Was somewhat worried about how these types of articles would work out with Andrei gone, but I'm glad to see it's more or less business as usual.
Somewhat disappointing X2 results. Could I ask if the test suites were recompiled for the chip? I wonder if any of the V9 required extensions would improve performance. SVE2, in particular, looks super nice to use IMO. Very impressive graphics performance though. I'm very interested to see power consumption.
Also, what does the sentence "It should be noted that Apple’s CoreML is currently not supported, hence the lack of Apple numbers here" mean when there are clearly A15 results in each MLPerf benchmark? Are those GPU/CPU scores? If so, I feel that should be made more clear.
No worries, but I think of you as part of the inventory here at Anandtech! :-) (Plus, I had the impression that Andrei was hired because you can't handle the workload all by yourself. This of course isn't meant as a dig towards you, Anandtech has been thoroughly reviewing *a lot* of CPUs and SoCs.)
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There are plenty of other, more important, drawbacks to buying (renting) and iPhone.
True the processer performance is not as fast as Apple but I'm on a S865 and have yet to find a situation where it was "slow" or not fast enough. So in the grand scheme these performance metrics dont mean much other than bragging rights.
I'd rather own a device that I have the freedom to do whatever I want to with than have "benchmark bragging rights" and be told what I'm allowed to do on a device Apple thinks I technically "rent" from them.
Everything said you said is true about iPhones being locked down. But if the speed doesn't matter, then you can buy a $300 Android Phone. There's no justification for expensive Android phones.
Yep Pixel 4a XL here. Never wants for performance, and the software is fantastic.
It's interesting to see how far the performance and efficiency of these tiny, low-power processors can be pushed, but it's pretty academic. Nobody uses them for AAA games or compiling.
It has a SoC that's faster than the QSD 888+ after it throttles, great battery life, display, and adequate cameras. The 3-year software updates, IP67 waterproofing, nice hardware, and premium features like microSD and Headphone Jack are just icing on the cake. During Black Friday sales, you could snag one direct from Samsung for USD $300 which is a steal. There's a good reason Samsung is trying to phase it out so soon, while they downgrade the successor A53 in the coming months.
Worthy competitors are the Samsung S20-fe and OnePlus 8t, but overall the A52-S is still the winner.
We have reached a point where even a low-range phone is "good enough" for 90% of users out there... Usually the draw backs of those devices tend to be in the display (LCD) or camera sensors rather than how snappy the device is.
Today I walked into a store to see what I could upgrade my Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G to.. It's been 18 months and from a camera and display perspective, nothing was really worth dropping another $2,000 AUD on... Because I am not going to perceive any difference in device snappiness... Even though I keep it in power saving mode 24/7 for increased battery life anyway.
Moto g power 2020, has a snapdragon 665, 1080p display, and stereo speakers alongside a huge battery for $229. With phones like that, I have no idea why people were buying $1400+ flagships.
Of course now manufacturers are cheaping out, using 720p displays and mediatek chips to push you towards their $500-600 mid range ptions.
Here’s where having a processor that’s more than “fast enough” matters. Software grows in complexity over time and Apple’s devices get updates for 6-8 years. What may seem like unnecessary performance now ensures that devices feel snappy throughout their lifetime. Your S865 would be struggling to support software that much younger than it. But of course you don’t get updates for that long and that’s why iPhones have a higher resell value.
Android phones dont need updates to continue getting new software. You can buy an android phone running android 6 and still play all the latest games and apps.
Iphones, OTOH, are screwed once updates stop for 1-2 years. Effectively both brands have the same lifespan, the difference being iphones are cut off by apple instead of developers.
Wrong. Both the citra 3ds emulator and aethersx2 ps2 emulator need android 8 and 7 respectively. Genshin impact and dead by daylight need 7. There's prolly a lot more.
This is factually incorrect, Google is fairly aggressively cutting off support for older versions of Android for app developers, and they are right to do so for security reasons. What they have not done is meaningfully extended the support lifecycle for hardware, so you get the worst of both worlds: Short support lifecycle and hardware that is decreasingly useful due to the app library thinning with every app update.
"Here’s where having a processor that’s more than “fast enough” matters. Software grows in complexity over time and Apple’s devices get updates for 6-8 years. What may seem like unnecessary performance now ensures that devices feel snappy throughout their lifetime. Your S865 would be struggling to support software that much younger than it."
I wound wager that "his 865" will do just as fine long term as the A13, the generational equivalent from Apple. The CPU is no the only relevant component for performance when looking at a phone. Other component like RAM, Storage and Wireless connection efficiency and performance are also very very important. The A13 isn't even faster in multi-core which is just becoming more and more important as times goes by and especially with Android which a more multi-core oriented system than iOS.
That's true. However, an iPhone will still age better than any Android device. That's the perks of having vertical integration. You'll have more optimised hardware, more optimised software, and more optimised third-party support.
For instance: iPhone 5S (A7) vs (QSD 800) Samsung Note 3 iPhone 6S+ (A9) vs (QSD 810) Sony Z5 Premium iPhone 8+ (A11) vs (QSD 835) Google Pixel 2XL iPhone 11 Max (A13) vs (QSD 855) ASUS RoG 2
And these are what I thought were strong competitors. For general use stuff, Apple wins. While it has some obvious drawbacks. And I can admit this as an Android user, credit where it's due.
"You'll have more optimised hardware, more optimised software, and more optimised third-party support."
I keep hearing this but it's not like hardware and software is only integrated and optimized on Apple devices.
"And these are what I thought were strong competitors."
I don't think those "were strong competitors", you just picked a few random phones and compared them. Like I've said the CPU is not the only relevant component. The SD 865 has a stronger GPU in sustained performance and much better connection performance. Also most SD 865 phones have 8GB of RAM. So in the long run it won't fare worse than iphones with the A13 as it's not a less capable and less efficient SOC it only scores lower in CPU benchmarks.
You keep hearing it because it is true. I didn't say the competitors lacked optimisation, but it's merely a difference of degree. No matter how hard Samsung can try, Apple will win by default simply because of those intangible advantages. Sometimes these are minor and meaningless victories, other times they are more pronounced and notable for users. But I digress.
Sorry, you're wrong. Those were some of (if not the) strongest competitors against those respective iPhones. I challenge you to provide even better ones.
I'm confident in this because I'm a nerd for these things. You can flip back to GSMArena and search for yourself. It is only to YOU that it LOOKS "random phones" because you're not as informed as I am, and secondly, because I tried to be unbiased and used diverse range of OEMs (Samsung, Sony, Google, ASUS). But there have been lots of interesting devices from the likes of LG, ZTE, Huawei, Xiaomi, etc etc over the years.
I personally don't like the QSD 865. Sure it was faster than the QSD 855, but not by much, and it achieved it by using more power, generating more heat and throttling soon. The QSD 870 is a much much better implementation. Whilst the QSD 888+ is much much worse, as they doubled down to use even more power, generate more heat, throttle even sooner. Why did Qualcomm do this? Just to try and catch up to the Apple A13! Like it or not, Apple is two-generations ahead of the industry now, and that's why they've taken it easy with the designs on the A14 and A15.
I suspected the QC 8g1 will be very similar to the QSD 888+, lackluster, and the independent reports that have been published recently shows its as bad as I estimated. So whilst there is a fairly big difference when going from the QSD 768G (best high-end) to the likes of the QSD 855 (worst luxury/flagship), there is very little difference in real-world use going from the QSD 855 to the QC 8g1 (best flagship). There's so much more to a processor than unrealistic synthetic benchmarks. So I recommend people to stick with their 2019 Samsung S10+, ASUS RoG 2, OnePlus 7t, and similar phones for another year. We will see a much larger improvement in 2023 with the Second-gen ARMv9 processors that were designed by the European Team. That will probably match or surpass the Apple A15 then, but it will leave Apple with a 18 month window to either: lose some ground, maintain it, or extend their lead. Time will tell.
Kangal, you keep touting how great the iphone is over any android device, but the truth is, for the most part any apple product will ALWAYS be a niche product, for one simple reason, price. apple is just too expensive for most people. i work with about 50 people, and only 4 of them have an iphone, and only one of them have a mac of some sort, and its all because of price. one who currently has an iphone, is looking at an android based phone, all because apple is just too expensive for what you get. its not called the apple tax for nothing....
I agree with you there. Apple is one/the most profitable corporation in the world. Their gaming division makes more money than PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, and Steam combined. That's why they don't want to move into AAA-Gaming and are very comfortable catering for Mobile Gaming, In-App-Purchases, with their 30% cut. Their telephone division sells only 20% of the worldwide phones, but they reap over 80% of all the profits in the whole market. The Apple Watch sells more watches than any other watch in the world, regardless if their smart or analogue. They have the highest Tablet sales in the iPad. And I believe the Apple TV sells one of the highest of all TV Boxes.
Now if the issue is merely about money, then the solution becomes rather simple. If I told you, that 40 of your friends were going to receive iPhones (locked to them, so no resale) for FREE, and I also told you it comes with a $100 balance to spend on Apps. Well, then there's little argument to be made here.
Ofcourse, we don't live in a vacuum. Price is important, so value for money is a reality we must consider. So that's the nuance. I can say iPhones are great and have many advantages, but I can also not use one personally, and not recommend one for people who are middle-class, poor, or budgeting.
have you SEEN the prices for their products ???????????????????????????? if they weren't the most profitable, some thing would be horribly wrong. doesnt change the fact, that apple is over priced for what you get.
i bet quite a few of them, would say no thanks. some arent fans of apple at all. and would just use those as paper weights. i wouldnt use an iphone even if apple payed me to.
" and not recommend one for people who are middle-class, poor, or budgeting. " so, you then go and pretty much insult them ? wow, get off your high horse. they dont buy apple products because they are over priced, some can afford them, but they dont buy them, as again over priced, and have better things to spend their money on.
Yes, I saw their prices. Some of the most expensive and over-priced products in the world, actually most, come from companies that are actually struggling financially. Apple is not. They are thriving.
So for them to be able to price their products that high, AND, be very profitable says something about the product they are selling. Clearly hundreds of millions of buyers every year, they do not agree with you, they see the value with their product and it's services.
I am not on a high horse, and frankly I don't think you know what you are talking about. Stating that someone is budgeting (rich or poor), or they are middle-class, or even if they are impoverished... IS NOT AN INSULT. It is not a joke, but a reality, some people can afford things others cannot. And for me to say, this product is not recommended for those people, that is very appropriate. It would be worse for me to say otherwise. Otherwise, it would be the case that yourself Qasar, is recommending that a person who is looking to buy a base-model Hyundai, you find it appropriate for them to also shop for an Audi.
If you CAN afford an iPhone, AND, if you WANT the features/characteristics of an iPhone. Then buy an iPhone. That is all I'm saying. If you DON'T like the characteristics of an iPhone, shop around. If you CANNOT afford an iPhone, then it wasn't an option to begin with. Nothing controversial there.
" Stating that someone is budgeting (rich or poor), or they are middle-class, or even if they are impoverished... IS NOT AN INSULT " i showed some of them at work this, and they consider what you are saying as in insult to them, cause you ASSUME that that cant afford it, they can, but they wont spend that kind of money on a phone ( iphones cost at least 1k here.)
" If you CAN afford an iPhone, AND, if you WANT the features/characteristics of an iPhone. Then buy an iPhone. " they CAN afford one, the do like the features and such of them, but as i said, WAY to expensive. not worth the price.
"If you CANNOT afford an iPhone, then it wasn't an option to begin with. Nothing controversial there." the same can be said about your lame analogy between the hyundi and audi.
bottom line STILL stands, apple products are overpriced. while others are willing to pay those prices, there are just as many who wont, who would rather spend that kind of money on more useful things then a phone, specially when from what i have seen, and heard, they will spend that kind of money, but then cant afford, or wont spend the extra 50 bucks or less to put that phone in a case to protect it from damage, which is ironic. i know quite a few out side of work, where with in a month, their brand new iphone, has a cracked screen, or some other damage.
Well, the problem here is that you are wrong, but you are too narrow-focussed to understand. This will seem insulting to you, but it isn't my intention.
I doubt you showed this comment to your friends. And even if you did, their reaction doesn't make you correct. If they WANT an iPhone, and they CAN afford it, but they CHOOSE to not buy one. Well, that's their choice. As I said above. There's nothing wrong or bad about that, I do not want to control people, I want people to make their own decisions with their own money.
And the thing you also got wrong, is that I never said the iPhone is the best. You can read my comments over again. Apple does a lot of things great, and somethings they do best, but that doesn't make them "the best". Because what is "the best" depends on an individual perspective. As an analogy, someone might think their porsche is the best car in the world, for another person it might be their JEEP, and for someone else it might actually be a Subaru. All three are correct for different reasons: fastest, versus durable, versus versatile.
The bottom-line is that, it is just YOU who subjectively FEELS like the iPhone is overpriced. Whereas, according to the world, it is not. The iPhone is the top selling phone model in the world. People all over the world are LITERALLY voting with their wallets for it, which means for HUNDREDS of MILLIONS they don't think it is overpriced (they justify its costs).
Me? I (Kangal) personally don't use an iPhone, as there are phones better for my wants/uses/needs. So I can't justify the cost, even though I personally CAN afford one.... BUT! That doesn't mean I am going to lie and be an Android fanboy. I can admit Apple's innovation and truthfully respect iPhones, without needing to buy one. With that said, there is A LOT of things I do not like about them also.
I think there isn't anything else needed to say on this subject. People can read all my comments, in context, for themselves.
" Well, the problem here is that you are wrong, " could say the same to you. " I doubt you showed this comment to your friends " i did, but i doubt anything i will say, will convince you other wise " If they WANT an iPhone, and they CAN afford it, but they CHOOSE to not buy one. Well, that's their choice. " the DO want an iphone, but YET again, they find they are not worth the price, as they find them too expensive. " The bottom-line is that, it is just YOU who subjectively FEELS like the iPhone is overpriced. " WRONG. most of the people i work with says the iphones are over priced, its not just me, why else do you think only 4 people have them ? but, hey if YOU feel 1k is not to much for a phone, then that is your view.
" The iPhone is the top selling phone model in the world. " and part of that, is probably due to phone carriers offering subsidiaries for phones, at least they do here. but you get stuck with at least a 2 year plan with them, some times longer, bust those i work with, still wouldnt get one.
" I think there isn't anything else needed to say on this subject. People can read all my comments, in context, for themselves. " agreed.
I'll switch to an iPhone when Apple lets me operate my phone my way and has the apps I need/want on their products. And the big one let me access the data on my phone without needing to install iTunes!
Android let's you do this? With root, sure, but that's hardly a supported experience & certainly isn't a stable one unless you are willing to go without Google services. Although I still will not pay for an Apple device, Google has convinced me they aren't interested in making Android great for consumers. They can't even be trusted to reliably sync browser data & that is a f*|<ing trivial problem.
Running Linux on desktop computers isn't exactly a "supported" configuration either. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be, and the same thing is generally true for Android phones as well (though not quite as true as it should be, to be sure).
They aren't the same thing. For one, yes, Linux is a supported OS on certain, mostly enterprise, machines, though I do understand your point. Second, phones don't yet have an equivalence to acpi & UEFI, so you're largely at the mercy of the OEM. Am I missing something?
I can plug my android phone into any PC and browse the filesystem to my hearts content. I can upload my own music to any folder I wish, load ROMs, ece.
" As usual, it's far slower than iPhones. People are getting ripped off when they buy slower Android hardware instead of iPhones. "
ill take the android phones over the iphone any day, im NOT paying for the apple tax, ( apple's products are just too over priced) and the fact, that you cant add storage to them via a micro SD card. so no thanks, owning anything made by apple, is more of a status symbol, then anything else now
That depends on what they use their phones for. For people who do not play demanding games on their phones Android phones are far better value for money, for people that do play demanding games then the higher performance from Apple may be worth the much higher cost.
The 6-10 years of support for iPhones more than mitigates what is at this point a very minor price difference outside of the very low end. iPhone SE is only $400 after all. Android phones in that price range are not great performers and have at best 2 years of support typically.
Even a used iPhone will typically have years more support than a comparably cheap new Android device, and for a non-power user that's great. I'll likely never have to upgrade my aunt's iPhone 8, which I got for her a few years ago when WinPhone died off and which has years of support left.
There are two main reason why older/second hand phone even iphone is not a good idea. (1) battery and (2) internal flash. Both getting worse and worse with the age.
Yup. Get them a year or two down the line with iPhones and save way more than enough to replace the battery. I've never, ever had flash become a problem in a phone during it's usable lifespan, even the old iPhone 6S a friend uses performs just fine with iOS15. Not even worth considering that aspect.
You can get sd870 phones from xiaomi like the poco f3 for 400$ with 256gb rom and a much bigger battery. The support still lacks, but you'll probably get 4 years or so from custom roms.
Depends, my 2016 150$ phone has all security patches till 2021 10 01 according to snooosnitch app. though gpu drivers are from 2018. Everything works as intended too.
It has the Android patches, it does not have any updates to driver or firmware security issues that have occurred since then (and there are vulns discovered all the time in that space). That's the diff. Also many of those third party Android roms significantly break the OS security model in order to run on old hardware, such as disabling checks for known vulnerable drivers.
The GrapheneOS project documents a lot of what's wrong with hacked roms for older phones, and is the only third party Android ROM I would install on a device.
Yeah its almost impossible to get those patches for specific hardware in the phone. Its usually taken from other devices with the same hardware that got the update. Graphene os severely limits phone choice though. I dont see why you wouldnt go for lineage with a wide selection.
Because Lineage's security model is completely broken. It's fun to play with on very old devices but I'd never put it on a device with access to anything I cared about.
U have to be kidding right. iPhone se might be costing just $400 in US but surely not outside US. Outside US, it costs $500. At $500 one gets a pure andriod flagship here in India. And in sale days, we get them further $100 cheap. Let's compare (in India): iPhone se $500 vs Xiaomi mi 11x A13 (GB score 3400) vs Sd 870 GB score 3400) Genshin Impact 53 fps vs 48 fps PUBG 90 fps vs 60 fps Amoled fhd+ 10 bit 120hz vs ips sd 60hz Bigger display 6.6 inch vs 4.7 Battery 5000 mah vs 1800 mah 8gb ram 128 GB storage vs 3 gb ram and 64 gb storage 33w fast charging vs slowing charging 5g ready vs backward 4g Modern minimalistic design vs old boring design Punch hole vs old boring design Peak brightness 1100 nits vs 480 nits Camera 64 mp main vs 12 MP main ........ Oh God please don't force me to tarnish this so called se edition here. Only ones who will prefer this are losers who think owning an apple mobile makes them richer.
I'm not saying Android sucks or trying to start a flame war. But that Android phone you mention comes with between 2-3 years of support before you are on your own, with all the security risks that entails and slow loss of app compat.
Meanwhile the iPhone 6S, released six years ago, just got iOS 15 which guarantees it at least four more years of support and all apps continue to function on it. A six year old phone will have a more functional lifespan than your brand new Xiaomi.
For someone trying to get into a phone cheap, have it just work, and who does not have an interest in upgrading (and spending another $400+) every 2-3 years, Apple is dirt cheap comparatively with 3-5x the support lifecycle for only 1.25x more money (using your comparison).
It's a no-brainer. Again, for those who aren't interested in the upgrade treadmill.
I'm lying because I'm including used phones in this. I bought a lot of used LGs, they drop in value like rocks. There's an LG G7 selling locally right now for $80...
I don't generally recommend a new phone period, but again on Android that lack of support lifecycle is a problem as used cuts significantly into the support timeframe.
The best method used to be to: - buy Used - buy ex-Flagship - buy with good Custom Rom support
Now? Flagship phones followed Apple's pricing, so used market is also less scarce and priced higher. Custom Rom community has also whimpered from its glory days (also lots of permanently locked bootloaders). And you can't replicate this tactic as often as previous (eg yearly or 18 months, is now 2+ years).
So getting an Android device either through Big Sales (eg Black Friday), and going for a lower ranked option (eg OnePlus 7t instead of 7t Pro) has become the go-to tactic. Just grab something that gives you as much value UPFRONT and hope you will get monthly security updates. Obtaining root or Custom ROMs is now considered bonus, mainly that most phones' firmware are Stock-ish and good enough. And keep that device as long as possible, until the upgrade to the next one is worthwhile (ie Display, Processor, Battery, Cameras, etc etc).
Tbf, my mobile phones tend not to last past 2-3 years 😬. Screen might get damaged, more often battery degrades too far for my liking. It's a tough life for a li-ion in a phone, regularly 40+ C in summertime and almost always being rapid charged.
I mean if that's your situation then yeah, support lifecycle means a lot less. My comments are really only for people who are not on the upgrade/replace bandwagon every 2 years. For those who need a new one (either cause they like the latest and greatest or because their phone is in rough situations routinely) this point I'm making does not apply.
"But that Android phone you mention comes with between 2-3 years of support before you are on your own"
You are trying to make it sound that after new Android versions stop coming the phones becomes obsolete. That is very far from the truth. Security risks are mitigated in a variety of ways on Android phones so he will still get security oriented updates through Project Mainline and Google Services long after the phones stops receiving OS updates.
"Meanwhile the iPhone 6S, released six years ago, just got iOS 15"
Which is runs quite poorly. iOS 14 run better on the 6s.
"A six year old phone will have a more functional lifespan than your brand new Xiaomi."
No it won't from a practical stand point.
"Apple is dirt cheap comparatively with 3-5x the support lifecycle for only 1.25x more money (using your comparison)."
Unclear what you mean here, I mean yes newer OS's tend to run a bit more sluggishly on old hardware, but that's where the superior Apple ARM implementation comes in: The same age android phone is not only out of support on any level but also runs terribly compared to the Apple device. Also, say you decided to stay back on iOS14 for a small perf gain, that *also* has another 3 years of support, meaning all you did was lose 1 total year to stay on your preferred OS.
Meanwhile that Android device stopped getting major OS versions and security updates half a decade ago.
"Unclear what you mean here, I mean yes newer OS's tend to run a bit more sluggishly on old hardware, but that's where the superior Apple ARM implementation comes in:"
No it doesn't come in. I have a 2016 SE, iOS 15 performs worse than iOS 14 which performed worse than iOS 13. Not to mention the visual and feature differences are small.
"The same age android phone is not only out of support on any level but also runs terribly compared to the Apple device."
Such a discussion is irrelevant. People are not buying old phones in the present, people buy present phones in the present and Android phones have evolved enormously hardware wise in the last few years.
"Also, say you decided to stay back on iOS14 for a small perf gain, that *also* has another 3 years of support, meaning all you did was lose 1 total year to stay on your preferred OS."
On a phone like the 6s "a small perf gain" is the difference between the phone feeling fine and feeling sluggish and the phone feels sluggish with iOS 15 which I don't think anybody would be happy about.
"Meanwhile that Android device stopped getting major OS versions and security updates half a decade ago."
Again not relevant. I recently bough a 52s. How do you reckon my situation software wise is? Did I make the wrong decision?
Iphones have support for a long time, but the experience isn't a particularly great one, and it's not as if old iphones receive all the same software feature updates as the newer phones. That aside, Apple is obviously doing the best in this area.
Yes, and that's my point. I am not a huge fan of the UI although it's been improving. I'd like a simpler dev unlock procedure. I would like to have a few more things where I can set a preference.
But I also have no interest in replacing my phone every 2-3 years anymore. And I cannot in good conscience give an Android device to a non-tech savvy user or senior given that they simply won't understand support lifecycle and will end up with a device that is easily compromised. Much better picking up a used iPhone off Swappa for such users.
I really hate that MS dropped out of this market, they met all the same criteria (security, support, ease of use) but had a better UI and more customization.
The android world doesnt need 6-10 years of support to still download and play the latest games, unlike iphones. Android 6 can play anything android 12 can.
The problem here is that the IPhone 6s not only has the latest version of ios but all the compilers updated to run current games, see that the A9 runs the immortal Diablo in its Medias settings at 30fps, the updates survive longer for the devices, already that in each version of Apple makes improvements in the APIs of the devices, 6s will only not be compatible with ios 16 because of Metal 3 that will only be available on the A11 Bionic, but see that the 6s has not died yet because most Apps need ios 11 to run.
"The 6-10 years of support for iPhones more than mitigates what is at this point a very minor price difference outside of the very low end."
LoL, 10 years of support? These same excuses are really funny. Phones hardly even last for 10 years, in general and after 2 years you need to change the battery especially with iphones so 5 years is the longest people keep their phones in general. And these are generally people that don't care about software updates, they don't even know what software version their phones has, they don't care what hardware their phones has and so on. The idea is that Android phones can be used for 5 years or more no problem. My A52s will get 4 years of updates but project Mainline will make it so the phone will continue to get updates well past that threshold, so I could probably keep it for as long it would last hardware wise.
"iPhone SE is only $400 after all."
The SE is a terrible phone in 2 very important areas: BATTERY and SCREEN. It's OK for phone calls and basic stuff that doesn't stress the batter but in such cases even a low end Android phone is just as good.
"Android phones in that price range are not great performers and have at best 2 years of support typically."
Well I payed 350 Euros, VAT included for my A52s 5G also with a free pair of Galaxy Buds2. An SE would cost me 500 Euros with VAT and I struggle to think about anything that would make it better as a phone. Other that a nicer built quality(which is irrelevant as I always uses cases with my phones) there isn't really anything relevant. Oh and the A52s has official software support for 4 years.
"Even a used iPhone will typically have years more support than a comparably cheap new Android device, and for a non-power user that's great."
This is silly, I mean, iPhone batteries are as good or better than their Android counterpoints in similar price ranges. And no, the SE is not a terrible phone, it's just not a power users' phone. Nothing wrong with mid-range products, and they exist in the Android ecosystem as well.
The issue with using Android past it's support lifecycle is that it is easily compromised, I've delt with dozens of people, most often seniors, with tons of spyware on their phones due to one click sms malware or following the wrong email link. It's important to have ongoing security updates to any computing device in active use as users simplly are not a reliable source of security.
"This is silly, I mean, iPhone batteries are as good or better than their Android counterpoints in similar price ranges."
SE's battery is way worse in comparison to any Android phone in it's price range. So your claim is the silly one sir.
"And no, the SE is not a terrible phone, it's just not a power users' phone."
I guess if you expect to be able to use your phone throughout the entire day you are a "power user".
"Nothing wrong with mid-range products, and they exist in the Android ecosystem as well."
It's funny how you try to defend it. I didn't say there's any problem with mid-range phones, I only said the SE is bad in 2 very important areas, which obviously you can't deny.
"The issue with using Android past it's support lifecycle is that it is easily compromised"
No it's not.
"I've delt with dozens of people, most often seniors, with tons of spyware on their phones due to one click sms malware or following the wrong email link."
Yeah, I'm sure you didn't. Realistically if you click or tap on anything every time, you can get compromised on any phone no matter the OS version. iOS for example is full of 0 day vulnerabilities, way more than Android.
"It's important to have ongoing security updates to any computing device in active use as users simplly are not a reliable source of security"
It is important but not life dependent, or better it doesn't make a phone unusable, useless device that will surely be compromised. I have lots of phones, some of them on older Android versions and I've never encountered a "malware" in the last 10 years. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, I should start tapping of suspicious links from unknown senders.
Android phones will never have better value than iPhones unless you go into the sub $200 range. iPhones have much higher resale value. Android phone values tank fast.
For there to be a resale value there must be demand for the secondhand device or its parts. Clearly there’s huge relative demand for secondhand iPhones as compared to most Androids. Why?
It's actually closer to ten years. Apple provides six years of major OS updates, however each major OS version gets four years of security updates which is why the iPhone 6S, which is six years old but just got iOS 15, still has four more years of support left.
Huge selling point for the people I support given their lack of interest in the latest and greatest.
resale value is cool and all but not everyone bought a phone to be sold later down the road. just like how some people simply didn't like iOS and it's limitations.
Some people use the extended life of an iPhone for other things; that’s part of why they have high resale value.
In other words people hand down three year old iPhones to kids or spouses. Some people want to keep their iPhones. Those people, as an example, refusing to let their iPhones go for sale increase the resale price by reducing supply in the face of demand.
Iphones are pretty bad for gaming for more than a few minutes unless you have very low ambient temps or are willing to use a plugged to the wall phone cooler. Something like the redamgic or legion are better for mobile 'gamers'.
I disagree, if you play games get android gaming phones, they can sustain perfomance compare to iphones which throttle a lot and mislead in lot of metrics (like operate in 120fps when you are on menu and drop to 60fps when you fight)
Also with Android you get more games options, like now Ps2 emulator has been released, you wont find something like this in ios, also lot of pc games have been ported to Android, you can enjoy them on go.
As an Android user, the results in Spec CPU 2017 are depressing. In every single test the X2 is far behind A15 (sometimes by nearly 2x) and yet in every single one the A15 uses less power. It is a bloodbath. I realize the synthetic tests are not necessarily representative of use case, but it sure looks dismal for Qualcomm. They are extraordinarily behind. Imagine if the next Galaxy S22 would use the A15: it would be 2-3 years ahead of all competition.
The lack of competition in high-end ARM-based CPU is just mind-boggling.
Yeah it seems very incremental on the CPU. They need a revolution just to catch up. But their GPU and NN seem like bigger leaps. Unfortunately both are more limited use cases - gaming and speech recognition primarily.
With the way Qualcomm has followed with the Wattage, they've only been achieving better and better scores at the expense of battery and heat. Basically they've embraced throttling. And that's not an acceptable solution for phones.
There's little to no performance difference between the QSD 855 to its siblings*. And that seems to be the case with the new Snapdragon 8gen1 for 2022. The biggest difference I can see is at the highest-end emulation, which is to run the latest console, with the highest graphical title, and scale up resolution as appropriate. Currently, this is the Nintendo Wii, running Metroid 3 Prime, and upscaled to x4 (1440p). On the fastest Android Phones (eg ASUS RoG 5) it runs around 50-60fps depending on the scene. On something like a Samsung S10+ you're instead getting 40-50fps. And the bigger improvement can come from the natural progression of the emulator itself (ie 2018 vs 2021), and by running Mods on it like MMJ. So these things can/do bridge the performance difference that I stated above.
What might be a good argument to be made, is when we get other more powerful/demanding use cases. Such as comparing Nintendo Switch emulation, running desktop programs, or even getting a new AAA-game that was developed for the handheld (eg GTA 6). Anyways, we will see a separation from current performance tier, at the earliest with 2023 using second-generation ARM Europe microarchitecture. Android hasn't quite caught up to Apple A13 levels of performance yet, and that's what I think when we will surpass it (Apple's A14 and A15 aren't that much better than their A13 either).
When I can use it as a desktop replacement I'll start to care. Until then, all you get with a "muh faster CPU" is your apps take three nanoseconds less time to open.
My next phone will be the GAA-FET (3-2nm) successor to the 780G, for the better energy-efficiency. If it takes five years, so be it. I don't game so I don't have a use for X2 cores.
Also limited to samsung devices. Perhaps Wereweeb has no interest in owning one of their devices. There are many that have no interest in owning a samsung based on past experiences.
Actually, what Apple is doing is both annoying (for iPhone owners) and logical (from Apple's bottom line POV). This and the prior generation iPhone certainly have the hardware oomph to drive a desktop setup akin to Dex, but that would, of course, mean fewer ipad pro and iMac mini sales. The ability to run a desktop-type setup on an iPhone used to be minimal due to the lower RAM older generations used to have, but that has changed. Being able to run a desktop environment on a $ 1,500 iPhone would really add value.
That said, the lagging performance of Apple's CPU+GPU in AI benchmarks proves most sites overstate the usefulness of CPUs in phones use cases when headlining with CPU specific performance metrics. Yes it's not an apples to oranges comparison, but it's proof that you should care about more than CPU benchmarks (particularly the consumer oriented Geekbench suite) even for Apple products when making comparisons between mobile phones.
CPU performance for notebook form factors will matter a lot more, but on phones CPU bottlenecked use cases are typically web browser / apps using Javascript and app compilation, and even for most of those cases your bottleneck will be connectivity rather than local processing. Heavy lifting is much more often done by ISP and various DSPs that are harder to benchmark.
As Andrei stated in his introduction to the S8G1:
"Qualcomm gave examples such as concurrent processing optimizations that are meant to give large boosts in performance to real-world workloads that might not directly show up in benchmarks."
This seems to be borne out by a reviewer of an anonymous device here:
despite some seeming inefficiencies for the other IP blocks when individually pinned by a benchmark. It also seems like SPEC17 is showing better efficiency whilst Geekbench is showing worse which indicates that Geekbench may need to optimize better for this year's ARMv9 implementations. Still a modest improvement for CPU this year though when all's considered.
"That said, the lagging performance of Apple's CPU+GPU in AI benchmarks proves most sites overstate the usefulness of CPUs in phones use cases when headlining with CPU specific performance metrics. "
Uh, no! It proves that a dedicated NPU does better than a CPU for these tasks. The point is that the Android tests go through Android APIs; the Apple tests are probably raw C that goes on the CPU (perhaps the GPU, but that's unlikely in the absence of using special APIs). Your complaint is as silly as comparing 3D SW running on a GPU vs emulated 3D running on the CPU.
A much better complaint is that I'm guessing all these tests were not compiled with SVE2 -- which could have substantial effects. But of course that requires the dev tools and OS to catch up, which means we have to wait for the official release.
And other companies have decided to dedicate more of their die area to NPUs and other processing blocks than the CPU. This is usually neglected in cursory reviews of the SoC and the pinned-to-the-CPU benches are overemphasized by some reviewers with PC gaming hardware review pedigrees fixated on what's easy to benchmark and what they know rather than what's impactful to actual phone use cases.
All that said the CPU on the iPhones is a gap step ahead of the competition for now, but Apple has consciously used more die area for this and emphasize this in their marketing. Note that Apple could market just the performance of phones and devices themselves but they unusually (for a consumer electronics oriented company) market the SoC separately in a slide in presentations and product specs. They de-emphasize the modem they use however in favor of stating what seem like phone level performance metrics. This is notable given that this is the same company with the marketing chops to morphed "Made in China" into "Designed in Cupertino. Assembled in China." (Glances at own iPhone. Hmm really...)
>> Qualcomm gave examples such as concurrent processing optimizations that are meant to give large boosts in performance to real-world workloads that might not directly show up in benchmarks.
This seems to be borne out by a reviewer of an anonymous device here:
That video review can't be used to make a case for hidden virtues of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 that for some reason have failed to show up in benchmark results. The reviewer castigated Qualcomm for producing a poor chip with many serious shortcomings. His comments about the X2 core suggest that he saw it as little better than a joke - a power hog that barely improves on earlier generation performance cores.
The reviewer did acknowledge that the new GPU was fast but he underscored that the performance gain came at a high cost in terms of power consumption. On those occasions that the SD8 Gen 1 showed any substantial performance advantage over the Apple A15 in tests conducted by the reviewer- some games - the advantage had disappeared after 10 minutes as progressive throttling took its toll.
The reviewer did look at modem performance (I'm not sure whether I understood the full context of the test) and once again the conclusion is the modem is fast and power hungry.
I don't think the reviewer conducted any AI tests, which I suspect would have been the place that the SD8 Gen 1 excelled.
What's mind-boggling is the performance using the ARM isa that Apple has achieved. Taken an equally mind-boggling amount of money to do it, more than anyone else can afford.
I guess that's one "impressive" benchmark score, just not the one any user would hope for. Less than 10% complete after half an hour is pretty abysmal. Doesn't bode well for ARM's supposedly much improved LITTLE core designs. Just for comparison, how did the last A55 cores perform in that test?
Remember the little cores are much slower than the big cores since they have very little cache and run at a low frequency. In SD888 the little cores are 6.4 times slower than the big core. That should be reduced to about 5 times in 8gen1.
I think having 4 little cores is too much, they don't contribute to benchmark scores, so you could have just 1 or 2 for background tasks and use the area to quadruple the tiny L2.
They do contribute to benchmark scores, 4 of them can be helpful when you need to load up all 4 big cores for the foreground and theres still some background tasks going on.
That does not make sense. The little cores have almost no L2 cache so will be competing with (and slowing down) the big cores due to the small L3. Having fewer little cores with a much larger L2 means more L3 is available per core, improving performance when all cores are loaded.
A little core is most useful for background tasks when the screen is off and mid/big cores are powered down. If you have more background tasks than a single little core could handle, then it's not really "background", and it would be better to run them on a mid core since that will be several times more efficient than 4 little cores (see the efficiency graph, the mid core in eg. SD888 has about the same efficiency as a maxed out little core).
When all 3 mid cores and the prime core are fully loaded in apps that use 4 threads, the little cores are doing all the background tasks. How much l3 do background tasks need anyway?
>>There is no AV1 decode engine in this chip, with Qualcomm’s VPs stating that the timing for their IP block did not synchronize with this chip.
This is very disappointing. The Radeon 6800, which launched over a year ago has hardware AV1 decode. I imagine the 2021 Exynos and Tensor chips will all do AV1
I'm looking forward to the '23 Nuvia designed cores for laptop compute, so let's see what they can do.
However, I think it's perfectly fine if they went with a smaller ARM solution for future phone SoCs: in the SG81 and the 888 they consciously chose to limit L3 cache sizes in their CPU complex (and hence single threaded performance) for 2 generations from the biggest possible to dedicate die area and power consumption for other higher impact purposes. To me, an ideal Apple phone would have 6 of their small cores so they can dedicate more die area to their GPU, NPU and ISPs.
John Carmack himself thought it best to throttle the CPU to half of maximum clock speed in even the XR2 (which is a 865 derivative using a faster clocked, bigger cache A77 as its biggest core):
It is indeed the DSPs and the GPUs doing the heavy lifting in the VR use case; I don't see it being much different for phones where wireless data rates are by far the biggest bottleneck.
The CPU benches you see headlining many web SoC reviews matter only for the benchmark obsessed, but pretty much no one else.
Your throttling argument doesn't make sense when the iPhone is more efficient also. You can run an iPhone at Snapdragon speed, and then you use way less power.
The bigger point is, for phones it's well past the point of diminishing returns to pin the A13 CPU where most benchmarks do since it's simply not a bottleneck in realistic workloads. You can make a very fast CPU for bench-marketing purposes and get semi-technical people excited about your SoC, but you won't need to go very far along the curve to both hit its "knee" and have excellent performance.
Apple made the core for laptops and desktops (for which it's well suited) but included it in its iPhone for marketing purposes rather than to address actual performance needs. Some cite the fact that more apps are coded in Javascript and websites are more Javascript intensive these days, but by far the bigger culprit in responsiveness is data connectivity and they were happy to use Intel's inferior modems behind the scenes while trotting out big but irrelevant Geekbench scores. Furthermore, part of their battery-gate issue stems from the huge possible current draw of their CPUs, which while efficient still use high peak power and current.
Qualcomm has certainly been worse in efficiency and performance across multiple SoC processing blocks for the past two generations due to switching to Samsung as its premium SoC fab, and I certainly have no kind words for them in making that decision. However, given what they had to work with in terms of die area and power draw, they did make the correct decision in de-emphasizing the CPU block for relatively more grunt in the other blocks.
Yes, that's right, but Samsung's inadequate process nodes are primarily responsible for Snapdragon parts (and all premium mobile SoCs based on licensed ARM IP) falling further behind. (Note: ARM SoCs are still seeing notable improvements in the execution rate of floating point workloads even as integer performance wallows.) For that reason, it will be very interesting to see how the TSMC fabbed MediaTek Dimensity 9000 acquits itself.
The more telling part of this story, I think, is the failure of ARM and ARM licensees to manage this transition to high performance mobile SoCs while maintaining energy efficiency leadership. In the mobile phone world, today, Apple not only wears the performance crown but the energy efficiency crown as well.
That means the efficiency gap was indeed due to process as suspected. There is definitely an advantage in using the most advanced process 1 year before everyone else.
Really good to see them pick up their game: bigger L3 cache and faster clocked middle cores seem to be part of the reason efficiency and multicore performance are up as well aside from process.
Some rumors indicate the dual sourced version of the S8G1 (SM8475) may be more efficient than the samsung node fabbed version but not as much as expected. It seems like Qualcomm picks different sub-blocks to optimize with each generation: this gen it was most certainly the GPU. Looks like the CPU block can be expected to languish until they bring up the NUVIA designed cores likely in '24. As their initial focus was servers, NUVIA may not have had a suitable small core in the pipeline for '23 which is much more important for mobile than laptop scale devices.
Yes it looks like Mediatek have done a great job. The larger caches should help power efficiency as well indeed. It will be interesting to see how the larger L3 and system cache compare with the Snapdragon and Exynos in AnandTech's benchmarks.
There's ALOT of performance to be gained by going with C/C++/Rust.
The fact that Android went with Java for it's primary programming language while Apple went with a C/C++ derivative could be what explains the large gap.
Since about Kit Kat or so, the bytecode of an Android app is compiled to native code at install time. But doubtless C++ would still be faster because Java overdoes object-oriented style and dynamic allocation. C/C++ code can work in Android using the NDK, but it appears to be a nightmare getting it latched in. Sometimes I wonder what they were thinking when they picked Java as their language.
Before, I used to care about these SOC improvements/benchmarks, etc. But I don't play games on smartphones. All I care about today is battery life improvements, not performance.
That's why I switched to Apple. I get battery life and efficiency improvements, and CPU improvements. The only highlight for Snapdragon is GPU. CPU improvements are almost non-existent this year, again. Same for several years, they get farther and farther behind Apple in CPU.
Apple has a long history, that whenever their next chipset offers more efficiency, they counteract this by using a new (power hungry) feature.
For instance, newer 5G modem, 120Hz screen, higher resolution, or more processing demand in their next software.
And at times, they even reduce the battery capacity. This saves weight off the phone, and they counteract this by adding other components like more cameras, or heavier glass construction.
All in all, the iPhones don't gain more battery life, they follow a general trend, and there are some outliers there (eg iPhone 6S+ and iPhone 13 Max).
As of now, and assuming Mediatek doesn't screw up the firmware, the Dimensity 9000 would best QC's "flagship" mobile SoC for 2022. Now, I remember reading that no major smartphone maker plans to sell phones with the Dimensity 9000 in the US, at least not officially. Is that really so, and if yes, does anyone here know why? I gladly do without the mm wave 5G channels (the 9000 doesn't cover those), which are really only available on Verizon, and even then only in some places.
Excellent article Ian! Those geekbench scores are extremely close to my tigerlake i5-1135g7 in fullsize notebook. Extremely impressive, look forward to sustained performance testing and comparisons to mediatek
How many times does it need to be pointed out that geekbench is worthless for comparisons across systems? Unless you are doing ARM android VS ARM android or the like, the scores are not representative of real world performance.
Comparing ARM android to x86 windows is like comparing an apple to a medieval sword. Totally different use cases.
How many times does it need to be pointed out the scores are directly comparable? It compilers the same benchmark source code using LLVM whenever possible and runs the same datasets. There are differences between OSes of course, but that only affects scores in a minor way.
And it's not like Geekbench scores show a completely different picture from SPEC results - modern phones are really as fast as laptops.
No they are not. You will inever beat the physical law. The only reason some Android or iOS devices have reached to the point of being comparable with laptops or desktops is because they have managed for the first time in history to grab some superior lithographies first
If that was not the case , laptops and desktops would be x3 to x15 faster than today's mobile devices. But if laptops nad desktops sold at 700 to 2000 dollars then how would smartphones be sold at today's prices ? The comparison would be abysmal.
So the industry found a solution. Keep desktops and laptops at ancient lithographies while grab for android and iOS the best of the best.
then convince the sheeple that they somehow live in a revolution of better and most economical devices while keeping them at the same level of computing capacity for the best part of the decade. Not only that , but also get tons of dollars for selling a dream....
I accept both geekbench AND antutu for making a quick comparison between mobile devices(and yes I know the qualms about Antutu but I think they are hysterical. And geekbench for making quick comparisons between platforms, having in the back of my mind their limitations, always.
Before the mobile devolution came we had a very clear picture of the computational capacity of our chips. Then the radicals came being secretive about their chips. So , though we still have a gross impression of the theoretical performance of desktop and laptop chips we are in the dark concerning the "mobile" . As far as I am concerned I take their claims with a huge grain of salt.
On these numbers the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 doesn't appear to be living up the 4x AI perf claim. Is there more performance to come? We will know soon enough but even without any further improvement in the AI scores the SD8 Gen 1 still looks pretty good.
With the SD8 Gen 1 and the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 posting good AI scores (unconfirmed in the case of the D9000) we can expect Google and even Apple to start raising the stakes on the AI performance of future silicon. Qualcomm, too, is going to have to lift its game with MediaTek looking very competitive in so many areas.
Apparently, D9000 has been benchmarked by this Chinese YouTuber (https://youtu.be/1ves1M4Ai-I) and it outperformed the snapdragon 8 gen 1 in all the areas. The performance power watt gap is massive between these two chips. Even in GPU benchmarks, D9000 outperformed the snapdragon equivalent. This is going to be an interesting generation. I wonder what will be the excuses of OEMs to use Qualcomm in the affordable flagship segments .
>>[the D9000] outperformed the snapdragon 8 gen 1 in all the areas<<
Not, exactly. The vlogger makes clear that the Adreno GPU in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 offers slightly higher performance than the Mali G710 in the D9000 but that the small performance increment comes at a significant cost in power consumption terms. So, while the Mali GPU offers slightly lower performance it is definitely the more energy efficient GPU.
Xiaobai's Tech Reviews ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TyEkQZvAEI ) - a Hong Kong based YouTuber - has come to similar conclusions to the tech vlogger (Geekerwan) that you cite. The benchmark testing conducted by both vloggers seems broader in scope and more careful than the usual fare on YouTube. In both cases the engineering test mules/prototype devices tested were equipped with the latest crop of premium ARM SoCs (that will appear in production Android devices in 2022). The similarity of benchmark results doesn't guarantee the correctness of those results or the completeness of the performance picture drawn, of course, but with independent sources getting very similar results it wouldn't be a shock if production devices follow the evident pattern.
Fans of android have a mania to use AnTuTu, the owner has already been arrested for fraud in the tests, it has already been confirmed that he received to increase the result. In addition to giving points for the amount of ram memory. it's a joke
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skavi - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Was somewhat worried about how these types of articles would work out with Andrei gone, but I'm glad to see it's more or less business as usual.Somewhat disappointing X2 results. Could I ask if the test suites were recompiled for the chip? I wonder if any of the V9 required extensions would improve performance. SVE2, in particular, looks super nice to use IMO. Very impressive graphics performance though. I'm very interested to see power consumption.
Also, what does the sentence "It should be noted that Apple’s CoreML is currently not supported, hence the lack of Apple numbers here" mean when there are clearly A15 results in each MLPerf benchmark? Are those GPU/CPU scores? If so, I feel that should be made more clear.
ballsystemlord - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Why is Andrei gone? I never knew he left.1_rick - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
It looks like he just left after his last article--his LinkedIn profile says he's self-employed as of December.shabby - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
That's a shame 😕ksec - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Will he be doing Freelance for Anandtech? Which is what a lot of writers too these days.1_rick - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Try tweeting him or Ian. Probably the best way to find out.Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
I was already freelance, albeit exclusively. But no, I'm not contributing anymore.1_rick - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Ah. Thanks for jumping in and clearing it up!tuxRoller - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Thanks so much for your work!I always looked forward to your articles and appreciated your willingness to engage with the community.
Best of luck.
eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Best of luck in your new ventures!GeoffreyA - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
All the best, Andrei. Live long and prosper.OreoCookie - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
Shame. Whoever takes over your responsibilities has big shoes to fill! Good luck for your future adventures. Your work was much appreciated.Ian Cutress - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
You're reading that guy's article already 👍OreoCookie - Thursday, December 16, 2021 - link
No worries, but I think of you as part of the inventory here at Anandtech! :-)(Plus, I had the impression that Andrei was hired because you can't handle the workload all by yourself. This of course isn't meant as a dig towards you, Anandtech has been thoroughly reviewing *a lot* of CPUs and SoCs.)
back2future - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
Thank you and best wishest.s - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
Thanks for everything, Andrei. Will miss your articles here.Bik - Thursday, December 16, 2021 - link
Have a good journey ahead friend.Meteor2 - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Best wishes for your future endeavours, Andrei! You'll be missed here.Trackster11230 - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Best of luck!naagin - Thursday, February 10, 2022 - link
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back2future - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
Thank you and best wishesskavi - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Also is there anywhere I could read up on the characteristics of each of the MLPerf benchmarks?ChrisGX - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
These might help:https://towardsdatascience.com/demystifying-mlperf...
https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/mi/2021/03/...
https://sites.google.com/g.harvard.edu/mlperf-benc...
https://mlcommons.org/en/
lemurbutton - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Boring. Until Qualcomm can do something custom, instead of just using stock ARM cores, it's not interesting.As usual, it's far slower than iPhones. People are getting ripped off when they buy slower Android hardware instead of iPhones.
cknobman - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
There are plenty of other, more important, drawbacks to buying (renting) and iPhone.True the processer performance is not as fast as Apple but I'm on a S865 and have yet to find a situation where it was "slow" or not fast enough.
So in the grand scheme these performance metrics dont mean much other than bragging rights.
I'd rather own a device that I have the freedom to do whatever I want to with than have "benchmark bragging rights" and be told what I'm allowed to do on a device Apple thinks I technically "rent" from them.
Alistair - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Everything said you said is true about iPhones being locked down. But if the speed doesn't matter, then you can buy a $300 Android Phone. There's no justification for expensive Android phones.t.s - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
Well, I bought Redmi Note 9 Pro with 2 A76 and 6 A55, and still happy with it. Not a speed monster, but for my everyday use, it's sufficient.Meteor2 - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Yep Pixel 4a XL here. Never wants for performance, and the software is fantastic.It's interesting to see how far the performance and efficiency of these tiny, low-power processors can be pushed, but it's pretty academic. Nobody uses them for AAA games or compiling.
Kangal - Sunday, December 19, 2021 - link
The Samsung A52-S is the flagship killer.It has a SoC that's faster than the QSD 888+ after it throttles, great battery life, display, and adequate cameras. The 3-year software updates, IP67 waterproofing, nice hardware, and premium features like microSD and Headphone Jack are just icing on the cake. During Black Friday sales, you could snag one direct from Samsung for USD $300 which is a steal. There's a good reason Samsung is trying to phase it out so soon, while they downgrade the successor A53 in the coming months.
Worthy competitors are the Samsung S20-fe and OnePlus 8t, but overall the A52-S is still the winner.
StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
We have reached a point where even a low-range phone is "good enough" for 90% of users out there... Usually the draw backs of those devices tend to be in the display (LCD) or camera sensors rather than how snappy the device is.Today I walked into a store to see what I could upgrade my Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G to.. It's been 18 months and from a camera and display perspective, nothing was really worth dropping another $2,000 AUD on... Because I am not going to perceive any difference in device snappiness... Even though I keep it in power saving mode 24/7 for increased battery life anyway.
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Moto g power 2020, has a snapdragon 665, 1080p display, and stereo speakers alongside a huge battery for $229. With phones like that, I have no idea why people were buying $1400+ flagships.Of course now manufacturers are cheaping out, using 720p displays and mediatek chips to push you towards their $500-600 mid range ptions.
Bd0N - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
Here’s where having a processor that’s more than “fast enough” matters. Software grows in complexity over time and Apple’s devices get updates for 6-8 years. What may seem like unnecessary performance now ensures that devices feel snappy throughout their lifetime. Your S865 would be struggling to support software that much younger than it. But of course you don’t get updates for that long and that’s why iPhones have a higher resell value.nucc1 - Thursday, December 16, 2021 - link
I can buy another mid range android every 24 months to keep up with software bloat and still come out ahead in dollar terms vs iPhone :)TheinsanegamerN - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Android phones dont need updates to continue getting new software. You can buy an android phone running android 6 and still play all the latest games and apps.Iphones, OTOH, are screwed once updates stop for 1-2 years. Effectively both brands have the same lifespan, the difference being iphones are cut off by apple instead of developers.
iphonebestgamephone - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Wrong. Both the citra 3ds emulator and aethersx2 ps2 emulator need android 8 and 7 respectively. Genshin impact and dead by daylight need 7. There's prolly a lot more.Reflex - Monday, December 20, 2021 - link
This is factually incorrect, Google is fairly aggressively cutting off support for older versions of Android for app developers, and they are right to do so for security reasons. What they have not done is meaningfully extended the support lifecycle for hardware, so you get the worst of both worlds: Short support lifecycle and hardware that is decreasingly useful due to the app library thinning with every app update.Nicon0s - Saturday, December 18, 2021 - link
"Here’s where having a processor that’s more than “fast enough” matters. Software grows in complexity over time and Apple’s devices get updates for 6-8 years. What may seem like unnecessary performance now ensures that devices feel snappy throughout their lifetime. Your S865 would be struggling to support software that much younger than it."I wound wager that "his 865" will do just as fine long term as the A13, the generational equivalent from Apple. The CPU is no the only relevant component for performance when looking at a phone. Other component like RAM, Storage and Wireless connection efficiency and performance are also very very important. The A13 isn't even faster in multi-core which is just becoming more and more important as times goes by and especially with Android which a more multi-core oriented system than iOS.
Kangal - Sunday, December 19, 2021 - link
That's true.However, an iPhone will still age better than any Android device. That's the perks of having vertical integration. You'll have more optimised hardware, more optimised software, and more optimised third-party support.
For instance:
iPhone 5S (A7) vs (QSD 800) Samsung Note 3
iPhone 6S+ (A9) vs (QSD 810) Sony Z5 Premium
iPhone 8+ (A11) vs (QSD 835) Google Pixel 2XL
iPhone 11 Max (A13) vs (QSD 855) ASUS RoG 2
And these are what I thought were strong competitors. For general use stuff, Apple wins. While it has some obvious drawbacks. And I can admit this as an Android user, credit where it's due.
Nicon0s - Saturday, December 25, 2021 - link
"You'll have more optimised hardware, more optimised software, and more optimised third-party support."I keep hearing this but it's not like hardware and software is only integrated and optimized on Apple devices.
"And these are what I thought were strong competitors."
I don't think those "were strong competitors", you just picked a few random phones and compared them.
Like I've said the CPU is not the only relevant component. The SD 865 has a stronger GPU in sustained performance and much better connection performance. Also most SD 865 phones have 8GB of RAM. So in the long run it won't fare worse than iphones with the A13 as it's not a less capable and less efficient SOC it only scores lower in CPU benchmarks.
Kangal - Sunday, December 26, 2021 - link
You keep hearing it because it is true. I didn't say the competitors lacked optimisation, but it's merely a difference of degree. No matter how hard Samsung can try, Apple will win by default simply because of those intangible advantages. Sometimes these are minor and meaningless victories, other times they are more pronounced and notable for users. But I digress.Sorry, you're wrong.
Those were some of (if not the) strongest competitors against those respective iPhones. I challenge you to provide even better ones.
I'm confident in this because I'm a nerd for these things. You can flip back to GSMArena and search for yourself. It is only to YOU that it LOOKS "random phones" because you're not as informed as I am, and secondly, because I tried to be unbiased and used diverse range of OEMs (Samsung, Sony, Google, ASUS). But there have been lots of interesting devices from the likes of LG, ZTE, Huawei, Xiaomi, etc etc over the years.
I personally don't like the QSD 865. Sure it was faster than the QSD 855, but not by much, and it achieved it by using more power, generating more heat and throttling soon. The QSD 870 is a much much better implementation. Whilst the QSD 888+ is much much worse, as they doubled down to use even more power, generate more heat, throttle even sooner. Why did Qualcomm do this? Just to try and catch up to the Apple A13! Like it or not, Apple is two-generations ahead of the industry now, and that's why they've taken it easy with the designs on the A14 and A15.
I suspected the QC 8g1 will be very similar to the QSD 888+, lackluster, and the independent reports that have been published recently shows its as bad as I estimated. So whilst there is a fairly big difference when going from the QSD 768G (best high-end) to the likes of the QSD 855 (worst luxury/flagship), there is very little difference in real-world use going from the QSD 855 to the QC 8g1 (best flagship). There's so much more to a processor than unrealistic synthetic benchmarks. So I recommend people to stick with their 2019 Samsung S10+, ASUS RoG 2, OnePlus 7t, and similar phones for another year. We will see a much larger improvement in 2023 with the Second-gen ARMv9 processors that were designed by the European Team. That will probably match or surpass the Apple A15 then, but it will leave Apple with a 18 month window to either: lose some ground, maintain it, or extend their lead. Time will tell.
Qasar - Sunday, December 26, 2021 - link
Kangal, you keep touting how great the iphone is over any android device, but the truth is, for the most part any apple product will ALWAYS be a niche product, for one simple reason, price. apple is just too expensive for most people. i work with about 50 people, and only 4 of them have an iphone, and only one of them have a mac of some sort, and its all because of price. one who currently has an iphone, is looking at an android based phone, all because apple is just too expensive for what you get. its not called the apple tax for nothing....Kangal - Monday, December 27, 2021 - link
I agree with you there.Apple is one/the most profitable corporation in the world. Their gaming division makes more money than PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, and Steam combined. That's why they don't want to move into AAA-Gaming and are very comfortable catering for Mobile Gaming, In-App-Purchases, with their 30% cut. Their telephone division sells only 20% of the worldwide phones, but they reap over 80% of all the profits in the whole market. The Apple Watch sells more watches than any other watch in the world, regardless if their smart or analogue. They have the highest Tablet sales in the iPad. And I believe the Apple TV sells one of the highest of all TV Boxes.
Now if the issue is merely about money, then the solution becomes rather simple. If I told you, that 40 of your friends were going to receive iPhones (locked to them, so no resale) for FREE, and I also told you it comes with a $100 balance to spend on Apps. Well, then there's little argument to be made here.
Ofcourse, we don't live in a vacuum. Price is important, so value for money is a reality we must consider. So that's the nuance. I can say iPhones are great and have many advantages, but I can also not use one personally, and not recommend one for people who are middle-class, poor, or budgeting.
Qasar - Monday, December 27, 2021 - link
have you SEEN the prices for their products ???????????????????????????? if they weren't the most profitable, some thing would be horribly wrong. doesnt change the fact, that apple is over priced for what you get.i bet quite a few of them, would say no thanks. some arent fans of apple at all. and would just use those as paper weights. i wouldnt use an iphone even if apple payed me to.
" and not recommend one for people who are middle-class, poor, or budgeting. " so, you then go and pretty much insult them ? wow, get off your high horse. they dont buy apple products because they are over priced, some can afford them, but they dont buy them, as again over priced, and have better things to spend their money on.
Kangal - Wednesday, December 29, 2021 - link
Yes, I saw their prices.Some of the most expensive and over-priced products in the world, actually most, come from companies that are actually struggling financially. Apple is not. They are thriving.
So for them to be able to price their products that high, AND, be very profitable says something about the product they are selling. Clearly hundreds of millions of buyers every year, they do not agree with you, they see the value with their product and it's services.
I am not on a high horse, and frankly I don't think you know what you are talking about. Stating that someone is budgeting (rich or poor), or they are middle-class, or even if they are impoverished... IS NOT AN INSULT. It is not a joke, but a reality, some people can afford things others cannot. And for me to say, this product is not recommended for those people, that is very appropriate. It would be worse for me to say otherwise. Otherwise, it would be the case that yourself Qasar, is recommending that a person who is looking to buy a base-model Hyundai, you find it appropriate for them to also shop for an Audi.
If you CAN afford an iPhone, AND, if you WANT the features/characteristics of an iPhone. Then buy an iPhone. That is all I'm saying. If you DON'T like the characteristics of an iPhone, shop around. If you CANNOT afford an iPhone, then it wasn't an option to begin with. Nothing controversial there.
Qasar - Wednesday, December 29, 2021 - link
" Stating that someone is budgeting (rich or poor), or they are middle-class, or even if they are impoverished... IS NOT AN INSULT " i showed some of them at work this, and they consider what you are saying as in insult to them, cause you ASSUME that that cant afford it, they can, but they wont spend that kind of money on a phone ( iphones cost at least 1k here.)" If you CAN afford an iPhone, AND, if you WANT the features/characteristics of an iPhone. Then buy an iPhone. " they CAN afford one, the do like the features and such of them, but as i said, WAY to expensive. not worth the price.
"If you CANNOT afford an iPhone, then it wasn't an option to begin with. Nothing controversial there." the same can be said about your lame analogy between the hyundi and audi.
bottom line STILL stands, apple products are overpriced. while others are willing to pay those prices, there are just as many who wont, who would rather spend that kind of money on more useful things then a phone, specially when from what i have seen, and heard, they will spend that kind of money, but then cant afford, or wont spend the extra 50 bucks or less to put that phone in a case to protect it from damage, which is ironic. i know quite a few out side of work, where with in a month, their brand new iphone, has a cracked screen, or some other damage.
Kangal - Thursday, December 30, 2021 - link
Well, the problem here is that you are wrong, but you are too narrow-focussed to understand. This will seem insulting to you, but it isn't my intention.I doubt you showed this comment to your friends. And even if you did, their reaction doesn't make you correct. If they WANT an iPhone, and they CAN afford it, but they CHOOSE to not buy one. Well, that's their choice. As I said above. There's nothing wrong or bad about that, I do not want to control people, I want people to make their own decisions with their own money.
And the thing you also got wrong, is that I never said the iPhone is the best. You can read my comments over again. Apple does a lot of things great, and somethings they do best, but that doesn't make them "the best". Because what is "the best" depends on an individual perspective. As an analogy, someone might think their porsche is the best car in the world, for another person it might be their JEEP, and for someone else it might actually be a Subaru. All three are correct for different reasons: fastest, versus durable, versus versatile.
The bottom-line is that, it is just YOU who subjectively FEELS like the iPhone is overpriced. Whereas, according to the world, it is not. The iPhone is the top selling phone model in the world. People all over the world are LITERALLY voting with their wallets for it, which means for HUNDREDS of MILLIONS they don't think it is overpriced (they justify its costs).
Me?
I (Kangal) personally don't use an iPhone, as there are phones better for my wants/uses/needs. So I can't justify the cost, even though I personally CAN afford one.... BUT! That doesn't mean I am going to lie and be an Android fanboy. I can admit Apple's innovation and truthfully respect iPhones, without needing to buy one. With that said, there is A LOT of things I do not like about them also.
I think there isn't anything else needed to say on this subject. People can read all my comments, in context, for themselves.
Qasar - Friday, December 31, 2021 - link
" Well, the problem here is that you are wrong, " could say the same to you." I doubt you showed this comment to your friends " i did, but i doubt anything i will say, will convince you other wise
" If they WANT an iPhone, and they CAN afford it, but they CHOOSE to not buy one. Well, that's their choice. " the DO want an iphone, but YET again, they find they are not worth the price, as they find them too expensive.
" The bottom-line is that, it is just YOU who subjectively FEELS like the iPhone is overpriced. " WRONG. most of the people i work with says the iphones are over priced, its not just me, why else do you think only 4 people have them ? but, hey if YOU feel 1k is not to much for a phone, then that is your view.
" The iPhone is the top selling phone model in the world. " and part of that, is probably due to phone carriers offering subsidiaries for phones, at least they do here. but you get stuck with at least a 2 year plan with them, some times longer, bust those i work with, still wouldnt get one.
" I think there isn't anything else needed to say on this subject. People can read all my comments, in context, for themselves. " agreed.
Wereweeb - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Now install a privacy-oriented open-source OS on the "supercomputer" you use to watch youtube.Oh yeah, no, your data is all going to Apple.
dubyadubya - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
I'll switch to an iPhone when Apple lets me operate my phone my way and has the apps I need/want on their products. And the big one let me access the data on my phone without needing to install iTunes!tuxRoller - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Android let's you do this? With root, sure, but that's hardly a supported experience & certainly isn't a stable one unless you are willing to go without Google services.Although I still will not pay for an Apple device, Google has convinced me they aren't interested in making Android great for consumers. They can't even be trusted to reliably sync browser data & that is a f*|<ing trivial problem.
Dolda2000 - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Running Linux on desktop computers isn't exactly a "supported" configuration either. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be, and the same thing is generally true for Android phones as well (though not quite as true as it should be, to be sure).tuxRoller - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
They aren't the same thing.For one, yes, Linux is a supported OS on certain, mostly enterprise, machines, though I do understand your point.
Second, phones don't yet have an equivalence to acpi & UEFI, so you're largely at the mercy of the OEM.
Am I missing something?
Fulljack - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
nah, I'm using root and all my google services—even banking apps are fine. what are you talking about?Meteor2 - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Chrome syncs perfectly between Windows, iPadOS, and Android for me.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
I can plug my android phone into any PC and browse the filesystem to my hearts content. I can upload my own music to any folder I wish, load ROMs, ece.Nicon0s - Saturday, December 18, 2021 - link
"Android let's you do this?"Yes it does.
Qasar - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
" As usual, it's far slower than iPhones. People are getting ripped off when they buy slower Android hardware instead of iPhones. "ill take the android phones over the iphone any day, im NOT paying for the apple tax, ( apple's products are just too over priced) and the fact, that you cant add storage to them via a micro SD card. so no thanks, owning anything made by apple, is more of a status symbol, then anything else now
Duncan Macdonald - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
That depends on what they use their phones for. For people who do not play demanding games on their phones Android phones are far better value for money, for people that do play demanding games then the higher performance from Apple may be worth the much higher cost.Reflex - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
The 6-10 years of support for iPhones more than mitigates what is at this point a very minor price difference outside of the very low end. iPhone SE is only $400 after all. Android phones in that price range are not great performers and have at best 2 years of support typically.Even a used iPhone will typically have years more support than a comparably cheap new Android device, and for a non-power user that's great. I'll likely never have to upgrade my aunt's iPhone 8, which I got for her a few years ago when WinPhone died off and which has years of support left.
kgardas - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
There are two main reason why older/second hand phone even iphone is not a good idea. (1) battery and (2) internal flash. Both getting worse and worse with the age.Glaurung - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
The amount you save buying secondhand will more than cover the cost of a battery replacement.Reflex - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
Yup. Get them a year or two down the line with iPhones and save way more than enough to replace the battery. I've never, ever had flash become a problem in a phone during it's usable lifespan, even the old iPhone 6S a friend uses performs just fine with iOS15. Not even worth considering that aspect.iphonebestgamephone - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
You can get sd870 phones from xiaomi like the poco f3 for 400$ with 256gb rom and a much bigger battery. The support still lacks, but you'll probably get 4 years or so from custom roms.bernstein - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
custom roms are awesome. But they’re for the 1% only. The other 99% require a phone thats uptodate without even pushing a virtual button.iphonebestgamephone - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
Samsung it is then, though for 400$ you will only get like sd778g and 4 years support. That soc will also be good enough for the 99%.Reflex - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
This, plus custom roms do not contain updated drivers and firmware to fix security issues past vendor support, they just hack the OS layer up to date.iphonebestgamephone - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Depends, my 2016 150$ phone has all security patches till 2021 10 01 according to snooosnitch app. though gpu drivers are from 2018. Everything works as intended too.Reflex - Monday, December 20, 2021 - link
It has the Android patches, it does not have any updates to driver or firmware security issues that have occurred since then (and there are vulns discovered all the time in that space). That's the diff. Also many of those third party Android roms significantly break the OS security model in order to run on old hardware, such as disabling checks for known vulnerable drivers.The GrapheneOS project documents a lot of what's wrong with hacked roms for older phones, and is the only third party Android ROM I would install on a device.
iphonebestgamephone - Monday, December 20, 2021 - link
Yeah its almost impossible to get those patches for specific hardware in the phone. Its usually taken from other devices with the same hardware that got the update. Graphene os severely limits phone choice though. I dont see why you wouldnt go for lineage with a wide selection.Reflex - Tuesday, December 21, 2021 - link
Because Lineage's security model is completely broken. It's fun to play with on very old devices but I'd never put it on a device with access to anything I cared about.iphonebestgamephone - Tuesday, December 21, 2021 - link
What exactly? How is it any different from stock roms?Mujeeb - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
U have to be kidding right. iPhone se might be costing just $400 in US but surely not outside US. Outside US, it costs $500.At $500 one gets a pure andriod flagship here in India. And in sale days, we get them further $100 cheap.
Let's compare (in India):
iPhone se $500 vs Xiaomi mi 11x
A13 (GB score 3400) vs Sd 870 GB score 3400)
Genshin Impact 53 fps vs 48 fps
PUBG 90 fps vs 60 fps
Amoled fhd+ 10 bit 120hz vs ips sd 60hz
Bigger display 6.6 inch vs 4.7
Battery 5000 mah vs 1800 mah
8gb ram 128 GB storage vs 3 gb ram and 64 gb storage
33w fast charging vs slowing charging
5g ready vs backward 4g
Modern minimalistic design vs old boring design
Punch hole vs old boring design
Peak brightness 1100 nits vs 480 nits
Camera 64 mp main vs 12 MP main
........
Oh God please don't force me to tarnish this so called se edition here.
Only ones who will prefer this are losers who think owning an apple mobile makes them richer.
1_rick - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
"Only ones who will prefer this are losers who think owning an apple mobile makes them richer."Don't forget about the tiny hands brigade of twentysomethings with perfect eyes. They like their small screens, too.
Fulljack - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
or people who just prefer small screen, tho.isthisavailable - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
lol this is such a boomer commentReflex - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
I'm not saying Android sucks or trying to start a flame war. But that Android phone you mention comes with between 2-3 years of support before you are on your own, with all the security risks that entails and slow loss of app compat.Meanwhile the iPhone 6S, released six years ago, just got iOS 15 which guarantees it at least four more years of support and all apps continue to function on it. A six year old phone will have a more functional lifespan than your brand new Xiaomi.
For someone trying to get into a phone cheap, have it just work, and who does not have an interest in upgrading (and spending another $400+) every 2-3 years, Apple is dirt cheap comparatively with 3-5x the support lifecycle for only 1.25x more money (using your comparison).
It's a no-brainer. Again, for those who aren't interested in the upgrade treadmill.
flyingpants265 - Thursday, December 16, 2021 - link
Well, every phone I've used from Android has cost less than $250 so at least it's not as bad as buying a new Galaxy phone every 2 years.flyingpants265 - Thursday, December 16, 2021 - link
I'm lying because I'm including used phones in this. I bought a lot of used LGs, they drop in value like rocks. There's an LG G7 selling locally right now for $80......Maybe buying a brand new phone is for suckers.
Reflex - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
I don't generally recommend a new phone period, but again on Android that lack of support lifecycle is a problem as used cuts significantly into the support timeframe.Kangal - Sunday, December 19, 2021 - link
The best method used to be to:- buy Used
- buy ex-Flagship
- buy with good Custom Rom support
Now?
Flagship phones followed Apple's pricing, so used market is also less scarce and priced higher. Custom Rom community has also whimpered from its glory days (also lots of permanently locked bootloaders). And you can't replicate this tactic as often as previous (eg yearly or 18 months, is now 2+ years).
So getting an Android device either through Big Sales (eg Black Friday), and going for a lower ranked option (eg OnePlus 7t instead of 7t Pro) has become the go-to tactic. Just grab something that gives you as much value UPFRONT and hope you will get monthly security updates. Obtaining root or Custom ROMs is now considered bonus, mainly that most phones' firmware are Stock-ish and good enough. And keep that device as long as possible, until the upgrade to the next one is worthwhile (ie Display, Processor, Battery, Cameras, etc etc).
Reflex - Monday, December 20, 2021 - link
The issue though is that security updates are only every 2-3 years. Very weak in this day and age.Meteor2 - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Tbf, my mobile phones tend not to last past 2-3 years 😬. Screen might get damaged, more often battery degrades too far for my liking. It's a tough life for a li-ion in a phone, regularly 40+ C in summertime and almost always being rapid charged.Reflex - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
I mean if that's your situation then yeah, support lifecycle means a lot less. My comments are really only for people who are not on the upgrade/replace bandwagon every 2 years. For those who need a new one (either cause they like the latest and greatest or because their phone is in rough situations routinely) this point I'm making does not apply.Nicon0s - Saturday, December 18, 2021 - link
"But that Android phone you mention comes with between 2-3 years of support before you are on your own"You are trying to make it sound that after new Android versions stop coming the phones becomes obsolete. That is very far from the truth.
Security risks are mitigated in a variety of ways on Android phones so he will still get security oriented updates through Project Mainline and Google Services long after the phones stops receiving OS updates.
"Meanwhile the iPhone 6S, released six years ago, just got iOS 15"
Which is runs quite poorly. iOS 14 run better on the 6s.
"A six year old phone will have a more functional lifespan than your brand new Xiaomi."
No it won't from a practical stand point.
"Apple is dirt cheap comparatively with 3-5x the support lifecycle for only 1.25x more money (using your comparison)."
And it's full of important hardware compromises.
Reflex - Monday, December 20, 2021 - link
Unclear what you mean here, I mean yes newer OS's tend to run a bit more sluggishly on old hardware, but that's where the superior Apple ARM implementation comes in: The same age android phone is not only out of support on any level but also runs terribly compared to the Apple device. Also, say you decided to stay back on iOS14 for a small perf gain, that *also* has another 3 years of support, meaning all you did was lose 1 total year to stay on your preferred OS.Meanwhile that Android device stopped getting major OS versions and security updates half a decade ago.
Nicon0s - Saturday, December 25, 2021 - link
"Unclear what you mean here, I mean yes newer OS's tend to run a bit more sluggishly on old hardware, but that's where the superior Apple ARM implementation comes in:"No it doesn't come in. I have a 2016 SE, iOS 15 performs worse than iOS 14 which performed worse than iOS 13. Not to mention the visual and feature differences are small.
"The same age android phone is not only out of support on any level but also runs terribly compared to the Apple device."
Such a discussion is irrelevant. People are not buying old phones in the present, people buy present phones in the present and Android phones have evolved enormously hardware wise in the last few years.
"Also, say you decided to stay back on iOS14 for a small perf gain, that *also* has another 3 years of support, meaning all you did was lose 1 total year to stay on your preferred OS."
On a phone like the 6s "a small perf gain" is the difference between the phone feeling fine and feeling sluggish and the phone feels sluggish with iOS 15 which I don't think anybody would be happy about.
"Meanwhile that Android device stopped getting major OS versions and security updates half a decade ago."
Again not relevant. I recently bough a 52s. How do you reckon my situation software wise is? Did I make the wrong decision?
Surfacround - Tuesday, December 21, 2021 - link
your spec is is wrong. it is a 48mp camera… https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_mi_11x-10775.phpwhat else is wrong in your spec list?
tuxRoller - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Iphones have support for a long time, but the experience isn't a particularly great one, and it's not as if old iphones receive all the same software feature updates as the newer phones.That aside, Apple is obviously doing the best in this area.
Reflex - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
Yes, and that's my point. I am not a huge fan of the UI although it's been improving. I'd like a simpler dev unlock procedure. I would like to have a few more things where I can set a preference.But I also have no interest in replacing my phone every 2-3 years anymore. And I cannot in good conscience give an Android device to a non-tech savvy user or senior given that they simply won't understand support lifecycle and will end up with a device that is easily compromised. Much better picking up a used iPhone off Swappa for such users.
I really hate that MS dropped out of this market, they met all the same criteria (security, support, ease of use) but had a better UI and more customization.
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
The android world doesnt need 6-10 years of support to still download and play the latest games, unlike iphones. Android 6 can play anything android 12 can.Now try that with iOS 9.
Sergio Luiz - Saturday, June 25, 2022 - link
The problem here is that the IPhone 6s not only has the latest version of ios but all the compilers updated to run current games, see that the A9 runs the immortal Diablo in its Medias settings at 30fps, the updates survive longer for the devices, already that in each version of Apple makes improvements in the APIs of the devices, 6s will only not be compatible with ios 16 because of Metal 3 that will only be available on the A11 Bionic, but see that the 6s has not died yet because most Apps need ios 11 to run.Nicon0s - Saturday, December 18, 2021 - link
"The 6-10 years of support for iPhones more than mitigates what is at this point a very minor price difference outside of the very low end."LoL, 10 years of support? These same excuses are really funny.
Phones hardly even last for 10 years, in general and after 2 years you need to change the battery especially with iphones so 5 years is the longest people keep their phones in general. And these are generally people that don't care about software updates, they don't even know what software version their phones has, they don't care what hardware their phones has and so on. The idea is that Android phones can be used for 5 years or more no problem. My A52s will get 4 years of updates but project Mainline will make it so the phone will continue to get updates well past that threshold, so I could probably keep it for as long it would last hardware wise.
"iPhone SE is only $400 after all."
The SE is a terrible phone in 2 very important areas: BATTERY and SCREEN.
It's OK for phone calls and basic stuff that doesn't stress the batter but in such cases even a low end Android phone is just as good.
"Android phones in that price range are not great performers and have at best 2 years of support typically."
Well I payed 350 Euros, VAT included for my A52s 5G also with a free pair of Galaxy Buds2. An SE would cost me 500 Euros with VAT and I struggle to think about anything that would make it better as a phone. Other that a nicer built quality(which is irrelevant as I always uses cases with my phones) there isn't really anything relevant. Oh and the A52s has official software support for 4 years.
"Even a used iPhone will typically have years more support than a comparably cheap new Android device, and for a non-power user that's great."
For a non-power user that's actually irrelevant.
Reflex - Monday, December 20, 2021 - link
This is silly, I mean, iPhone batteries are as good or better than their Android counterpoints in similar price ranges. And no, the SE is not a terrible phone, it's just not a power users' phone. Nothing wrong with mid-range products, and they exist in the Android ecosystem as well.The issue with using Android past it's support lifecycle is that it is easily compromised, I've delt with dozens of people, most often seniors, with tons of spyware on their phones due to one click sms malware or following the wrong email link. It's important to have ongoing security updates to any computing device in active use as users simplly are not a reliable source of security.
Nicon0s - Saturday, December 25, 2021 - link
"This is silly, I mean, iPhone batteries are as good or better than their Android counterpoints in similar price ranges."SE's battery is way worse in comparison to any Android phone in it's price range. So your claim is the silly one sir.
"And no, the SE is not a terrible phone, it's just not a power users' phone."
I guess if you expect to be able to use your phone throughout the entire day you are a "power user".
"Nothing wrong with mid-range products, and they exist in the Android ecosystem as well."
It's funny how you try to defend it. I didn't say there's any problem with mid-range phones, I only said the SE is bad in 2 very important areas, which obviously you can't deny.
"The issue with using Android past it's support lifecycle is that it is easily compromised"
No it's not.
"I've delt with dozens of people, most often seniors, with tons of spyware on their phones due to one click sms malware or following the wrong email link."
Yeah, I'm sure you didn't. Realistically if you click or tap on anything every time, you can get compromised on any phone no matter the OS version. iOS for example is full of 0 day vulnerabilities, way more than Android.
"It's important to have ongoing security updates to any computing device in active use as users simplly are not a reliable source of security"
It is important but not life dependent, or better it doesn't make a phone unusable, useless device that will surely be compromised. I have lots of phones, some of them on older Android versions and I've never encountered a "malware" in the last 10 years. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, I should start tapping of suspicious links from unknown senders.
lemurbutton - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Android phones will never have better value than iPhones unless you go into the sub $200 range. iPhones have much higher resale value. Android phone values tank fast.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Android users dont have to have the new shiney every year, unlike iphone users, so who cares?Wrs - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
For there to be a resale value there must be demand for the secondhand device or its parts. Clearly there’s huge relative demand for secondhand iPhones as compared to most Androids. Why?michael2k - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Because Apple provides updates for 6 years. Meaning a 3 year old iPhone will receive as many OS updates as a brand new 2021 Android phone.And from the charts, a 3 year old iPhone will perform as well as a brand new 2021 Android phone.
Reflex - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
It's actually closer to ten years. Apple provides six years of major OS updates, however each major OS version gets four years of security updates which is why the iPhone 6S, which is six years old but just got iOS 15, still has four more years of support left.Huge selling point for the people I support given their lack of interest in the latest and greatest.
Fulljack - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
resale value is cool and all but not everyone bought a phone to be sold later down the road. just like how some people simply didn't like iOS and it's limitations.michael2k - Thursday, December 16, 2021 - link
Some people use the extended life of an iPhone for other things; that’s part of why they have high resale value.In other words people hand down three year old iPhones to kids or spouses. Some people want to keep their iPhones. Those people, as an example, refusing to let their iPhones go for sale increase the resale price by reducing supply in the face of demand.
iphonebestgamephone - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Iphones are pretty bad for gaming for more than a few minutes unless you have very low ambient temps or are willing to use a plugged to the wall phone cooler. Something like the redamgic or legion are better for mobile 'gamers'.hemedans - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
I disagree, if you play games get android gaming phones, they can sustain perfomance compare to iphones which throttle a lot and mislead in lot of metrics (like operate in 120fps when you are on menu and drop to 60fps when you fight)Also with Android you get more games options, like now Ps2 emulator has been released, you wont find something like this in ios, also lot of pc games have been ported to Android, you can enjoy them on go.
yankeeDDL - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
As an Android user, the results in Spec CPU 2017 are depressing.In every single test the X2 is far behind A15 (sometimes by nearly 2x) and yet in every single one the A15 uses less power. It is a bloodbath.
I realize the synthetic tests are not necessarily representative of use case, but it sure looks dismal for Qualcomm. They are extraordinarily behind.
Imagine if the next Galaxy S22 would use the A15: it would be 2-3 years ahead of all competition.
The lack of competition in high-end ARM-based CPU is just mind-boggling.
Wrs - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Yeah it seems very incremental on the CPU. They need a revolution just to catch up. But their GPU and NN seem like bigger leaps. Unfortunately both are more limited use cases - gaming and speech recognition primarily.Kangal - Sunday, December 19, 2021 - link
With the way Qualcomm has followed with the Wattage, they've only been achieving better and better scores at the expense of battery and heat. Basically they've embraced throttling. And that's not an acceptable solution for phones.There's little to no performance difference between the QSD 855 to its siblings*. And that seems to be the case with the new Snapdragon 8gen1 for 2022. The biggest difference I can see is at the highest-end emulation, which is to run the latest console, with the highest graphical title, and scale up resolution as appropriate. Currently, this is the Nintendo Wii, running Metroid 3 Prime, and upscaled to x4 (1440p). On the fastest Android Phones (eg ASUS RoG 5) it runs around 50-60fps depending on the scene. On something like a Samsung S10+ you're instead getting 40-50fps. And the bigger improvement can come from the natural progression of the emulator itself (ie 2018 vs 2021), and by running Mods on it like MMJ. So these things can/do bridge the performance difference that I stated above.
What might be a good argument to be made, is when we get other more powerful/demanding use cases. Such as comparing Nintendo Switch emulation, running desktop programs, or even getting a new AAA-game that was developed for the handheld (eg GTA 6). Anyways, we will see a separation from current performance tier, at the earliest with 2023 using second-generation ARM Europe microarchitecture. Android hasn't quite caught up to Apple A13 levels of performance yet, and that's what I think when we will surpass it (Apple's A14 and A15 aren't that much better than their A13 either).
*855+, 860, 778, 780, 865, 865+, 870, 888, 888+.
Wereweeb - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
When I can use it as a desktop replacement I'll start to care. Until then, all you get with a "muh faster CPU" is your apps take three nanoseconds less time to open.My next phone will be the GAA-FET (3-2nm) successor to the 780G, for the better energy-efficiency. If it takes five years, so be it. I don't game so I don't have a use for X2 cores.
1_rick - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
"When I can use it as a desktop replacement I'll start to care."DeX, dude. It's already good enough for light work.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Also limited to samsung devices. Perhaps Wereweeb has no interest in owning one of their devices. There are many that have no interest in owning a samsung based on past experiences.nucc1 - Thursday, December 16, 2021 - link
I have a desktop and laptop, I don't need a phone that can do desktop duties.michael2k - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
You do realize that's exactly what Apple does with it's CPUs right? Use them for desktop/laptop parts?eastcoast_pete - Thursday, December 16, 2021 - link
Actually, what Apple is doing is both annoying (for iPhone owners) and logical (from Apple's bottom line POV). This and the prior generation iPhone certainly have the hardware oomph to drive a desktop setup akin to Dex, but that would, of course, mean fewer ipad pro and iMac mini sales. The ability to run a desktop-type setup on an iPhone used to be minimal due to the lower RAM older generations used to have, but that has changed. Being able to run a desktop environment on a $ 1,500 iPhone would really add value.Raqia - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
That said, the lagging performance of Apple's CPU+GPU in AI benchmarks proves most sites overstate the usefulness of CPUs in phones use cases when headlining with CPU specific performance metrics. Yes it's not an apples to oranges comparison, but it's proof that you should care about more than CPU benchmarks (particularly the consumer oriented Geekbench suite) even for Apple products when making comparisons between mobile phones.CPU performance for notebook form factors will matter a lot more, but on phones CPU bottlenecked use cases are typically web browser / apps using Javascript and app compilation, and even for most of those cases your bottleneck will be connectivity rather than local processing. Heavy lifting is much more often done by ISP and various DSPs that are harder to benchmark.
As Andrei stated in his introduction to the S8G1:
"Qualcomm gave examples such as concurrent processing optimizations that are meant to give large boosts in performance to real-world workloads that might not directly show up in benchmarks."
This seems to be borne out by a reviewer of an anonymous device here:
https://youtu.be/IpQRiM5F370?t=1002
despite some seeming inefficiencies for the other IP blocks when individually pinned by a benchmark. It also seems like SPEC17 is showing better efficiency whilst Geekbench is showing worse which indicates that Geekbench may need to optimize better for this year's ARMv9 implementations. Still a modest improvement for CPU this year though when all's considered.
name99 - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
"That said, the lagging performance of Apple's CPU+GPU in AI benchmarks proves most sites overstate the usefulness of CPUs in phones use cases when headlining with CPU specific performance metrics. "Uh, no!
It proves that a dedicated NPU does better than a CPU for these tasks.
The point is that the Android tests go through Android APIs; the Apple tests are probably raw C that goes on the CPU (perhaps the GPU, but that's unlikely in the absence of using special APIs).
Your complaint is as silly as comparing 3D SW running on a GPU vs emulated 3D running on the CPU.
But if you prefer to compare browser benchmarks, go right ahead:
https://www.imore.com/iphone-12-takes-1-spot-ipad-...
A much better complaint is that I'm guessing all these tests were not compiled with SVE2 -- which could have substantial effects.
But of course that requires the dev tools and OS to catch up, which means we have to wait for the official release.
Raqia - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
And other companies have decided to dedicate more of their die area to NPUs and other processing blocks than the CPU. This is usually neglected in cursory reviews of the SoC and the pinned-to-the-CPU benches are overemphasized by some reviewers with PC gaming hardware review pedigrees fixated on what's easy to benchmark and what they know rather than what's impactful to actual phone use cases.All that said the CPU on the iPhones is a gap step ahead of the competition for now, but Apple has consciously used more die area for this and emphasize this in their marketing. Note that Apple could market just the performance of phones and devices themselves but they unusually (for a consumer electronics oriented company) market the SoC separately in a slide in presentations and product specs. They de-emphasize the modem they use however in favor of stating what seem like phone level performance metrics. This is notable given that this is the same company with the marketing chops to morphed "Made in China" into "Designed in Cupertino. Assembled in China." (Glances at own iPhone. Hmm really...)
ChrisGX - Thursday, December 16, 2021 - link
>> Qualcomm gave examples such as concurrent processing optimizations that are meant to give large boosts in performance to real-world workloads that might not directly show up in benchmarks.This seems to be borne out by a reviewer of an anonymous device here:
https://youtu.be/IpQRiM5F370?t=1002 <<
That video review can't be used to make a case for hidden virtues of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 that for some reason have failed to show up in benchmark results. The reviewer castigated Qualcomm for producing a poor chip with many serious shortcomings. His comments about the X2 core suggest that he saw it as little better than a joke - a power hog that barely improves on earlier generation performance cores.
The reviewer did acknowledge that the new GPU was fast but he underscored that the performance gain came at a high cost in terms of power consumption. On those occasions that the SD8 Gen 1 showed any substantial performance advantage over the Apple A15 in tests conducted by the reviewer- some games - the advantage had disappeared after 10 minutes as progressive throttling took its toll.
The reviewer did look at modem performance (I'm not sure whether I understood the full context of the test) and once again the conclusion is the modem is fast and power hungry.
I don't think the reviewer conducted any AI tests, which I suspect would have been the place that the SD8 Gen 1 excelled.
Meteor2 - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
What's mind-boggling is the performance using the ARM isa that Apple has achieved. Taken an equally mind-boggling amount of money to do it, more than anyone else can afford.defaultluser - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Decent little preview, but if I had to pick a "best core test," given the two hour limit, I would have chosen the little cores!Ian Cutress - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
I tried running SPEC on the little cores. After 30 mins we were less than 10% complete.eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
I guess that's one "impressive" benchmark score, just not the one any user would hope for. Less than 10% complete after half an hour is pretty abysmal. Doesn't bode well for ARM's supposedly much improved LITTLE core designs. Just for comparison, how did the last A55 cores perform in that test?dudedud - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
Andrei said something along the lines of 14hrs for both int and fp SPEC 06.Wilco1 - Thursday, December 16, 2021 - link
Remember the little cores are much slower than the big cores since they have very little cache and run at a low frequency. In SD888 the little cores are 6.4 times slower than the big core. That should be reduced to about 5 times in 8gen1.I think having 4 little cores is too much, they don't contribute to benchmark scores, so you could have just 1 or 2 for background tasks and use the area to quadruple the tiny L2.
iphonebestgamephone - Thursday, December 16, 2021 - link
They do contribute to benchmark scores, 4 of them can be helpful when you need to load up all 4 big cores for the foreground and theres still some background tasks going on.Wilco1 - Saturday, December 18, 2021 - link
That does not make sense. The little cores have almost no L2 cache so will be competing with (and slowing down) the big cores due to the small L3. Having fewer little cores with a much larger L2 means more L3 is available per core, improving performance when all cores are loaded.A little core is most useful for background tasks when the screen is off and mid/big cores are powered down. If you have more background tasks than a single little core could handle, then it's not really "background", and it would be better to run them on a mid core since that will be several times more efficient than 4 little cores (see the efficiency graph, the mid core in eg. SD888 has about the same efficiency as a maxed out little core).
iphonebestgamephone - Sunday, December 19, 2021 - link
When all 3 mid cores and the prime core are fully loaded in apps that use 4 threads, the little cores are doing all the background tasks. How much l3 do background tasks need anyway?syxbit - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
>>There is no AV1 decode engine in this chip, with Qualcomm’s VPs stating that the timing for their IP block did not synchronize with this chip.This is very disappointing. The Radeon 6800, which launched over a year ago has hardware AV1 decode. I imagine the 2021 Exynos and Tensor chips will all do AV1
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
AV1 wont be necessary for a decade at least. AV1 only hit stable 1.0 spec in 2019, this chip was likely already in the design phase beforehand.movax2 - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
YouTube and Netflix already uses AV1 for a good portion of their videos. Your statement is wrong.GC2:CS - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
The GPU upgrade seems absolutelly massive.I have not seen 50% gain in years if i remember corectly.
Alistair - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Their GPU is great, their CPU is 3 years behind now, and this improvement over last year is almost nill. Sigh. Sad.Raqia - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
I'm looking forward to the '23 Nuvia designed cores for laptop compute, so let's see what they can do.However, I think it's perfectly fine if they went with a smaller ARM solution for future phone SoCs: in the SG81 and the 888 they consciously chose to limit L3 cache sizes in their CPU complex (and hence single threaded performance) for 2 generations from the biggest possible to dedicate die area and power consumption for other higher impact purposes. To me, an ideal Apple phone would have 6 of their small cores so they can dedicate more die area to their GPU, NPU and ISPs.
John Carmack himself thought it best to throttle the CPU to half of maximum clock speed in even the XR2 (which is a 865 derivative using a faster clocked, bigger cache A77 as its biggest core):
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/130662113...
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/131878675...
but he praised the XR2 in no uncertain terms, calling it "a lot of processing"
https://youtu.be/sXmY26pOE-Y?t=1972
It is indeed the DSPs and the GPUs doing the heavy lifting in the VR use case; I don't see it being much different for phones where wireless data rates are by far the biggest bottleneck.
The CPU benches you see headlining many web SoC reviews matter only for the benchmark obsessed, but pretty much no one else.
Alistair - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Your throttling argument doesn't make sense when the iPhone is more efficient also. You can run an iPhone at Snapdragon speed, and then you use way less power.Raqia - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
If you look at the efficiency curves for the A77 and the A13's big CPU, they're pretty danged close:https://miro.medium.com/max/1155/1*U7qA0vDhixGAYes...
The bigger point is, for phones it's well past the point of diminishing returns to pin the A13 CPU where most benchmarks do since it's simply not a bottleneck in realistic workloads. You can make a very fast CPU for bench-marketing purposes and get semi-technical people excited about your SoC, but you won't need to go very far along the curve to both hit its "knee" and have excellent performance.
Apple made the core for laptops and desktops (for which it's well suited) but included it in its iPhone for marketing purposes rather than to address actual performance needs. Some cite the fact that more apps are coded in Javascript and websites are more Javascript intensive these days, but by far the bigger culprit in responsiveness is data connectivity and they were happy to use Intel's inferior modems behind the scenes while trotting out big but irrelevant Geekbench scores. Furthermore, part of their battery-gate issue stems from the huge possible current draw of their CPUs, which while efficient still use high peak power and current.
Qualcomm has certainly been worse in efficiency and performance across multiple SoC processing blocks for the past two generations due to switching to Samsung as its premium SoC fab, and I certainly have no kind words for them in making that decision. However, given what they had to work with in terms of die area and power draw, they did make the correct decision in de-emphasizing the CPU block for relatively more grunt in the other blocks.
ChrisGX - Thursday, December 16, 2021 - link
Yes, that's right, but Samsung's inadequate process nodes are primarily responsible for Snapdragon parts (and all premium mobile SoCs based on licensed ARM IP) falling further behind. (Note: ARM SoCs are still seeing notable improvements in the execution rate of floating point workloads even as integer performance wallows.) For that reason, it will be very interesting to see how the TSMC fabbed MediaTek Dimensity 9000 acquits itself.The more telling part of this story, I think, is the failure of ARM and ARM licensees to manage this transition to high performance mobile SoCs while maintaining energy efficiency leadership. In the mobile phone world, today, Apple not only wears the performance crown but the energy efficiency crown as well.
Wilco1 - Saturday, December 18, 2021 - link
There are claims that Dimensity 9000 has ~49% better perf/W than SD8gen1: https://www.breakinglatest.news/business/tsmcs-4nm...That means the efficiency gap was indeed due to process as suspected. There is definitely an advantage in using the most advanced process 1 year before everyone else.
Raqia - Saturday, December 18, 2021 - link
Really good to see them pick up their game: bigger L3 cache and faster clocked middle cores seem to be part of the reason efficiency and multicore performance are up as well aside from process.Some rumors indicate the dual sourced version of the S8G1 (SM8475) may be more efficient than the samsung node fabbed version but not as much as expected. It seems like Qualcomm picks different sub-blocks to optimize with each generation: this gen it was most certainly the GPU. Looks like the CPU block can be expected to languish until they bring up the NUVIA designed cores likely in '24. As their initial focus was servers, NUVIA may not have had a suitable small core in the pipeline for '23 which is much more important for mobile than laptop scale devices.
Wilco1 - Sunday, December 19, 2021 - link
Yes it looks like Mediatek have done a great job. The larger caches should help power efficiency as well indeed. It will be interesting to see how the larger L3 and system cache compare with the Snapdragon and Exynos in AnandTech's benchmarks.Kamen Rider Blade - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
I wonder how much more performance Android would gain by going with C++ instead of Java.https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/bench...
There's ALOT of performance to be gained by going with C/C++/Rust.
The fact that Android went with Java for it's primary programming language while Apple went with a C/C++ derivative could be what explains the large gap.
jospoortvliet - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
Might make a difference in day to day use but not in these benchmarks as they already use native code.GeoffreyA - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
Since about Kit Kat or so, the bytecode of an Android app is compiled to native code at install time. But doubtless C++ would still be faster because Java overdoes object-oriented style and dynamic allocation. C/C++ code can work in Android using the NDK, but it appears to be a nightmare getting it latched in. Sometimes I wonder what they were thinking when they picked Java as their language.Meteor2 - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
They were thinking about the number of developers who could code it...TheinsanegamerN - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Developer support, ease of transition, and flexibility.Chaser - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
Before, I used to care about these SOC improvements/benchmarks, etc. But I don't play games on smartphones. All I care about today is battery life improvements, not performance.Alistair - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
That's why I switched to Apple. I get battery life and efficiency improvements, and CPU improvements. The only highlight for Snapdragon is GPU. CPU improvements are almost non-existent this year, again. Same for several years, they get farther and farther behind Apple in CPU.flyingpants265 - Thursday, December 16, 2021 - link
Yeah, but everything else about it sucks.Alistair - Saturday, December 18, 2021 - link
just browsing the web and using apps that are the same on all platforms, and doing it fasterKangal - Sunday, December 19, 2021 - link
Apple has a long history, that whenever their next chipset offers more efficiency, they counteract this by using a new (power hungry) feature.For instance, newer 5G modem, 120Hz screen, higher resolution, or more processing demand in their next software.
And at times, they even reduce the battery capacity. This saves weight off the phone, and they counteract this by adding other components like more cameras, or heavier glass construction.
All in all, the iPhones don't gain more battery life, they follow a general trend, and there are some outliers there (eg iPhone 6S+ and iPhone 13 Max).
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Budget phones like the moto g power annialate apple in real life battery benchmarks for a fraction of the price.Alistair - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
I'll all in on Mediatek then, this was disappointing. Can't wait for Mediatek comparisons!eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
As of now, and assuming Mediatek doesn't screw up the firmware, the Dimensity 9000 would best QC's "flagship" mobile SoC for 2022. Now, I remember reading that no major smartphone maker plans to sell phones with the Dimensity 9000 in the US, at least not officially. Is that really so, and if yes, does anyone here know why? I gladly do without the mm wave 5G channels (the 9000 doesn't cover those), which are really only available on Verizon, and even then only in some places.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Dimensity has no support for Verizon, which means you lose about 40% of the US market from the get go.Wardrive86 - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
Excellent article Ian! Those geekbench scores are extremely close to my tigerlake i5-1135g7 in fullsize notebook. Extremely impressive, look forward to sustained performance testing and comparisons to mediatekTheinsanegamerN - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
How many times does it need to be pointed out that geekbench is worthless for comparisons across systems? Unless you are doing ARM android VS ARM android or the like, the scores are not representative of real world performance.Comparing ARM android to x86 windows is like comparing an apple to a medieval sword. Totally different use cases.
Wilco1 - Saturday, December 18, 2021 - link
How many times does it need to be pointed out the scores are directly comparable? It compilers the same benchmark source code using LLVM whenever possible and runs the same datasets. There are differences between OSes of course, but that only affects scores in a minor way.And it's not like Geekbench scores show a completely different picture from SPEC results - modern phones are really as fast as laptops.
Wardrive86 - Sunday, December 19, 2021 - link
Agreed Wilco, it may not stress the memory subsystems to the extent that SPEC does, but it seems to paint roughly the same picture.IUU - Monday, February 7, 2022 - link
"modern phones are really as fast as laptops."No they are not. You will inever beat the physical law. The only reason some Android or iOS devices have reached to the point of being comparable with laptops or desktops is because they have managed for the first time in history to grab some superior lithographies first
If that was not the case , laptops and desktops would be x3 to x15 faster than today's mobile devices. But if laptops nad desktops sold at 700 to 2000 dollars then how would smartphones be sold at today's prices ? The comparison would be abysmal.
So the industry found a solution. Keep desktops and laptops at ancient lithographies while grab for android and iOS the best of the best.
Then con
IUU - Monday, February 7, 2022 - link
then convince the sheeple that they somehow live in a revolution of better and most economical devices while keeping them at the same level of computing capacity for the best part of the decade. Not only that , but also get tons of dollars for selling a dream....IUU - Monday, February 7, 2022 - link
I accept both geekbench AND antutu for making a quick comparison between mobile devices(and yes I know the qualms about Antutu but I think they are hysterical. And geekbench for making quick comparisons between platforms, having in the back of my mind their limitations, always.Before the mobile devolution came we had a very clear picture of the computational capacity of our chips. Then the radicals came being secretive about their chips. So , though we still have a gross impression of the theoretical performance of desktop and laptop chips we are in the dark concerning the "mobile" . As far as I am concerned I take their claims with a huge grain of salt.
Good guys don't hide....
ChrisGX - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
On these numbers the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 doesn't appear to be living up the 4x AI perf claim. Is there more performance to come? We will know soon enough but even without any further improvement in the AI scores the SD8 Gen 1 still looks pretty good.With the SD8 Gen 1 and the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 posting good AI scores (unconfirmed in the case of the D9000) we can expect Google and even Apple to start raising the stakes on the AI performance of future silicon. Qualcomm, too, is going to have to lift its game with MediaTek looking very competitive in so many areas.
rtho782 - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Alex Katouzian is like budget Sylvester Stallone :Dbogamia - Monday, December 20, 2021 - link
Apparently, D9000 has been benchmarked by this Chinese YouTuber (https://youtu.be/1ves1M4Ai-I) and it outperformed the snapdragon 8 gen 1 in all the areas. The performance power watt gap is massive between these two chips. Even in GPU benchmarks, D9000 outperformed the snapdragon equivalent. This is going to be an interesting generation. I wonder what will be the excuses of OEMs to use Qualcomm in the affordable flagship segments .iphonebestgamephone - Monday, December 20, 2021 - link
It looks like things like genshin impact is still more optimized for adreno.ChrisGX - Thursday, December 23, 2021 - link
>>[the D9000] outperformed the snapdragon 8 gen 1 in all the areas<<Not, exactly. The vlogger makes clear that the Adreno GPU in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 offers slightly higher performance than the Mali G710 in the D9000 but that the small performance increment comes at a significant cost in power consumption terms. So, while the Mali GPU offers slightly lower performance it is definitely the more energy efficient GPU.
Kangal - Friday, December 24, 2021 - link
Interesting video. Here's the recap:GeekBench 5 (Single-core)
D9000: 1287 score, 3.5 Watts, 368 Efficiency
QC 8g1: 1200 score, 4.2 Watts, 286 Efficiency
QSD 888: 1135 score, 3.8 Watts, 299 Efficiency
GeekBench 5 (Multi-thread)
D9000: 4474 score, 9.8 Watts, 457 Efficiency
QC 8g1: 3810 score, 11.1 Watts, 343 Efficiency
QSD 888: 3753 score, 8.9 Watts, 422 Efficiency
GFXBench Aztec Ruins (High/1440p Offscreen)
D9000: 43 fps, 8.2 Watts, 5.24 Efficiency
QC 8g1: 47 fps, 11.2 Watts, 4.20 Efficiency
QSD 888: 30 fps, 9.0 Watts, 3.34 Efficiency
Genshin Impact (Quality Mode, Initial Performance)
D9000: 60 fps, 6.8 Watts, drops 1.1 Watts, 7 minutes then throttles
QC 8g1: 60 fps, 7.5 Watts, drops 1.2 Watts, 3 min then dips but maintains
QSD 888: 60 fps, 7.5 Watts, drops 1.6 Watts, 6 minutes then throttles
Genshin Impact (Quality Mode, after 15min throttling)
D9000: 48 fps, 5.7 Watts, 8.42 Efficiency, Resolution 1422x640
QC 8g1: 55 fps, 6.3 Watts, 8.73 Efficiency, Resolution 1422x640
QSD 888: 48 fps, 5.9 Watts, 8.14 Efficiency, Resolution 1600x720
ChrisGX - Tuesday, January 4, 2022 - link
Xiaobai's Tech Reviews ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TyEkQZvAEI ) - a Hong Kong based YouTuber - has come to similar conclusions to the tech vlogger (Geekerwan) that you cite. The benchmark testing conducted by both vloggers seems broader in scope and more careful than the usual fare on YouTube. In both cases the engineering test mules/prototype devices tested were equipped with the latest crop of premium ARM SoCs (that will appear in production Android devices in 2022). The similarity of benchmark results doesn't guarantee the correctness of those results or the completeness of the performance picture drawn, of course, but with independent sources getting very similar results it wouldn't be a shock if production devices follow the evident pattern.Golden Reviewer, a Singapore based tech reviewer/vlogger (posting reviews in English) if anything offers an even more critical account of the SD8 Gen 1 and an account of the D9000 that does indeed credit it as the better chip in most areas. Using a pre-production device in testing he singles out overheating as a serious problem for the SD8 Gen 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO46vmsS61Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCYx3K4qjX4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTW6Z55bEfU
maik80 - Tuesday, January 18, 2022 - link
Fans of android have a mania to use AnTuTu, the owner has already been arrested for fraud in the tests, it has already been confirmed that he received to increase the result. In addition to giving points for the amount of ram memory. it's a jokeqnfw3174 - Thursday, March 31, 2022 - link
Is it finished to test A710/A510? Where can I find the result?yeeeeman - Monday, April 25, 2022 - link
Can we get a follow up on this?