Seen a Chinese article a few days ago looking at Nubuia Z9 and with 2xA47 cores loaded it would last about 3 seconds without throttling (lol). OnePlus said today that they are clocking it at 1.8GHz in OnePLus 2 to avoid overheating. Unlikely that 1.8GHz is low enough but should keep it stable enough in normal use. Ofc the resulting perf is less than stellar.
I wonder if that small a clock speed drop will allow it to stay on the A57 cores rather than having to fall back to the A53s in minutes. Still curious about the price of the Oneplus Two, the One was interesting, but only at its price point.
They've definitely gone out of their way to workaround shoehorning that SOC in a (relatively) slim phone form factor. One of the interesting bits is...
"We’ve created a proprietary technology...[chomp]...In layman’s terms, one of our ROM’s features is to intuitively know which processor should be used for what task, and it avoids using two or more processors that are right next to each other."
Price is supposedly the same as the One launch price.
So they're spreading heat through the SoC by selecting which cores to use? That's kind of interesting I guess, I wonder how big a difference that makes. If it did make a big one though, you'd think the big phone makers would be doing it?
Price will be higher, at least $50. They already confirmed this on a followup blog post. "The 810 is much more powerful than its younger counterpart, the 801, and is a much more expensive component. We’re paying more for the 810 than we ever have for the 801. In fact, the cost is almost 60% higher, and we’re not getting any discount. We can tell you now that the price of the 2 will certainly be higher than $322. But, the 810 is a top-of-the-line processor, and it’s what the OnePlus 2 deserves. Our Snapdragon 810 chipset runs the same eight cores for stability, but at 1.8 GHz for cooler temperatures. We’ve taken precautions to make sure none of our users have to settle."
I'd be fine with $400 too. The original One is still a stupid good deal at the now discounted price of $300 for the 64GB model. The fact that the Zenfone 2 only has half the battery life makes it a non-starter for me (not to mention worse screen etc.). I'm hoping the 2015 Nexus 5 revision rumors are true as well. I still prefer stock and speedy updates, so slap a Snapdragon 808 in there with a good fingerprint sensor and I might pick up one of those over the OnePlus Two.
Most tasks only fire up the A57 cores rarely. Video recording, higher end games, benchmarks, and, err. I'm failing to think of a 4th task that needs the A57 cores for more than a few seconds.
The first two, sure. Along with the third? Not very often for majority of users. And, web browsing typically --> open browser (A57 launches, renders homepage, moves to A53 core) --> search, A57 renders, switch to A53, etc. music is not CPU intensive... Why bother saying. I'm unsure how much CPU power downloading stuff takes, I can browse and DL stuff smooth on Moto G 1st gen, so, yeah. 4xA7 cores...
Well, from my usage experience, the A57's are used way too often.
I only have a few programs that should ever touch the A57 and I'm eagerly awaiting Android M and beyond on these issues. The latest update on the M9 already reduced the intensity and directly resulted in less drain. You're however completely right on what should use it ;)
Ok. Listening to music, very common. Doing it while playing a game, also common. Updating/downloading an app/multiple apps from google play in background, pretty common too. Let's say that the game sparks up 2 A57 cores and the GPU, while the other tasks fire up the whole A53 cluster, we're already at almost full load. Now, let's look at power users, who do this WHILE downloading a video from tubemate AND a video from the browser, plus the music EQ app in background. If you REALLY use a phone, it isn't hard to max it out.
Multi-tasking is the reason you want faster soc and more ram. For power users, it's not uncommon to be updating apps in Play Store while streaming music and playing games or browsing at the same time. Hell, I know people who torrents from their phone.
yes, but, what part of that is CPU intensive. That's the part I'm missing. 8 A53 cores will do that just as well as the 810 will.
Most games target low-mid range phones. Most games don't require over A9 performance. Likely a fraction of a percent require over the performance of 2 A15 cores.
You can stream music while torrenting 2 movies on a single A7 core at 1ghz without problem, this doesn't load a modern CPU much. Browsing similarly uses most power through the screen which has to be on... Only the initial page load is heavy. YouTube is even not that heavy. It is starting apps, and installation and upgrade which is heavy but you can only spend so many minutes per day doing install and upgrade... For me, upgrades run at night while I sleep, seems a sane way of doing that.
Games and benchmarks, together with taking and editing pictures and movies are among the few things which cause sustained high loads in normal use.
I wont say that playing music any torrenting while browsing does not use a lot of power: but that goes to the screen, the network and a bit to the headphones. Not the CPU!
Don't forget that using all those components at the same time builds up a lot of heat, wich further holds performance back. Plus all those tasks can fill up the RAM, hurting performance even more. The raw CPU grunt is not the only problem, really.
Yeah? Then why are so many reviews of phones carrying the 810 pointing out the overheating as an issue? Every single phone that's currently out on the market with a Snapdragon 810 overheats. The only thing they did to mitigate it on the M9 was underclock it. It's an issue. They should have just quietly buried the 810 and moved on. LG and Samsung were wise not to adopt it on their flagships.
No, the M9 had a benchmark-cheat going nuts and ran very hot in a single benchmark. Every phone has throttling, that's not new and has been there for years. However if you run at maximum performance and have a wrongly set throttling point, then yes... You get an egg cooker ;)
As for the rumors, yes those are about the V1 engineering sample. Rumors which are hinted at being from Samsung, which suddenly has it's own chip that needs selling. http://www.gsmarena.com/qualcomm_snapdragon_810_fo...">The 810 is actually rumored to run cooler than the 801, so throttling has been around for a while but the 810 might be a bit more powerful than anticipated and thus creating throttling issues.
Yup, thnx for that link. Hadn't seen an in-dept throttle analysis yet and clearly pointing out the problem.
The fun part is that that test is designed to see when it would hit throttling if you put it in full stress. In a comparison of tasks, http://www.phonearena.com/news/Qualcomm-Snapdragon...">the article I was trying to link to or it's http://www.stjsgadgets-portal.com/2015/02/snapdrag...">source show that it runs cooler as a SoC. Still, something that runs cooler compared to previous versions may still boil egg's for you ;)
In real life, it's also what I noticed with the M9. It runs cooler than my M7 of friends M8 when performing the same tasks as it's obviously a newer SoC with newer support. In addition, as an HTC user I've gotten used to 'hot phones' as the alu-body always feels warmer thanks to it's fast dissipation properties.
Look, heat and temperature are different things. The 810 is much bigger than the 801, so even if it reaches slightly lower skin temps, the actual amount of heat is much hugher. The more the heat, the higher the overall phone temoerature. Easy.
I'm honestly citing a rather extensive article that suggests that Samsung is the source of the rumors. Am I personally blaming them, no, but I'm still waiting for a proper and structured counter-argument on it. Until that point, I will be 'paranoid' towards Samsung or any rumor that's in Samsung's favor. If they did do all that, they've made millions by ruining other companies. Not something I'll support.
apparently anything with [ u r l = seems to fail in teh comments, so there.. go read then come back with "rumors". What the SD810 actually does is a completely different story.
The 810 doesn't run cooler than the 80x series LOL. The SD810 memory controller is broken, that leads to generation of a lot of heat. Which, makes it throttle faster. That being said, dunno what idiots decided to start putting SoCs that at their max clocks (for everything running) could draw 10W+ when they can see that people benchmark like that. Because it's a realistic usage scenario on phones. (last sentence was sarcasm)
Part of the rumors certainly came from Samsung, they're the only ones I can see who moved away from the 810, for whatever reason they did, no one else has a good reason to bash Qualcomm at the time.
At least, not for a flagship SoC that would be appearing in high end phones.
"which suddenly has it's own chip that needs selling"
Drama queen much? Samsung didn't "suddenly" have a chip, the majority of their flagships sold had their in-house chips since 2010. Qualcomm didn't offer them a chip that held tangible value over their own, nor was their built-in modem proposition worthwhile, given the downsides of their 810, this time around.
These are business decisions, not playing favor. Samsung aren't loyal even to their own Systems LSI, so we might see a change of heart with the Note 5 or GS7 if their in-house custom CPU/GPU aren't ready for action.
Qualcomm screwed up with the 810. Deal with it. Even Samsung had their bad days with the 5410............... IT HAPPENS...............
No, the chips runs really hot. Any prior claims that it didn't were PR based on throttling. It runs way to hot and any that arent when fully utilized are being throttle to death. Maybe the 810 v2.1 fixes that as reported, maybe not, that remains to be seen when it is independently tested, but the 810 up to and including v2.0 is way too hot. Skip it.
Well, the memory controller is the broken part on the initial version. This seems to have partially fixed it (still isn't running close to what it should be, but, not lagging behind controllers with about half the theoretical bandwidth either)
Yes, also wrote a rather extensive one in my native language.
Your point being what? That benchmarks show it's not the fastest but still a good phone? That despite all the rumors it only went nuts on a single benchmark? That the SD810, ok... not in the Flex2, is working fine? That my M9 runs 3 days on a batterij charge? That people seem to not understand every phone uses throttling?
The point being is that the HTC One M9 was a huge dud and largely because of the SD 810 inside of it. This website here ran a review and compared it to the M8 and in many regards it was a downgrade.
Sure, bash on a person and without knowledge bash on the T-Mobile site... That's improving your statement, however you've merely referenced a review I used as source for validity in mine. Anandtech is without doubt the most secure and reliable review site and it makes no sense to debate test scores from them. What does make sense is debate the overall conclusions and validity of conclusions.
In addition the word used is 'sidegrade' and not downgrade. Not to mention that since that review 2 very important changes have been made, which make the conclusions no longer (completely) valid.
Any review must hold two things in regard, the fixed hardware and the alterable software. I blame any site review to be too obsessed with focusing on temporary results due to the combination. The camera of the M9 has been improved, twice, since then and, given still not perfect or near the i6 or S6 level, very much no longer a dubious element. The second element is that there has been a significant improvement on battery drain and continued improvements on application behaviour will also increase the life span on a charge.
HTC One M9 has very good hardware but surely has missed the possibilities of good software. The camera is the most clearest result. Not only is the RAW function a blessing, the now twice improved algorithms make the camera even without manual options an acceptable camera. I say acceptable and emphasize manual here, as in manual mode any person that can or simply has experience with DSLR will be able to take rather impressive pictures. The ability to improve the experience proves the M9 camera sensor is fine, no discussion possible. It also proves HTC has made some big mistakes on launching an unfinished or at least rubbish camera app with it.
The M9 has 2 flaws of which 1 can't be solved. The screen is non-replaceable and the lack of panel refresh and rather below expected standard color quality is a big miss. The SD810 is a fine SoC however it needs to be handled properly. Lollipop is an horror story when it comes to the HTC version. Bugs, wild apps keeping the phone awake and A57 core accessing by applications like whatsapp prove it's performing far from optimal. That can be optimized and will end (for that matter for all big.LITTLE phones) with a massive increase in battery life span and performance longevity. As in the rather extensive debate here in the comments also posted, the throttling of the A57's to speeds equal to the A53's make no sense to even use the A53's except for architectural benefits, which are minimal. For that matter, the big cores should only be used for tasks that need them, not to mention be far more focused on 'sprint' than 'marathon' usage.
So, I have taken some in-depth time on the matter and do not blindly agree with the 'heat' claims and 'it's all bad' views that have been so easily (re)posted.
S6 also uses throttling... Every SoC uses that, it's because we stopped using <1W SoC's a while ago. Read the link of Martina84a, illustrates the throttling and how agressive it's on the SD810 and therefor performs far less than it could. Aka, why 2.1 is better.
Samsung choose to use the 7420, Qualcomm might have a chance to win part of the S6 designs, but, the rumors 100% were pushed by Samsung. S810 overheating exists, but, it is overblown in rumors, which almost certainly started from Samsung, no one else has motive and something to gain.
50C is a nice temperature and you might be right that that is without throttling. I would expect higher though as my M7 (also 2 yrs old) could easily hit 45 degrees and that was with throttling, so I would expect 50 to still be with some (though very minor) throttling.
May I at least claim "no current flagship model" then?
yes. it has little flaw. he measured whole system power load. so we need to get rid of power usage of other parts. but, after subtract other part's power consumption(subtract power usage at A53 1 core load), it still over 4 watt.
That's a funny joke. Seriously, that test is incorrect. That, or it is deliberately screwed up.
I suspect (S)he managed to have 2 A57 cores running, no matter what the results say in the end. Qualcomm builds their platform around an unmodified A57 core. You'll find an unmodified core draws under 2.5 watts at 2.1Ghz.
Why so many revisions of the 810? Didn't Qualcomm publicly state there were no yield or perf issues on the 810 months ago? And now we see all this constant tweaking, OEMs choosing to downgrade to the 805, their own chips or other SoCs for their flagships.
1 bad chip from Qualcomm won't fully erode confidence in them, but 810 has been awful for them.
As far as CPU and GPU performance goes there is no issue if cooled in a chassis capable of dissipating 10W+
In smaller form factors you hit a thermal and power wall well before that. The thermal wall hitting earlier than it should due to the broken memory controller.
So, technically, Qualcomm's wording can be taken as correct as far as performance goes. 'performance' is such a vague word. No clue about yields. It's around the size of Apple's A9 iirc, so, shouldn't be any any problems there.
"1 bad chip from Qualcomm won't fully erode confidence in them, but 810 has been awful for them"
Yup. With any chip really, you have to wait until its tested on actual shipping product, not engineering samples. Dont believe pre-release hype, don't believe PR, don't believe fanboys. When its independently tested by a few trusted sites then and only then can you believe it.
It isn't unusual to see multiple revisions of an SoC before mass production, test chips are needed to verify that simulations were correct. It's often the case that simulations aren't accurate and that additional changes are needed to get the chip to perform to expectations.
It is somewhat unusual to see large changes like this once the chip is in mass production for customers, the cost of such tape-outs is enormous.
That's funny, check out the official Mi Note forums at mi.com, people are complaining about throttling, overheating and poor battery life. Looks like v2.1 of the SD810 isn't enough to fix its inherent issues. I'd rather get a slower 805 that runs at full clock for a lot longer.
Was part of the complaining people, and last MIUI's update really improved battery drain and overheating. Btw real the problem was that the phone went on high temperatures for no reason, like if you were playing to an intensive game, while you were just listening some music.
Now, it's really fine. Too be honest, my Mi Note Pro (s810) doesn't seems to be really different than my Mi 4 (s801) in daily use (web browsing, videos, some gaming...).
Sadly no, you wake the entire cluster and you can play with frequency and activity. So the entire cluster is awake and you use 1-4 of their cores.
This is were the 808 is easier on thermal load. 4x A53 and 2x A57, so reduced thermal load by just saying "we don't need 4x A57". Not a bad decision at all, unless you're buying a phone for gaming, you wouldn't need so much power that often.
I love my G4, and I'm glad it only has 2x A57 cores, but damn do I wish it had the same Adreno 430 as the 810. That would be the perfect combo IMO. Why in hell did they go with the 418?
or, maybe a phone only needs one fast core if you're going to do big.LITTLE. Better yet, having cores that are low power and high performance or low performance with high scalability are the best designs.
Apple's custom cores and Krait are examples of both.
Anyone know when the 820 is supposed to be making its way into new devices? Because if the 810 is going to go through constant revisions to make it any good then I'd rather just hold out for the 820. On top of that, awhile down the line could see Qualcomm finally lose their hold over SoCs in Android devices after what we've seen from Asus.
So where can someone in the US even get a Mi Note Pro, assuming we were masochistic enough to want one? (Ive read that the phone could only use 3G/HSPA networks on T-Mobile in the US, but that's fast enough for most tasks.)
The 810 was 20nm so a shrink to 14nm should reduce the power load at the same clockspeed. It would be nice to be able to profile the apps and phone mode to set performance limits. Some games use high CPU & GPU even while doing very liitle so I would love to tell it 20fps (75% MHz of A53 and 50% GPU) instead of 60+ fps when I don't need to aim and shoot. Less CPU for background apps.
Seriously? I was going to get a Mi Note Pro but I held back because of the battery life and overheating issues.
How long does your battery last? I'm a typical business user, mainly emails and calls, with Web browsing and some music listening after work. I'm interested in the Note mainly for the screen, I hope it can be easily read outdoors.
For my needs, it's quite good : i'm usually around 30/40% near midnight, with 2H+ watching videos, light web browsing, some texting + mails, and (not so much) music listening.
I didnt compare with the classic Note (probably less draining) display, but the screen is gorgeous. The sunlight display features (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZkIZWo9yHc) sure helps but since the last days were cloudy here, i couldnt really test the feature.
LOL, you're referencing a site that uses a Dutch site (tweakers.net) who found that in a single benchmark the HTC throttling was uhm... let's call it absent. That's not an heat problem, that's an heat management problem. The irony of Tweakers being referenced here when I reference Anandtech there, that made my morning!
Now I won't blame you for not reading Dutch, but as I can... That said has revised it's results due to the update. Which was why Anandtech held off with Part 2 of the review for about a week.
I think this whole 810 fiasco is a huge executive management mistake in QCT. They were cheap and did not invest in a 64-bit design. Then Apple caught them with their pants down and they rushed an ARM design (rather than an in-house design) into production, creating handsets that catch fire. They are vulnerable to similar management mistakes going forward, because they have no idea how to manage a CPU design operation.
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testbug00 - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Should fix the largest issues with the 810.Nothing is going to fix putting a 10W+ SoC into a phone however. It's dumb.
tipoo - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Is it really 10+W? That's beyond Denver K1 leveltestbug00 - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
K1 running at full clocks uses over 10 watts of power.PhytochromeFr - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
810's A57 core can consume over 4W in '1 core' load. it consumes more than haswell-Y(intel capped it's sustainable package consumtion to 6W.) lol.testbug00 - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
I find that test dubious...testbug00 - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Are you suggesting that Qualcomm's refrence tablet dissiplated over 20 watts while running Geekbench and no one testing noticed? Yeah. Right. Sure...tuxRoller - Thursday, October 1, 2015 - link
So you have a reference for that?jjj - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Seen a Chinese article a few days ago looking at Nubuia Z9 and with 2xA47 cores loaded it would last about 3 seconds without throttling (lol).OnePlus said today that they are clocking it at 1.8GHz in OnePLus 2 to avoid overheating. Unlikely that 1.8GHz is low enough but should keep it stable enough in normal use. Ofc the resulting perf is less than stellar.
tipoo - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
I wonder if that small a clock speed drop will allow it to stay on the A57 cores rather than having to fall back to the A53s in minutes. Still curious about the price of the Oneplus Two, the One was interesting, but only at its price point.Bob Todd - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
There's a whole blog post about it here...https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/oneplus-2-cpu-q...
They've definitely gone out of their way to workaround shoehorning that SOC in a (relatively) slim phone form factor. One of the interesting bits is...
"We’ve created a proprietary technology...[chomp]...In layman’s terms, one of our ROM’s features is to intuitively know which processor should be used for what task, and it avoids using two or more processors that are right next to each other."
Price is supposedly the same as the One launch price.
tipoo - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
So they're spreading heat through the SoC by selecting which cores to use? That's kind of interesting I guess, I wonder how big a difference that makes. If it did make a big one though, you'd think the big phone makers would be doing it?PhytochromeFr - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
without solve its A57 core's power consumption issue, it can't help so much. 810's issue caused by its A57 core's insanely high power consumtion.max1001 - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Price will be higher, at least $50. They already confirmed this on a followup blog post."The 810 is much more powerful than its younger counterpart, the 801, and is a much more expensive component. We’re paying more for the 810 than we ever have for the 801. In fact, the cost is almost 60% higher, and we’re not getting any discount. We can tell you now that the price of the 2 will certainly be higher than $322. But, the 810 is a top-of-the-line processor, and it’s what the OnePlus 2 deserves. Our Snapdragon 810 chipset runs the same eight cores for stability, but at 1.8 GHz for cooler temperatures. We’ve taken precautions to make sure none of our users have to settle."
Bob Todd - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
I'd be fine with $400 too. The original One is still a stupid good deal at the now discounted price of $300 for the 64GB model. The fact that the Zenfone 2 only has half the battery life makes it a non-starter for me (not to mention worse screen etc.). I'm hoping the 2015 Nexus 5 revision rumors are true as well. I still prefer stock and speedy updates, so slap a Snapdragon 808 in there with a good fingerprint sensor and I might pick up one of those over the OnePlus Two.tuxRoller - Wednesday, July 1, 2015 - link
Always love the "proprietary" tech marketing.Them's quality for sure, if you can't examine it!
testbug00 - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Most tasks only fire up the A57 cores rarely. Video recording, higher end games, benchmarks, and, err. I'm failing to think of a 4th task that needs the A57 cores for more than a few seconds.nikaldro - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Try listening to music + browsing + running multiple downloads from different sources, wich is not uncommon.testbug00 - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
The first two, sure. Along with the third? Not very often for majority of users. And, web browsing typically --> open browser (A57 launches, renders homepage, moves to A53 core) --> search, A57 renders, switch to A53, etc. music is not CPU intensive... Why bother saying. I'm unsure how much CPU power downloading stuff takes, I can browse and DL stuff smooth on Moto G 1st gen, so, yeah. 4xA7 cores...Freaky_Angelus - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Well, from my usage experience, the A57's are used way too often.I only have a few programs that should ever touch the A57 and I'm eagerly awaiting Android M and beyond on these issues. The latest update on the M9 already reduced the intensity and directly resulted in less drain. You're however completely right on what should use it ;)
nikaldro - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link
Ok.Listening to music, very common.
Doing it while playing a game, also common.
Updating/downloading an app/multiple apps from google play in background, pretty common too.
Let's say that the game sparks up 2 A57 cores and the GPU, while the other tasks fire up the whole A53 cluster, we're already at almost full load.
Now, let's look at power users, who do this WHILE downloading a video from tubemate AND a video from the browser, plus the music EQ app in background.
If you REALLY use a phone, it isn't hard to max it out.
max1001 - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Multi-tasking is the reason you want faster soc and more ram. For power users, it's not uncommon to be updating apps in Play Store while streaming music and playing games or browsing at the same time. Hell, I know people who torrents from their phone.testbug00 - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
yes, but, what part of that is CPU intensive. That's the part I'm missing. 8 A53 cores will do that just as well as the 810 will.Most games target low-mid range phones. Most games don't require over A9 performance. Likely a fraction of a percent require over the performance of 2 A15 cores.
jospoortvliet - Sunday, June 21, 2015 - link
You can stream music while torrenting 2 movies on a single A7 core at 1ghz without problem, this doesn't load a modern CPU much. Browsing similarly uses most power through the screen which has to be on... Only the initial page load is heavy. YouTube is even not that heavy. It is starting apps, and installation and upgrade which is heavy but you can only spend so many minutes per day doing install and upgrade... For me, upgrades run at night while I sleep, seems a sane way of doing that.
Games and benchmarks, together with taking and editing pictures and movies are among the few things which cause sustained high loads in normal use.
I wont say that playing music any torrenting while browsing does not use a lot of power: but that goes to the screen, the network and a bit to the headphones. Not the CPU!
nikaldro - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link
Don't forget that using all those components at the same time builds up a lot of heat, wich further holds performance back.Plus all those tasks can fill up the RAM, hurting performance even more.
The raw CPU grunt is not the only problem, really.
lefty2 - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
I believe the overheating rumours of the 810 were about the V1 engineering sample, not the production versiongreyhulk - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Yeah? Then why are so many reviews of phones carrying the 810 pointing out the overheating as an issue? Every single phone that's currently out on the market with a Snapdragon 810 overheats. The only thing they did to mitigate it on the M9 was underclock it. It's an issue. They should have just quietly buried the 810 and moved on. LG and Samsung were wise not to adopt it on their flagships.Freaky_Angelus - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
No, the M9 had a benchmark-cheat going nuts and ran very hot in a single benchmark. Every phone has throttling, that's not new and has been there for years. However if you run at maximum performance and have a wrongly set throttling point, then yes... You get an egg cooker ;)As for the rumors, yes those are about the V1 engineering sample. Rumors which are hinted at being from Samsung, which suddenly has it's own chip that needs selling. http://www.gsmarena.com/qualcomm_snapdragon_810_fo...">The 810 is actually rumored to run cooler than the 801, so throttling has been around for a while but the 810 might be a bit more powerful than anticipated and thus creating throttling issues.
Martin84a - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/in-depth-wi...Freaky_Angelus - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Yup, thnx for that link. Hadn't seen an in-dept throttle analysis yet and clearly pointing out the problem.The fun part is that that test is designed to see when it would hit throttling if you put it in full stress. In a comparison of tasks, http://www.phonearena.com/news/Qualcomm-Snapdragon...">the article I was trying to link to or it's http://www.stjsgadgets-portal.com/2015/02/snapdrag...">source show that it runs cooler as a SoC. Still, something that runs cooler compared to previous versions may still boil egg's for you ;)
In real life, it's also what I noticed with the M9. It runs cooler than my M7 of friends M8 when performing the same tasks as it's obviously a newer SoC with newer support. In addition, as an HTC user I've gotten used to 'hot phones' as the alu-body always feels warmer thanks to it's fast dissipation properties.
Freaky_Angelus - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Ok, last attempt...http://www.phonearena.com/news/Qualcomm-Snapdragon...
http://www.stjsgadgets-portal.com/2015/02/snapdrag...
Otherwise, just paste these lines (no idea why they won't link proper with the url tag...
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Qualcomm-Snapdragon...
http://www.stjsgadgets-portal.com/2015/02/snapdrag...
nikaldro - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link
Look, heat and temperature are different things.The 810 is much bigger than the 801, so even if it reaches slightly lower skin temps, the actual amount of heat is much hugher.
The more the heat, the higher the overall phone temoerature. Easy.
syxbit - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
You're honestly blaming the rumours on Samsung?You sound like a Qualcomm Marketing exec.
Freaky_Angelus - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
I'm honestly citing a rather extensive article that suggests that Samsung is the source of the rumors. Am I personally blaming them, no, but I'm still waiting for a proper and structured counter-argument on it. Until that point, I will be 'paranoid' towards Samsung or any rumor that's in Samsung's favor. If they did do all that, they've made millions by ruining other companies. Not something I'll support.Flunk - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Can we give up the "rumors" tagline yet? Every review of every product with the 810 has shown significantly subpar performance.Freaky_Angelus - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
http://semiaccurate.com/2015/03/02/behind-fake-qua...apparently anything with [ u r l = seems to fail in teh comments, so there.. go read then come back with "rumors". What the SD810 actually does is a completely different story.
testbug00 - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
The 810 doesn't run cooler than the 80x series LOL. The SD810 memory controller is broken, that leads to generation of a lot of heat. Which, makes it throttle faster. That being said, dunno what idiots decided to start putting SoCs that at their max clocks (for everything running) could draw 10W+ when they can see that people benchmark like that. Because it's a realistic usage scenario on phones. (last sentence was sarcasm)Part of the rumors certainly came from Samsung, they're the only ones I can see who moved away from the 810, for whatever reason they did, no one else has a good reason to bash Qualcomm at the time.
At least, not for a flagship SoC that would be appearing in high end phones.
lilmoe - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
"which suddenly has it's own chip that needs selling"Drama queen much? Samsung didn't "suddenly" have a chip, the majority of their flagships sold had their in-house chips since 2010. Qualcomm didn't offer them a chip that held tangible value over their own, nor was their built-in modem proposition worthwhile, given the downsides of their 810, this time around.
These are business decisions, not playing favor. Samsung aren't loyal even to their own Systems LSI, so we might see a change of heart with the Note 5 or GS7 if their in-house custom CPU/GPU aren't ready for action.
Qualcomm screwed up with the 810. Deal with it. Even Samsung had their bad days with the 5410............... IT HAPPENS...............
retrospooty - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
No, the chips runs really hot. Any prior claims that it didn't were PR based on throttling. It runs way to hot and any that arent when fully utilized are being throttle to death. Maybe the 810 v2.1 fixes that as reported, maybe not, that remains to be seen when it is independently tested, but the 810 up to and including v2.0 is way too hot. Skip it.testbug00 - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Well, the memory controller is the broken part on the initial version. This seems to have partially fixed it (still isn't running close to what it should be, but, not lagging behind controllers with about half the theoretical bandwidth either)sseemaku - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Didn't you see the HTC One M9 review?Freaky_Angelus - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Yes, also wrote a rather extensive one in my native language.Your point being what?
That benchmarks show it's not the fastest but still a good phone? That despite all the rumors it only went nuts on a single benchmark? That the SD810, ok... not in the Flex2, is working fine? That my M9 runs 3 days on a batterij charge? That people seem to not understand every phone uses throttling?
niva - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
The point being is that the HTC One M9 was a huge dud and largely because of the SD 810 inside of it. This website here ran a review and compared it to the M8 and in many regards it was a downgrade.http://www.anandtech.com/show/9137/the-htc-one-m9-...
You can just read the last paragraph. I for one take Anandtech reviews much more seriously than some random internet review on a non-English website.
Freaky_Angelus - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Sure, bash on a person and without knowledge bash on the T-Mobile site... That's improving your statement, however you've merely referenced a review I used as source for validity in mine. Anandtech is without doubt the most secure and reliable review site and it makes no sense to debate test scores from them. What does make sense is debate the overall conclusions and validity of conclusions.In addition the word used is 'sidegrade' and not downgrade. Not to mention that since that review 2 very important changes have been made, which make the conclusions no longer (completely) valid.
Any review must hold two things in regard, the fixed hardware and the alterable software. I blame any site review to be too obsessed with focusing on temporary results due to the combination. The camera of the M9 has been improved, twice, since then and, given still not perfect or near the i6 or S6 level, very much no longer a dubious element.
The second element is that there has been a significant improvement on battery drain and continued improvements on application behaviour will also increase the life span on a charge.
HTC One M9 has very good hardware but surely has missed the possibilities of good software. The camera is the most clearest result. Not only is the RAW function a blessing, the now twice improved algorithms make the camera even without manual options an acceptable camera. I say acceptable and emphasize manual here, as in manual mode any person that can or simply has experience with DSLR will be able to take rather impressive pictures. The ability to improve the experience proves the M9 camera sensor is fine, no discussion possible. It also proves HTC has made some big mistakes on launching an unfinished or at least rubbish camera app with it.
The M9 has 2 flaws of which 1 can't be solved.
The screen is non-replaceable and the lack of panel refresh and rather below expected standard color quality is a big miss.
The SD810 is a fine SoC however it needs to be handled properly. Lollipop is an horror story when it comes to the HTC version. Bugs, wild apps keeping the phone awake and A57 core accessing by applications like whatsapp prove it's performing far from optimal. That can be optimized and will end (for that matter for all big.LITTLE phones) with a massive increase in battery life span and performance longevity. As in the rather extensive debate here in the comments also posted, the throttling of the A57's to speeds equal to the A53's make no sense to even use the A53's except for architectural benefits, which are minimal. For that matter, the big cores should only be used for tasks that need them, not to mention be far more focused on 'sprint' than 'marathon' usage.
So, I have taken some in-depth time on the matter and do not blindly agree with the 'heat' claims and 'it's all bad' views that have been so easily (re)posted.
Refuge - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
No, they weren't rumors, all flagship phones sporting these chips have heat/throttling issues.Have you read any reviews lately? HTC One M9? Galaxy S6? Any of them?
Refuge - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Correction to that, S6 went with the Exyno's this year.But that is also because the overheating issues weren't rumors, they were real.
Freaky_Angelus - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
S6 also uses throttling... Every SoC uses that, it's because we stopped using <1W SoC's a while ago. Read the link of Martina84a, illustrates the throttling and how agressive it's on the SD810 and therefor performs far less than it could. Aka, why 2.1 is better.testbug00 - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Samsung choose to use the 7420, Qualcomm might have a chance to win part of the S6 designs, but, the rumors 100% were pushed by Samsung. S810 overheating exists, but, it is overblown in rumors, which almost certainly started from Samsung, no one else has motive and something to gain.Freaky_Angelus - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Every phone uses throttling and stops at skin-temperature of +/- 40Celsiushttp://ic.tweakimg.net/ext/i/imagenormal/200059015...
testbug00 - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Nope, I got an S4 phone hitting over 50C on case. Of course, no one complains that said chip overheated...Freaky_Angelus - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
50C is a nice temperature and you might be right that that is without throttling. I would expect higher though as my M7 (also 2 yrs old) could easily hit 45 degrees and that was with throttling, so I would expect 50 to still be with some (though very minor) throttling.May I at least claim "no current flagship model" then?
PhytochromeFr - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
lol. 810's A57 core consumes over 4 watt per core. it can't sustain full clock for 2 core less than 10 sec. http://tieba.baidu.com/p/3819195171?pn=0&testbug00 - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
that testing is deffo flawed.PhytochromeFr - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
yes. it has little flaw. he measured whole system power load. so we need to get rid of power usage of other parts. but, after subtract other part's power consumption(subtract power usage at A53 1 core load), it still over 4 watt.testbug00 - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
That's a funny joke. Seriously, that test is incorrect. That, or it is deliberately screwed up.I suspect (S)he managed to have 2 A57 cores running, no matter what the results say in the end. Qualcomm builds their platform around an unmodified A57 core. You'll find an unmodified core draws under 2.5 watts at 2.1Ghz.
chizow - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Why so many revisions of the 810? Didn't Qualcomm publicly state there were no yield or perf issues on the 810 months ago? And now we see all this constant tweaking, OEMs choosing to downgrade to the 805, their own chips or other SoCs for their flagships.1 bad chip from Qualcomm won't fully erode confidence in them, but 810 has been awful for them.
testbug00 - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
As far as CPU and GPU performance goes there is no issue if cooled in a chassis capable of dissipating 10W+In smaller form factors you hit a thermal and power wall well before that. The thermal wall hitting earlier than it should due to the broken memory controller.
So, technically, Qualcomm's wording can be taken as correct as far as performance goes. 'performance' is such a vague word. No clue about yields. It's around the size of Apple's A9 iirc, so, shouldn't be any any problems there.
Refuge - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
If I add an * to any statement I make, I can make it true also.It doesn't change the fact that this chip is too hot for the form factor that it is supposed to target.
testbug00 - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Notice how Qualcomm's reference design device was a tablet...? And it ran fine at full clocks.Refuge - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link
Ok, so this SoC was meant for tablets, and all the other manufacturers just threw their hands up and said "Whatever, we do what we want!"?Either that or I mis-understood your post, because this was definitely targeted at every flagship smartphone.
retrospooty - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
"1 bad chip from Qualcomm won't fully erode confidence in them, but 810 has been awful for them"Yup. With any chip really, you have to wait until its tested on actual shipping product, not engineering samples. Dont believe pre-release hype, don't believe PR, don't believe fanboys. When its independently tested by a few trusted sites then and only then can you believe it.
JoshHo - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link
It isn't unusual to see multiple revisions of an SoC before mass production, test chips are needed to verify that simulations were correct. It's often the case that simulations aren't accurate and that additional changes are needed to get the chip to perform to expectations.It is somewhat unusual to see large changes like this once the chip is in mass production for customers, the cost of such tape-outs is enormous.
syxbit - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Check out this propaganda article from Qualcomm regarding SD810https://www.qualcomm.com/news/snapdragon/2015/02/1...
It is laughable
der - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
10th commenttipoo - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Oh good, the solution to throttle hell was obviously higher clocks.Refuge - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
I think the strategy here is to cause your phone to melt, so that you have to get a new one. lol ;)serendip - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
That's funny, check out the official Mi Note forums at mi.com, people are complaining about throttling, overheating and poor battery life. Looks like v2.1 of the SD810 isn't enough to fix its inherent issues. I'd rather get a slower 805 that runs at full clock for a lot longer.Meshh - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
That's not funny :P.Was part of the complaining people, and last MIUI's update really improved battery drain and overheating. Btw real the problem was that the phone went on high temperatures for no reason, like if you were playing to an intensive game, while you were just listening some music.
Now, it's really fine. Too be honest, my Mi Note Pro (s810) doesn't seems to be really different than my Mi 4 (s801) in daily use (web browsing, videos, some gaming...).
blzd - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link
Sony's latest flagships are already using V2.1 of the 810 and they still over heat and throttle. Not much has changed.der - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
30th commentnikaldro - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Wouldn't it be possible to only wake up 2 A57 cores, or 2 A57s + 2 A53s?Freaky_Angelus - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Sadly no, you wake the entire cluster and you can play with frequency and activity. So the entire cluster is awake and you use 1-4 of their cores.This is were the 808 is easier on thermal load. 4x A53 and 2x A57, so reduced thermal load by just saying "we don't need 4x A57". Not a bad decision at all, unless you're buying a phone for gaming, you wouldn't need so much power that often.
grayson_carr - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
I love my G4, and I'm glad it only has 2x A57 cores, but damn do I wish it had the same Adreno 430 as the 810. That would be the perfect combo IMO. Why in hell did they go with the 418?testbug00 - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
or, maybe a phone only needs one fast core if you're going to do big.LITTLE. Better yet, having cores that are low power and high performance or low performance with high scalability are the best designs.Apple's custom cores and Krait are examples of both.
mortimerr - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
Anyone know when the 820 is supposed to be making its way into new devices?Because if the 810 is going to go through constant revisions to make it any good then I'd rather just hold out for the 820. On top of that, awhile down the line could see Qualcomm finally lose their hold over SoCs in Android devices after what we've seen from Asus.
Taristin - Friday, June 19, 2015 - link
So where can someone in the US even get a Mi Note Pro, assuming we were masochistic enough to want one? (Ive read that the phone could only use 3G/HSPA networks on T-Mobile in the US, but that's fast enough for most tasks.)tygrus - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link
The 810 was 20nm so a shrink to 14nm should reduce the power load at the same clockspeed. It would be nice to be able to profile the apps and phone mode to set performance limits. Some games use high CPU & GPU even while doing very liitle so I would love to tell it 20fps (75% MHz of A53 and 50% GPU) instead of 60+ fps when I don't need to aim and shoot. Less CPU for background apps.serendip - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link
Seriously? I was going to get a Mi Note Pro but I held back because of the battery life and overheating issues.How long does your battery last? I'm a typical business user, mainly emails and calls, with Web browsing and some music listening after work. I'm interested in the Note mainly for the screen, I hope it can be easily read outdoors.
Meshh - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link
For my needs, it's quite good : i'm usually around 30/40% near midnight, with 2H+ watching videos, light web browsing, some texting + mails, and (not so much) music listening.I didnt compare with the classic Note (probably less draining) display, but the screen is gorgeous. The sunlight display features (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZkIZWo9yHc) sure helps but since the last days were cloudy here, i couldnt really test the feature.
Martin84a - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2015/03/...Enough said.
Freaky_Angelus - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
LOL, you're referencing a site that uses a Dutch site (tweakers.net) who found that in a single benchmark the HTC throttling was uhm... let's call it absent. That's not an heat problem, that's an heat management problem. The irony of Tweakers being referenced here when I reference Anandtech there, that made my morning!Now I won't blame you for not reading Dutch, but as I can... That said has revised it's results due to the update. Which was why Anandtech held off with Part 2 of the review for about a week.
systemBuilder - Sunday, June 21, 2015 - link
I think this whole 810 fiasco is a huge executive management mistake in QCT. They were cheap and did not invest in a 64-bit design. Then Apple caught them with their pants down and they rushed an ARM design (rather than an in-house design) into production, creating handsets that catch fire. They are vulnerable to similar management mistakes going forward, because they have no idea how to manage a CPU design operation.gnx - Sunday, June 28, 2015 - link
Well, if these benchmarks are anything to go by (take them with a grain of salt), looks like Qualcomm will return to form with the 820 next year:http://www.phonearena.com/news/Qualcomms-Snapdrago...
ToxicTaZ - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
Snapdragon 810 vs Exynos 7420Why are people trying to compare 20nm vs 14nm FinFET? Unfair unrealistic
14nm FinFET vs 14nm FinFET
Snapdragon 820 vs Exynos 7420
This why Intel always wins! 10nm FinFET/14nm FinFET/22nm FinFET vs the rest of the world 28nm/32nm
FinFET technology really power effective!
totalz - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Yes, and Qualcomm was real stupid to go with the 20nm production, period.