has kept selling the S10 series. I really don't see the point in buying S20/S20+ against the S10+ at the time, when S10+ can be bought at discounted rate.
I'm frankly sick of Samsung doing this. I have an S8 and I love it. The battery was replaced recently but, since the latest update the auto brightness is a couple of steps up and it's going to full whack with hardly any provocation (and refuses to be turned down without disabling autobrightness). This strikes me as almost certainly being on purpose as it worked fine before the update and afterwards was trying to blind me. It means that, even with a new battery, the battery life is unacceptable when it should now be all day again. The S9 was shown to be a demonstrably worse SoC by Anandtech and so I missed that generation quite happily. The S10 seemed worth buying but I've missed it out as phones are now becoming a 3 yearly investment and getting one without 5G when I'm happy with what I have seems mad. My city is going to be one of the early adopters of 5G so it makes perfect sense to get a 5G phone when the tech has matured a bit. Now, we're getting this UTTER CRAP from Samsung yet again where the Snapdragon model is way better than the Exynos model. Now this, I don't have an issue with - two different models with different performance released in different markets is not a problem for me. What IS a problem is that we are expected to treat these as identical phones with identical model names / marketing and place identical value on the product. No. Not acceptable. These are almost certainly two very differently performing phones with likely different camera DSPs and so on. That means they have different performance levels and are of DIFFERENT VALUE.
Sorry but any chance I had of buying one of these (and I was strongly considering it for a minute there) just went out of the window unless the reruns of these tests show them to be an outlier. I sincerely hope it is the case as this is just obnoxious.
That's also why I recommended a Redmi K30 Pro (SD865, soon to be released) to my friend, instead of getting a used S10+ or an S20. Getting an inferior chip (exynos) is unacceptable when paying for a flagship, and Samsung still insists on using different chips for different geographical markets
The main issue with the Redmi would be baked-in ads everywhere, potentially. Also there may be too much integration with Tencent, 360 etc. companies with a very bad record of privacy infringement.
Ads are only baked in if you live in China and you get the phone for cheap. There is no integration with Tencent on my K20 pro that I use. And even then, you can always root and get rid of everything since Xiaomi allows you to root.
It's just a 1400 euro phone that is sold in Europe with midrange SOC. *
there, I fixed it for you. He has the all right in the world to bash them and I am baffled why there is no investigation and insane fine for what they do (essentially a scam, also there is a variant without the 5G antennas - how about that? :) ).
Is there any app on a phone, where you absolutely notice it without knowing from a review that it is different? No? Then just buy what you want and use it.
You absolutely notice at minimum on battery life though, and that is a major area in which Exynos takes a hit. It's also the topic of this article, which isn't exclusively synthetic benchmarks.
And you can absolutely notice the difference day to day, not just in benchmarks.
Some people invest a lot of emotion into their phones because ownership of consumer electronics contributes significantly to their sense of self-worth and self-image. There is nothing really outright wrong with that as we just cannot fairly judge if those sorts of people have emptiness in their lives that can only be filled through the act of making status symbol purchases.
Hence the Android vs Apple, Nvidia vs AMD, or really any company vs company thing. Just buy the best product within your budget ffs, we don't need to hear how the other company "sucks" or is "greedy"
To those who misunderstood my post - I place no status on a phone or have any emotional investment. I use them a lot for a lot of different stuff as well as work so having a decent one is a must. What I do have an emotional and visceral reaction to is being treated like a mug by companies like Samsung who can tell me a product is the same as everyone else's with the same name and same price and it being fundamentally a far lower spec product. I don't mind (for example) apple using two different SSDs in a model of laptop where the fundamental spec is similar. This is not that. As above - Europe gets a mid range SoC and pays the same as everyone else. It's abhorrent.
Because the s10+ you will buy will have only one years of support left + some security patches. This is the most funny one - apple: 5 years FULL support with betas, day one release and all (and then security patches for years to come, 5 and 4s received security patch this summer). Samsung with higher prices now with ultra: 2 years roflmaooooo and people pay such a price tag with that kind of support and abuse on top of the SOC variant one?
That apple updates occasionally brick devices where the customer has dared to undertake a repair themselves or degrade performance to encourage an upgrade is anticonsumer as well. Apple make a design screw up and then tell the customer it's their fault for holding their phone wrong. Sorry but Apple's history of screw ups is far worse. As for Samsung updates, my missus' S7 still gets security updates but you're right, android is out of their control and you can't guarantee updates being compatible after a period so they commit to two years. That is an advantage of apple and them owning the whole ecosystem. But, apple are anticonsumer to the core and the way they treated me with my broken Mac means I'll never take the risk of handing them a significant sum of money ever again.
Actually, sometimes yes. My mac was sent out with an old version of the WiFi standard and a firmware update enabled a newer standard where, I assume, apple equipped the hardware to the draft spec and when it was confirmed, enabled it.
Make 6150 bucks every month... Start doing online computer-based work through our website. I have been working from home for 4 years now and I love it. I don't have a boss standing over my shoulder and I make my own hours. The tips below are very informative and anyone currently working from home or planning to in the future could use this website... WWW.iⅭash68.ⅭＯⅯ
"On the latter, I did notice that for the S20 this year this mode does seemingly a larger power consumption hit, especially on the Exynos 990 variants of the phones, something that wasn’t quite as prevalent in the S10 series."
That's one sentence. I added returns after every comma in it to highlight how unwieldy it is.
I know this is a rush article. But I expect better from Anandtech.
Moaning about a few commas is an article this technical and in-depth is petty and an insult to the amount of work that has gone into it . You will not find a better, more in depth comparison review anywhere.
Well, what about this one: "Many times, when I have got upon the cars, expecting to be magnetized into an hour or two of blissful reverie, my thoughts shaken up by the vibrations into all sorts of new and pleasing patterns, arranging themselves in curves and nodal points, like the grains of sand in Chladni's famous experiment,—fresh ideas coming up to the surface, as the kernels do when a measure of corn is jolted in a farmer's wagon,—all this without volition, the mechanical impulse alone keeping the thoughts in motion, as the mere act of carrying certain watches in the pocket keeps them wound up,—many times, I say, just as my brain was beginning to creep and hum with this delicious locomotive intoxication, some dear detestable friend, cordial, intelligent, social, radiant, has come up and sat down by me and opened a conversation which has broken my day-dream, unharnessed the flying horses that were whirling along my fancies and hitched on the old weary omnibus-team of every-day associations, fatigued my hearing and attention, exhausted my voice, and milked the breasts of my thought dry during the hour when they should have been filling themselves full of fresh juices." Oliver Wendell Holmes Beautiful, isn't it? But, alas, Google is making us stupid... ;)
What is the improvement from exynos S10 to exynos S20 ? Is it significant ? If Exynos implements cortex 78 (or whatever the name) it will match qualcomm right ?
What does this 120Hz battery “burnup” means for other brands that have not implemented it yet ? They will not implement it ? For example Apple has supposedly 0,5W base power draw with the 5,8” iPhone. They and other OEMS can not just increase it further right ? So no 120Hz besides tablet sized devices this year ? :(.
Honestly, the value of 120hz is debatable for non-gaming uses. I have an iPhone 11 Pro Max and I have no issues with the refresh rate. Even for gaming on mobile, the benefits of a higher refresh rate are debatable. I would rather see work go towards efficiency and GPU performance.
not sure why you are attacking the west? the first time I met a seriously addicted student when i was working as a tutor, the first one was chinese, and the second one was korean
the korean girl used her flip phone so much her hands wore away the keypad down to the metal and I had to talk to her parents about an intervention...
For me the variable refresh rate that will undoubtedly come with Apples implementation (ProMotion) is more important than the peak framerate, the screen being able to update in less time after the system goes over a frame time limit helps reduce those frame drops that are just a little unpleasant.
You don't read much do you? OLED with 60Hz is painfull to scroll across texts. VERY painful. LCD was no better.
I have been waiting for 85Hz+ to re-emerge ever since LCD replaced CRT. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't go back to CRT, I just want higher refresh rate.
They already use DSC and have been for several years now. The physical interface still seemingly isn't fast enough to support larger resolutions at 120Hz.
But for others: Apple already has variable rate 120Hz working on the iPad Pro. Given that it wasn't added to the 2019 iPhones, I guess Apple considers the power hit still too high to be worth it in a phone, but on the iPad Pro it doesn't seem to be a massive battery suck.
Obviously it is the best mobile implementation but is it variable as in GSync? I understood it switches based on context to fixed rates from 120 to 60 to 24.
Don’t think the power hit was the main issue we didn’t see 120hz on this generations iPhones. I just think that there were no suitable OLEDs you could source that let you do 120hz.
"While Samsung has managed to implement the 120Hz mode without any additional hardware such as additional MIPI interfaces between the SoC and the display controller IC (hence, why it’s limited to 1080p 120Hz)"
Does this mean that Samsung will not release a 120Hz@QHD update like they announced a month ago? Not enough bandwidth?
Unless there is a second MIPI interface or they use the existing lane at much higher speed, it's physically impossible. I've seen no evidence in the drivers that this will happen.
Thanks for the explanation. Wonder how Samsung plans to implement it when there's a hardware bottleneck. I'm also guessing that Vulkan would be more energy efficient at drawing the UI on Android but it's still using OpenGL for that which is a shame.
I was so hopeful for new g77 cores is there any advantage over g76 cores? or Samsung just spend less silicon using g77 cores at the same performance and do you have any estimation how big are these new socs?
Thanks Andrei! How much of the difference in power consumption is due to higher OLED power draw when refreshing twice as often? Also, the black screen numbers are even more sobering for SoC power draw with the OLED devices; shouldn't they be notably lower with a dark/black screen for those vs, for example, the ROG II phone?
If your question is if OLEDs should use less power than LCD when displaying a black image, the reality is that OLEDs tend to use more power. While OLEDs are not using any power to light up pixels, the DDIC still uses some power. From the iPhone XS review: "The iPhone X, XS and XS Max all fluctuate around 480-500 mW when on a black screen, which is around 150mW more than the iPhone 8 LCD models" The ROG II has on OLED display, so no difference there.
Thanks, that is both interesting and frustrating! In other words, even mighty Apple leaves a lot of potential power saving on the table, despite the possibility of capitalizing on "off" pixels not drawing power with OLED screens.
So the OLED iPhones use only 40% more power to drive 270% more pixels? If your 150mW value is correct the the OLED power usage / pixel is way less than LCD.
Where did you get 270% more? You said 40% so clearly you know what "more" means, yet 270% the pixels is NOT 270% more, it's 170%.
Besides, LCD's figure INCLUDES backlight while OLED has none while displaying black screen. If you want make that comparison, you'll need at least 50% white display
That 40% is whole system power. When you take only the display power, the difference will be greater. Also, the 270% more pixels is incorrect. The comparison is to any of the LCD iPhones, including the 1080p iPhone 8 Plus, which has around 2M pixels, which is only ~30% less pixels than an iPhone X. It's even worse if you compare the number of subpixels (3 in the LCDs and 2 in OLED), because the iPhone 8 Plus actually has ~13% more subpixels than the iPhone X (~6.2M vs ~5.5M).
The phone in the quote is iPhone 8, not iPhone 8 Plus, so the resolution is 1334 × 750 Pixels or 1 MPixel. I compare it to iPhone X with a resolution of 2436 × 1125 Pixel or 2.7 MPixel.
Hi Andrei, I presume the s20 ultra sku you have is the 128 gb/12gb ram variant one and not the 16 gb/512 gb storage one, right? So if I import the 16 gb variant I order to get more storage (what we really need is more storage, not 16 gb ram which is frankly unnecessary) will the battery life figures be significantly degraded due to the extra 4 gb Ram? I don't think a 12 gb/512gb s20 ultra sku will ever be released by Samsung. Thanks.
Yes this is a 128/12GB unit. I don't think the larger capacities will affect power efficiency, they're the same amount of RAM dies, just different size.
That's the basic argument for IGZO, in fact it should go as low as 8Hz for static images, technically. However IGZO never caught on and it's hard to say about real life improvements.
It's bad...but no longer my concern :)))) Everybody who needs the jack in a flagship this year suddenly has at least Xperia 1 Mk.2, Redmi K30Pro, NEX 3S 5G and Motorola Edge Plus to choose from! Byebye Samsung!
same issue for me, unless at least they want to include a BLACK and high quality usb C to audio jack adapter in the box, that is guaranteed to work perfectly like my lightning earphones, I'm not interested in Samsung anymore (this is my first iPhone in 10 years)
i went through 3 x USB only phones that all had trouble with their adapters: the Essential phone, the Pixel phone, and finally the LG G7 with the google adapter also didn't work well
i want usb c in an iphone, with working adapter at minimum
Unless you are using a decent quality external DAC the G7 will embarrass it. Say whatever about software updates, camera quality etc, LG's higher end phones utterly embarrass anything Apple for a audio out with wireless and wired it's a slaughter.
Hope Sam to close the gap with A78 but Exynos 9810-9820-990 all have some degree of problems and couple of directors,engineers and Ceo there deserve to see unemployment office right away not to forget battery burns,Fold screen,Bixby.At that level those errors means billions of euro waisted and nobody seams to care!Maybe someone here will have time to explaine to me why i'm forced to buy Exynos in Europe instead on Snap865 and from what i read importe one from US it's not a solution!
It should have VRR. More options are welcome, but lower refresh rate when playing video and when you hand is not touching the screen (especially when not scrolling) is a must.
Brief conclusion: 2k90 on enormous device=barely acceptable battery life 2k120: Inplausible for phones 2020 Perhaps apple should release an ipad mini6 with a12x and 120hz screen and just squash those slick android "gaming" phones.
120Hz refresh rates are just the latest product differentiation method OEMs must implement in order to keep up with or stand out from their competitors. While it is a costly non-beneficial feature, failure to implement it will coat more sales than the awful battery life does so Samsung and other phone manufacturers are in a bit of a bind when it comes to implementing such things. People want this and some think they need it regardless of the implications so it will be slapped onto the spec sheet no matter the cost.
Speak for yourself. I've been waiting for 85Hz+ to come back for over a decade. 60Hz is just unacceptable for flicking through texts. 90Hz+ is a must for OLED phone.
There is nothing wrong with how you feel and you don't have to defend yourself. As I said, lots of people will feel like this is an important feature they need to have on a phone screen. Your desires will drive the market and push companies like Samsung to implement things like this which is perfectly okay. Others, at the moment, can acquire a different phone with better battery life if they aren't interested in it or are more prudent about whether or not they feel as though they can see flickering. It's all good in the end if you do you.
I agree that 120hz refresh rate is just a way to differentiate in the currently crowded market. As usual, manufacturers will build on the success of a certain feature, and end up overdoing it, i.e. pushing for big numbers with no tangible benefits in day to day usage. This is particularly apparent in the overcrowded Android phone space, where fast SOC is no longer enough, and they are pushing big numbers for other features like 100+ MP camera, 100x zoom, >12GB of RAM, extra big screen (I feel this is just something they have to increase due to bigger battery and bigger chassis), 120hz display, 4K resolution, etc. Strangely, nobody seems to be so focus on storage with most base models still with a sad 128GB.
Don't get me wrong, cause I would like a high refresh rate on my display. But the fact as I mentioned earlier is that 120hz is not going to benefit the mobile phone space much. To constantly do 120Hz will drain your phone's battery big time. In the end, you end up with some kind of VRR to combat this battery drain, which may drive your refresh rate even lower than 60hz in some scenarios.
Potentially bad timing given all the time consuming testing been done to date, and unsure what difference it would make to the results, but have seen anecdotal accounts of the latest firmware (22nd March in the UK) update making a big difference with battery life & overheating.
That said, unless Samsung manage to close the gap with ARM cores I will be looking elsewhere when I get bored of my S10+
After I used the 90hz display on my One Plus 7 Pro, I think a higher refresh rate certainly is great to have. The smoothness of the animation on the screen is apparent when you go back to use a phone with 60hz display. As for 120Hz, I think it will be better, but I don't feel it suits well on a mobile phone since it will inevitably have a significant hit on the already limited battery.
As for the battery life deficit between Exynos and SD, it is not unexpected. While Samsung charges the phone about the same price globally after taking into consideration the exchange rate, I feel the regions/ countries getting handsets with Exynos are being short changed. If they are to sell the phones with Exynos cheaper than those running SD, it may make more sense to me. While I applaud Samsung's effort to try to be like Apple to create their own SOC cores, I dislike the fact they double standard their phones by implementing both Exynos and SD SOCs on the same flagship model. Either they stick to Exynos or on SD fully. There may be other factors in the background for this dual SOC decision, but people can clearly see the difference and get upset. It also makes their already slow updates even slower and problematic having to develop the updates since the difference from what I read is not just limited to SOCs. Even the camera module is different between the 2 models.
The camera difference is sometimes noticeable, sometimes not at all, and the Exynos also sometimes comes up on top, like the UWA night of the S10 series. I really don't feel this is an issue as a consumer is expected not to have the option of an alternate version, like many other merchandise, "oh Sunkist's oranges here are more sour than those in Florida and still costs more", do people really whine about that? There are many factors influencing local pricing, minimum wages, even, so as long as they list correctly the specs of the variant they sell locally I don't see this problematic as a business practice.
am I the only one here who doesn't like punch-hole displays? it really gets to my OCD. either there should be waterdrop notch or a pop-up selfie camera, punch holes look like an ugly improvisation
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patel21 - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
" I would likely recommend either importing a Snapdragon unit, or just outright skipping this generation altogether. "Its really the best advice out for the S20 series, especially when samsung has kept selling the S10 series. I really don't see the point in buying S20/S20+ against the S10+ at the time, when S10+ can be bought at discounted rate.
philehidiot - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
I'm frankly sick of Samsung doing this. I have an S8 and I love it. The battery was replaced recently but, since the latest update the auto brightness is a couple of steps up and it's going to full whack with hardly any provocation (and refuses to be turned down without disabling autobrightness). This strikes me as almost certainly being on purpose as it worked fine before the update and afterwards was trying to blind me. It means that, even with a new battery, the battery life is unacceptable when it should now be all day again. The S9 was shown to be a demonstrably worse SoC by Anandtech and so I missed that generation quite happily. The S10 seemed worth buying but I've missed it out as phones are now becoming a 3 yearly investment and getting one without 5G when I'm happy with what I have seems mad. My city is going to be one of the early adopters of 5G so it makes perfect sense to get a 5G phone when the tech has matured a bit. Now, we're getting this UTTER CRAP from Samsung yet again where the Snapdragon model is way better than the Exynos model. Now this, I don't have an issue with - two different models with different performance released in different markets is not a problem for me. What IS a problem is that we are expected to treat these as identical phones with identical model names / marketing and place identical value on the product. No. Not acceptable. These are almost certainly two very differently performing phones with likely different camera DSPs and so on. That means they have different performance levels and are of DIFFERENT VALUE.Sorry but any chance I had of buying one of these (and I was strongly considering it for a minute there) just went out of the window unless the reruns of these tests show them to be an outlier. I sincerely hope it is the case as this is just obnoxious.
Retycint - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
That's also why I recommended a Redmi K30 Pro (SD865, soon to be released) to my friend, instead of getting a used S10+ or an S20. Getting an inferior chip (exynos) is unacceptable when paying for a flagship, and Samsung still insists on using different chips for different geographical marketss.yu - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
The main issue with the Redmi would be baked-in ads everywhere, potentially. Also there may be too much integration with Tencent, 360 etc. companies with a very bad record of privacy infringement.Shekels - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Ads are only baked in if you live in China and you get the phone for cheap. There is no integration with Tencent on my K20 pro that I use. And even then, you can always root and get rid of everything since Xiaomi allows you to root.iphonebestgamephone - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Ads are baked in india too. Who knows if they are in other asian countries too. Its still easy to rid of ads though.s.yu - Thursday, March 26, 2020 - link
Definitely beyond China, I know that much.s.yu - Thursday, March 26, 2020 - link
I hope that won't destabilize the OS, I've honestly not had first hand experience with MIUI.iphonebestgamephone - Thursday, March 26, 2020 - link
It doesnt. Dont even need root to disable ads. Just turn of a few settings. I put a custom rom as fast as i can though.Lolimaster - Thursday, March 26, 2020 - link
You can disable those after a few days.Peskarik - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Dude, it is only a phone, calm down ffs.Buy some other phone instead.
Personally I am waiting for Sony Xperia 1 II.
cha0z_ - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
It's just a 1400 euro phone that is sold in Europe with midrange SOC. *there, I fixed it for you. He has the all right in the world to bash them and I am baffled why there is no investigation and insane fine for what they do (essentially a scam, also there is a variant without the 5G antennas - how about that? :) ).
Fataliity - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
I understand your point, but my counter is..Is there any app on a phone, where you absolutely notice it without knowing from a review that it is different? No? Then just buy what you want and use it.
Stop getting stuck on these artifical numbers.
Sleepingforest - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
You absolutely notice at minimum on battery life though, and that is a major area in which Exynos takes a hit. It's also the topic of this article, which isn't exclusively synthetic benchmarks.And you can absolutely notice the difference day to day, not just in benchmarks.
iphonebestgamephone - Thursday, March 26, 2020 - link
Dolphin emulator.PeachNCream - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Some people invest a lot of emotion into their phones because ownership of consumer electronics contributes significantly to their sense of self-worth and self-image. There is nothing really outright wrong with that as we just cannot fairly judge if those sorts of people have emptiness in their lives that can only be filled through the act of making status symbol purchases.Retycint - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Hence the Android vs Apple, Nvidia vs AMD, or really any company vs company thing. Just buy the best product within your budget ffs, we don't need to hear how the other company "sucks" or is "greedy"philehidiot - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
To those who misunderstood my post - I place no status on a phone or have any emotional investment. I use them a lot for a lot of different stuff as well as work so having a decent one is a must. What I do have an emotional and visceral reaction to is being treated like a mug by companies like Samsung who can tell me a product is the same as everyone else's with the same name and same price and it being fundamentally a far lower spec product. I don't mind (for example) apple using two different SSDs in a model of laptop where the fundamental spec is similar. This is not that. As above - Europe gets a mid range SoC and pays the same as everyone else. It's abhorrent.cha0z_ - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Because the s10+ you will buy will have only one years of support left + some security patches. This is the most funny one - apple: 5 years FULL support with betas, day one release and all (and then security patches for years to come, 5 and 4s received security patch this summer). Samsung with higher prices now with ultra: 2 years roflmaooooo and people pay such a price tag with that kind of support and abuse on top of the SOC variant one?philehidiot - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
That apple updates occasionally brick devices where the customer has dared to undertake a repair themselves or degrade performance to encourage an upgrade is anticonsumer as well. Apple make a design screw up and then tell the customer it's their fault for holding their phone wrong. Sorry but Apple's history of screw ups is far worse. As for Samsung updates, my missus' S7 still gets security updates but you're right, android is out of their control and you can't guarantee updates being compatible after a period so they commit to two years. That is an advantage of apple and them owning the whole ecosystem. But, apple are anticonsumer to the core and the way they treated me with my broken Mac means I'll never take the risk of handing them a significant sum of money ever again.Spunjji - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
This. ^iphonebestgamephone - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
What do all those updates and patches do? Add new hardware features?philehidiot - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Actually, sometimes yes. My mac was sent out with an old version of the WiFi standard and a firmware update enabled a newer standard where, I assume, apple equipped the hardware to the draft spec and when it was confirmed, enabled it.iphonebestgamephone - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
Wow.lisabmassey - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
Make 6150 bucks every month... Start doing online computer-based work through our website. I have been working from home for 4 years now and I love it. I don't have a boss standing over my shoulder and I make my own hours. The tips below are very informative and anyone currently working from home or planning to in the future could use this website... WWW.iⅭash68.ⅭＯⅯJames5mith - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
"On the latter,I did notice that for the S20 this year this mode does seemingly a larger power consumption hit,
especially on the Exynos 990 variants of the phones,
something that wasn’t quite as prevalent in the S10 series."
That's one sentence. I added returns after every comma in it to highlight how unwieldy it is.
I know this is a rush article. But I expect better from Anandtech.
s.yu - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
I think it's fine.Slash3 - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
It's objectively not.peevee - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
This site is not targeted at English majors unable to comprehend sentences of the low-to-moderate complexity as the one you quoted.Edwardmcardle - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Moaning about a few commas is an article this technical and in-depth is petty and an insult to the amount of work that has gone into it . You will not find a better, more in depth comparison review anywhere.Pyrostemplar - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Well, what about this one:"Many times, when I have got upon the cars, expecting to be magnetized into an hour or two of blissful reverie, my thoughts shaken up by the vibrations into all sorts of new and pleasing patterns, arranging themselves in curves and nodal points, like the grains of sand in Chladni's famous experiment,—fresh ideas coming up to the surface, as the kernels do when a measure of corn is jolted in a farmer's wagon,—all this without volition, the mechanical impulse alone keeping the thoughts in motion, as the mere act of carrying certain watches in the pocket keeps them wound up,—many times, I say, just as my brain was beginning to creep and hum with this delicious locomotive intoxication, some dear detestable friend, cordial, intelligent, social, radiant, has come up and sat down by me and opened a conversation which has broken my day-dream, unharnessed the flying horses that were whirling along my fancies and hitched on the old weary omnibus-team of every-day associations, fatigued my hearing and attention, exhausted my voice, and milked the breasts of my thought dry during the hour when they should have been filling themselves full of fresh juices."
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Beautiful, isn't it? But, alas, Google is making us stupid... ;)
GC2:CS - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
What is the improvement from exynos S10 to exynos S20 ? Is it significant ?If Exynos implements cortex 78 (or whatever the name) it will match qualcomm right ?
What does this 120Hz battery “burnup” means for other brands that have not implemented it yet ? They will not implement it ? For example Apple has supposedly 0,5W base power draw with the 5,8” iPhone. They and other OEMS can not just increase it further right ? So no 120Hz besides tablet sized devices this year ? :(.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
App performance is a lot better on the S20, GPU is almost the same. Camera I haven't gone into yet.Yes they should close the gap with the A78.
I trust Apple will not screw up 120Hz. Everybody else, who knows.
eek2121 - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Honestly, the value of 120hz is debatable for non-gaming uses. I have an iPhone 11 Pro Max and I have no issues with the refresh rate. Even for gaming on mobile, the benefits of a higher refresh rate are debatable. I would rather see work go towards efficiency and GPU performance.FunBunny2 - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
"the value of 120hz is debatable for non-gaming uses. "bingo!! the decadent West is turning into, at least, 2 generations of distraction seeking mindless morons.
Alistair - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
not sure why you are attacking the west? the first time I met a seriously addicted student when i was working as a tutor, the first one was chinese, and the second one was koreanthe korean girl used her flip phone so much her hands wore away the keypad down to the metal and I had to talk to her parents about an intervention...
FunBunny2 - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
not sure why you are attacking the west?
this is why:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_Weste...
and, of course, the notion derives from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_D...
Alistair - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
just saying it has nothing to do with the west, do you think cellphone addiction is only a problem here?FunBunny2 - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
he who laughs last, didn't get the joke. :)iphonebestgamephone - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
What joke?ianmills - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
As someone who likes to read and scroll at the same time I have to say 60fps is inadequate. Try it and notice what limits your reading speedtipoo - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
For me the variable refresh rate that will undoubtedly come with Apples implementation (ProMotion) is more important than the peak framerate, the screen being able to update in less time after the system goes over a frame time limit helps reduce those frame drops that are just a little unpleasant.dotjaz - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
You don't read much do you? OLED with 60Hz is painfull to scroll across texts. VERY painful. LCD was no better.I have been waiting for 85Hz+ to re-emerge ever since LCD replaced CRT. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't go back to CRT, I just want higher refresh rate.
iphonebestgamephone - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Higher refresh rates are easier than making more efficient soc, and its nice to look at.eek2121 - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
The device could have the ability to do display stream compression ala DisplayPort 1.4. That would allow for 120hz QHD.Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
They already use DSC and have been for several years now. The physical interface still seemingly isn't fast enough to support larger resolutions at 120Hz.name99 - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Andrei presumably knows this :-)https://www.anandtech.com/show/13661/the-2018-appl...
But for others: Apple already has variable rate 120Hz working on the iPad Pro.
Given that it wasn't added to the 2019 iPhones, I guess Apple considers the power hit still too high to be worth it in a phone, but on the iPad Pro it doesn't seem to be a massive battery suck.
id4andrei - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Obviously it is the best mobile implementation but is it variable as in GSync? I understood it switches based on context to fixed rates from 120 to 60 to 24.tipoo - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
It's fully variable between the top and bottom, yes. Only the original generation iPad Pro had two fixed modes, 30 and 60 iirc.MarcusMo - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Don’t think the power hit was the main issue we didn’t see 120hz on this generations iPhones. I just think that there were no suitable OLEDs you could source that let you do 120hz.high3r - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
"While Samsung has managed to implement the 120Hz mode without any additional hardware such as additional MIPI interfaces between the SoC and the display controller IC (hence, why it’s limited to 1080p 120Hz)"Does this mean that Samsung will not release a 120Hz@QHD update like they announced a month ago? Not enough bandwidth?
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Unless there is a second MIPI interface or they use the existing lane at much higher speed, it's physically impossible. I've seen no evidence in the drivers that this will happen.high3r - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Thanks for the explanation. Wonder how Samsung plans to implement it when there's a hardware bottleneck. I'm also guessing that Vulkan would be more energy efficient at drawing the UI on Android but it's still using OpenGL for that which is a shame.Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Android UI is already using Vulkan AFAIK. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the data stream from the SoC to the display panel.Jetcat3 - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Sorry, I’m very much non technical here. So it is still possible for 120Hz WQHD+ as it stands from a hardware perspective?Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Based on what we know of the hardware, no.Jetcat3 - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Dang, that’s a huge bummer right there. Thanks for the exhaustive testing and results so far. I’m loving it!dotjaz - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
I don't think WQHD+@75Hz is possible let alone 120Hziphonebestgamephone - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Oppo has qhd at 120 already? Or do you mean the s20 series?iphonebestgamephone - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Is it really? Vulkan has been performing poorly on benchmarks and games compared to opengl on android 10.peevee - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
What kind of evidence in the drivers are you looking at?Can you quote the code?
Arian_amg - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
I was so hopeful for new g77 cores is there any advantage over g76 cores?or Samsung just spend less silicon using g77 cores at the same performance
and do you have any estimation how big are these new socs?
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
83.54 mm2 for the S865 and 91.83 mm2 for the E990.Under sustained load, the E990 isn't any faster than the E9820, so it's all terrible.
Zoolook13 - Thursday, March 26, 2020 - link
The SD865 has a significant process advantage over theE990, do you have any idea how much that comes into play here @AndreiThe_Assimilator - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
In related news, Exynos is still trash. The only impressive thing is how it manages to get worse with each generation.eastcoast_pete - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Thanks Andrei! How much of the difference in power consumption is due to higher OLED power draw when refreshing twice as often? Also, the black screen numbers are even more sobering for SoC power draw with the OLED devices; shouldn't they be notably lower with a dark/black screen for those vs, for example, the ROG II phone?ss96 - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
If your question is if OLEDs should use less power than LCD when displaying a black image, the reality is that OLEDs tend to use more power. While OLEDs are not using any power to light up pixels, the DDIC still uses some power. From the iPhone XS review:"The iPhone X, XS and XS Max all fluctuate around 480-500 mW when on a black screen, which is around 150mW more than the iPhone 8 LCD models"
The ROG II has on OLED display, so no difference there.
eastcoast_pete - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Thanks, that is both interesting and frustrating! In other words, even mighty Apple leaves a lot of potential power saving on the table, despite the possibility of capitalizing on "off" pixels not drawing power with OLED screens.Shark321 - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
So the OLED iPhones use only 40% more power to drive 270% more pixels? If your 150mW value is correct the the OLED power usage / pixel is way less than LCD.dotjaz - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Where did you get 270% more? You said 40% so clearly you know what "more" means, yet 270% the pixels is NOT 270% more, it's 170%.Besides, LCD's figure INCLUDES backlight while OLED has none while displaying black screen. If you want make that comparison, you'll need at least 50% white display
ss96 - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
That 40% is whole system power. When you take only the display power, the difference will be greater.Also, the 270% more pixels is incorrect. The comparison is to any of the LCD iPhones, including the 1080p iPhone 8 Plus, which has around 2M pixels, which is only ~30% less pixels than an iPhone X. It's even worse if you compare the number of subpixels (3 in the LCDs and 2 in OLED), because the iPhone 8 Plus actually has ~13% more subpixels than the iPhone X (~6.2M vs ~5.5M).
Shark321 - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
The phone in the quote is iPhone 8, not iPhone 8 Plus, so the resolution is 1334 × 750 Pixels or 1 MPixel. I compare it to iPhone X with a resolution of 2436 × 1125 Pixel or 2.7 MPixel.prophet001 - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
This thing is useless imo. It's production for the sake of keeping the producer alive.Speedfriend - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
So if you live in Europe the battery life is absolutely crap and the camera seems to be too.sanjeev.k - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Hi Andrei,I presume the s20 ultra sku you have is the 128 gb/12gb ram variant one and not the 16 gb/512 gb storage one, right?
So if I import the 16 gb variant I order to get more storage (what we really need is more storage, not 16 gb ram which is frankly unnecessary) will the battery life figures be significantly degraded due to the extra 4 gb Ram?
I don't think a 12 gb/512gb s20 ultra sku will ever be released by Samsung.
Thanks.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Yes this is a 128/12GB unit. I don't think the larger capacities will affect power efficiency, they're the same amount of RAM dies, just different size.dotjaz - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
I suspect not. 16GB=8x12Gb+4x8Gb, 12GB = 8x12Gb or 12x8Gb dies, the latter is clearly more expensive for both the die and packaging cost.According to Samsung, they clearly do have common sense in this case.
July 2019 12GB 10nm-class 12Gb LPDDR5, 5500Mb/s
https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-begins-mas...
eastcoast_pete - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
So, would going to a 30 Hz refresh rate for static screens give significant power savings? Does the S20 or any other flagship phone allow that?s.yu - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
That's the basic argument for IGZO, in fact it should go as low as 8Hz for static images, technically. However IGZO never caught on and it's hard to say about real life improvements.s.yu - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
It's bad...but no longer my concern :))))Everybody who needs the jack in a flagship this year suddenly has at least Xperia 1 Mk.2, Redmi K30Pro, NEX 3S 5G and Motorola Edge Plus to choose from! Byebye Samsung!
Alistair - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
same issue for me, unless at least they want to include a BLACK and high quality usb C to audio jack adapter in the box, that is guaranteed to work perfectly like my lightning earphones, I'm not interested in Samsung anymore (this is my first iPhone in 10 years)i went through 3 x USB only phones that all had trouble with their adapters: the Essential phone, the Pixel phone, and finally the LG G7 with the google adapter also didn't work well
i want usb c in an iphone, with working adapter at minimum
BenSkywalker - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Why would you use an adapter on a G7?Unless you are using a decent quality external DAC the G7 will embarrass it. Say whatever about software updates, camera quality etc, LG's higher end phones utterly embarrass anything Apple for a audio out with wireless and wired it's a slaughter.
Alistair - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
yes i didn't, I meant i tested the usb audio adapters from other companies including google and they don't work perfectly with that phone eitherxmind99 - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Hope Sam to close the gap with A78 but Exynos 9810-9820-990 all have some degree of problems and couple of directors,engineers and Ceo there deserve to see unemployment office right away not to forget battery burns,Fold screen,Bixby.At that level those errors means billions of euro waisted and nobody seams to care!Maybe someone here will have time to explaine to me why i'm forced to buy Exynos in Europe instead on Snap865 and from what i read importe one from US it's not a solution!Edwardsdad - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
Exynos is garbage and Samsung should stop using it on their flagship models. Exynos belongs in their midrange models like the A series.dotjaz - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
Wait for Exynos to return to ARM cores then pass judgement. Yes Exynos Mx core had proven to be disastrous over the years but that has already ended.Vitor - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link
My notebook has 48hz option that is great for 24fps movies.Samsung should have given more options like 72hz and 90hz.
dotjaz - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
It should have VRR. More options are welcome, but lower refresh rate when playing video and when you hand is not touching the screen (especially when not scrolling) is a must.EthiaW - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Brief conclusion:2k90 on enormous device=barely acceptable battery life
2k120: Inplausible for phones 2020
Perhaps apple should release an ipad mini6 with a12x and 120hz screen and just squash those slick android "gaming" phones.
BenSkywalker - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Rog II seems to do just fine @120Hz, top ten phone tested here for battery life. That's another big OLED phone.EthiaW - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Rog2 has 1080p resolution. I mean in 2020 phones have to compromise between 1440p resolution and 120hz refresh rate no matter how large they are.iphonebestgamephone - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
Find x2 pro seems to have decent battery life on gsmarenaPeachNCream - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
120Hz refresh rates are just the latest product differentiation method OEMs must implement in order to keep up with or stand out from their competitors. While it is a costly non-beneficial feature, failure to implement it will coat more sales than the awful battery life does so Samsung and other phone manufacturers are in a bit of a bind when it comes to implementing such things. People want this and some think they need it regardless of the implications so it will be slapped onto the spec sheet no matter the cost.dotjaz - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
Speak for yourself. I've been waiting for 85Hz+ to come back for over a decade. 60Hz is just unacceptable for flicking through texts. 90Hz+ is a must for OLED phone.PeachNCream - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
There is nothing wrong with how you feel and you don't have to defend yourself. As I said, lots of people will feel like this is an important feature they need to have on a phone screen. Your desires will drive the market and push companies like Samsung to implement things like this which is perfectly okay. Others, at the moment, can acquire a different phone with better battery life if they aren't interested in it or are more prudent about whether or not they feel as though they can see flickering. It's all good in the end if you do you.watzupken - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
I agree that 120hz refresh rate is just a way to differentiate in the currently crowded market. As usual, manufacturers will build on the success of a certain feature, and end up overdoing it, i.e. pushing for big numbers with no tangible benefits in day to day usage. This is particularly apparent in the overcrowded Android phone space, where fast SOC is no longer enough, and they are pushing big numbers for other features like 100+ MP camera, 100x zoom, >12GB of RAM, extra big screen (I feel this is just something they have to increase due to bigger battery and bigger chassis), 120hz display, 4K resolution, etc. Strangely, nobody seems to be so focus on storage with most base models still with a sad 128GB.Don't get me wrong, cause I would like a high refresh rate on my display. But the fact as I mentioned earlier is that 120hz is not going to benefit the mobile phone space much. To constantly do 120Hz will drain your phone's battery big time. In the end, you end up with some kind of VRR to combat this battery drain, which may drive your refresh rate even lower than 60hz in some scenarios.
Monty1401 - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
Potentially bad timing given all the time consuming testing been done to date, and unsure what difference it would make to the results, but have seen anecdotal accounts of the latest firmware (22nd March in the UK) update making a big difference with battery life & overheating.That said, unless Samsung manage to close the gap with ARM cores I will be looking elsewhere when I get bored of my S10+
watzupken - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
After I used the 90hz display on my One Plus 7 Pro, I think a higher refresh rate certainly is great to have. The smoothness of the animation on the screen is apparent when you go back to use a phone with 60hz display. As for 120Hz, I think it will be better, but I don't feel it suits well on a mobile phone since it will inevitably have a significant hit on the already limited battery.As for the battery life deficit between Exynos and SD, it is not unexpected. While Samsung charges the phone about the same price globally after taking into consideration the exchange rate, I feel the regions/ countries getting handsets with Exynos are being short changed. If they are to sell the phones with Exynos cheaper than those running SD, it may make more sense to me. While I applaud Samsung's effort to try to be like Apple to create their own SOC cores, I dislike the fact they double standard their phones by implementing both Exynos and SD SOCs on the same flagship model. Either they stick to Exynos or on SD fully. There may be other factors in the background for this dual SOC decision, but people can clearly see the difference and get upset. It also makes their already slow updates even slower and problematic having to develop the updates since the difference from what I read is not just limited to SOCs. Even the camera module is different between the 2 models.
s.yu - Thursday, March 26, 2020 - link
The camera difference is sometimes noticeable, sometimes not at all, and the Exynos also sometimes comes up on top, like the UWA night of the S10 series.I really don't feel this is an issue as a consumer is expected not to have the option of an alternate version, like many other merchandise, "oh Sunkist's oranges here are more sour than those in Florida and still costs more", do people really whine about that? There are many factors influencing local pricing, minimum wages, even, so as long as they list correctly the specs of the variant they sell locally I don't see this problematic as a business practice.
V1tru - Friday, March 27, 2020 - link
really a shame Anand lost the only one good iteration of Exynos: 9825 in Note10Ramandeep Singh - Tuesday, April 7, 2020 - link
Asus smartphones doing really great job in terms of the battery life. Even budget smartphones have good battery.Ramandeep Singh - Tuesday, April 7, 2020 - link
Asus doing a really good job in terms of battery life. Even budget Asus smartphones are too good in battery backup?AnkitGupta040795 - Tuesday, April 7, 2020 - link
What I love about the smartphones is their camera. This section never seems to disappoint.Ayaan_G - Tuesday, April 7, 2020 - link
battery life is one of the most essential aspects - thanks for delving into details for these devices !cool_Akshat - Tuesday, April 7, 2020 - link
am I the only one here who doesn't like punch-hole displays? it really gets to my OCD. either there should be waterdrop notch or a pop-up selfie camera, punch holes look like an ugly improvisationsdfdsf - Thursday, May 28, 2020 - link
Amazing Information on Samsung https://www.top10ww.com