Reaching back to the distant past of Apple naming conventions: A4 Plus, A4 Classic, A4 GS--oh what the hell, A4 Turbo and A4 SuperSport!
Oh, I understand what you're saying there, I'm simply wondering which way they'll go with it. A4 sounds good. I'm just curious if they'll simply call the chip the A4 regardless of the changes made to it, sort of like they call a Mac Pro a Mac Pro regardless of internal revisions.
It seems to me that Apple and Samsung are sort of in lockstep with regards to hardware. Despite all the chest thumping that goes on about Apple's custom chip design capabilities and them consequently pulling ahead of the pack as a result, it just isn't going to happen. Samsung will always have at least equivalent or superior HW available for their own devices. The A4 is most likely a custom variant of Samsung's S5PC110A01 Hummingbird, since that design existed prior to the A4
I think you are discounting an important aspect of the A4 - what's more important is all the stuff the A4 doesn't have. By jettisoning the stuff Apple doesn't use vs general purpose everything- and-the-kitchen-sink designs like hummingbird Apple gets smaller and more power effecient chips.
Also as Sol' pointed out, the iOS devices are more than just their hardware specs. Apples tight integration with their software allows them to get better performance.
So while other phones may have higher CPU speeds, and from a geek perpective higher is better, in portable electronics higher speed means higher power consumption and more heat - not desirable characteristics for battery life.
This is why I don't see Apple talking specifics about the hardware - first, it really is irrelevant - the device either delivers a good user experience or it doesn't. More importantly, the vast majority of people are wholly unqualified to interpret the mix of hardware and software and state with any reasonableness what raw specs like CPU speed mean.
Also if you remember back to early articles about the A4, in addition to leaving all but the essential stuff out it has extra power management. Apples combination if battery life, small size/weight and aggressive price points aren't an accident.
In mobile devices where every decision has a much more cascading effect on overall performance, the total control Apple has over all of their components allows them to have a significant edge over their competitors. It's pretty obvious now, but with the next generation of hardware I expect this gap to widen even more.
This isn't a desktop world where to match or exceede Apple performance you can just crank the clock speed or throw in the latest cutting edge chip that is unoptimized in hardware and software - every decision has a significant impact if the holy trinity of mobile: size/weight, battery and cost.
By the time the iPad 3 and iPhone 6 hit, if there isn't at least one other company tightly integrating hardware AND software like Apple, no one will be able to catch them.
The only one I can see is HP with WebOS. HP has also ran custom chip architectures in the past - whether they still have that expertise or not I'm not sure.
MS could do it if they wanted. Will wait until it's too late like the Zune or will they just "Zune" their WP7 partners now and get it over with? I'm banking on timidity until it's too late - unfortunately
Their is a limit to what optimization can do for you. Besides it is software that takes advantage of that hardware. As we have seen on many Android systems software that ignores the built in hardware just sucks.
The reverse is true as well... You can add hardware that can help out software as well. So, optimization goes both ways. Just as with hardware H.264 decoders, there is a lot that can be done in hardware to make a system run more efficient.
OS X is full of technologies that can benefit from hardware optimizations. The more processing you can offload to co-processors, the more performance you can squeeze out of the same main CPU. This is why it is extremely important for Apple to design its own SoCs, they can continue to design systems with specialized processors that can take over from CPU duties.
This is also why Apple has done a lot of work in getting OpenCL standardized and put a lot of work into technologies like LLVM, 'C' Blocks and have helped developers adopt threading and parallelism in their applications by removing a lot of the complexity of scheduling via GCD.
Yes, it would be great to see Apple "keep up" with competitors and release a Cortex-A9 based SoC, but the reality is, they don't need it to keep up performance wise. There are many other ways to tackle performance issues. Heading down the same path Intel took a decade ago is not the best path to follow. With desktops it was okay because there was an endless supply of power. Mobile processors have to keep pace with battery technology and right now, they're out pacing batteries. ARM is great at designing highly efficient general purpose processors, but still can't compete with highly optimized, special purpose processors.
Right now, of all the mobile operating systems, Apple is in the best position as far allowing them to squeeze performance out of hardware and allowing them to offload more and more processing to coprocessors.
Yeah, but it still seems like a major risk for Apple to be putting such a critical element of its success in the hands of someone who trying their darnedest to compete with them. It's not like Apple doesn't have the volume to justify, or couldn't afford to set up its own manufacture.
Sorry, but Apple's volume doesn't come close to justifying getting into the IC business. They could dump $10 billion into it tomorrow and never get a return on that investment. Worse, they would not be big enough to keep up with the process innovations to remain competitive - so they'd always be generations behind everyone else.
Smart businesses know their core strengths and how to build on them. IC manufacture is clearly not a core strength for Apple, so it would be incredibly foolish for Apple to start doing it. Others can do it far better, faster, and less expensively than Apple can.
As for Samsung competing with Apple? Completely irrelevant. First, this is common practice in this industry. People buy from competitors all the time. Second, Apple is important enough that Samsung isn't going to screw them. Third, I'm sure Apple has alternate vendors lined up. Finally, they'll know instantly if Samsung messes up. The risk is miniscule.
They most certainly do have to compete! Their is a limit to what optimization can do for you. Besides it is software that takes advantage of that hardware.
So you think Apple would make custom hardware for their own devices and not take advantage of that customization in their system software?
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As we have seen on many Android systems software that ignores the built in hardware just sucks.
Okay, but Apple system software does not ignore built-in hardware. The hardware and software are made/optimized for each other.
Processor speed is only one part of the system. It's not simply, " the fastest processor wins".
Sorry, but Apple's volume doesn't come close to justifying getting into the IC business. They could dump $10 billion into it tomorrow and never get a return on that investment. Worse, they would not be big enough to keep up with the process innovations to remain competitive - so they'd always be generations behind everyone else.
Smart businesses know their core strengths and how to build on them. IC manufacture is clearly not a core strength for Apple, so it would be incredibly foolish for Apple to start doing it. Others can do it far better, faster, and less expensively than Apple can.
As for Samsung competing with Apple? Completely irrelevant. First, this is common practice in this industry. People buy from competitors all the time. Second, Apple is important enough that Samsung isn't going to screw them. Third, I'm sure Apple has alternate vendors lined up. Finally, they'll know instantly if Samsung messes up. The risk is miniscule.
Thanks for clearing that up. You're probably right. But it's interesting that you could substitute smart phone for IC in your second paragraph and get what conventional wisdom was three or four years ago.
I think you are discounting an important aspect of the A4 - what's more important is all the stuff the A4 doesn't have. By jettisoning the stuff Apple doesn't use vs general purpose everything- and-the-kitchen-sink designs like hummingbird Apple gets smaller and more power effecient chips.
Funny how that 'theory' doesn't pan out in the real world. The Samsung S8500 Wave, which has a Hummingbird processor, gets better battery life results in GSM-Arena tests than the iPhone 4.
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Also as Sol' pointed out, the iOS devices are more than just their hardware specs. Apples tight integration with their software allows them to get better performance.
Without a performance metric that can actually be tested in the real world, such genaralised waffle is meaningless. It's reminiscent of the days when Apple and their fans used to declare Macs running on Power PC chips outperformed PC's running on Intel chips and that clock speeds and benchmarks were meaningless. Those claims were lies, as history has proven. The Power PC couldn't deliver and when Apple switched to Inel chips, the performance of Macs rocketed. I remember clearly the hardware/software synergy Apple could deliver, being touted as a superiority - decades ago. It just wasn't, apart from a marketing tool and as a salve for the egos of Mac users, myself being one of them.
Apple's raison d'être is profit, not performance.
Apple do better software and they are absolute masters at leveraging that advantage to reduce HW costs and maximise profit margins. A classic example of that would be the iPad. The biggest differnce between the A4 SoC in the iPad and the Hummingbird was the deletion of 250 Mb of Ram Apple didn't tell Samsung to leave out the RAM to boost performance and 'user experience' they did it for their best performing product, the Mac Scrooge.
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So while other phones may have higher CPU speeds, and from a geek perpective higher is better, in portable electronics higher speed means higher power consumption and more heat - not desirable characteristics for battery life.
Pure bull dust - sorry. The Orion SoC (Hummingbird successor) will blow away anything Samsung or Apple currently make, performance wise. The peak power consumption will be higher, but due to multiple efficiency improvements, the average power consumption will actually be lower - reportedly 30% lower!:
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The Cortex-A9 chipsets also should deliver 30% reduction in power consumption, so all the goodies above will come in an even thriftier package that will further enhance battery life on mobile devices.
Also if you remember back to early articles about the A4, in addition to leaving all but the essential stuff out it has extra power management. Apples combination if battery life, small size/weight and aggressive price points aren't an accident.
And such generalised statements aren't proven either.
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In mobile devices where every decision has a much more cascading effect on overall performance, the total control Apple has over all of their components allows them to have a significant edge over their competitors. It's pretty obvious now, but with the next generation of hardware I expect this gap to widen even more.
That's bordering on delusional.
'Total control over their components' applies more to Samsung than it does Apple due to them being an actual HW manufacturer of vast scale and comprehensive vertical integration.
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By the time the iPad 3 and iPhone 6 hit, if there isn't at least one other company tightly integrating hardware AND software like Apple, no one will be able to catch them.
Samsung are in a better position to do HW/Software synergy and integration than Apple. The S8500 Wave already has Samsung's own Bada operating system on it. It is quite possible that there isn't a single component in the Wave that isn't made by Samsung themselves. Despite Sol's piss poor joke, Bada is actually a very impressive OS. It is Unix based like iOS and C++ apps written for it execute way faster than the equivalents on Android, I understand.
Funny how that 'theory' doesn't pan out in the real world. The Samsung S8500 Wave, which has a Hummingbird processor, gets better battery life results in GSM-Arena tests than the iPhone 4.
Funny how that 'theory' doesn't pan out in the real world. The Samsung S8500 Wave, which has a Hummingbird processor, gets better battery life results in GSM-Arena tests than the iPhone 4.
You are saying that the Samsung Wave S5800 that can get 7 hours of ‘3G’ talk time, just like the iPhone 4 has better battery life? Note to the readers at home: the Samsung Wave has a LARGER battery, a SMALLER display (read: smaller area to light, thus using less power), LESS resolution and HALF the RAM, yet only gets the same ‘3G’ talk time.
The only relevant test that is does seem to best the iPhone is standby time. We also have to consider that Apple and Sony use the most accurate battery life testing in CE and others try to slide on by with the bare minimum which is probably why they don’t list video playback, audio playback, or internet usage of the device. This is something Apple prominently displays.
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Without a performance metric that can actually be tested in the real world, such genaralised waffle is meaningless. It's reminiscent of the days when Apple and their fans used to declare Macs running on Power PC chips outperformed PC's running on Intel chips and that clock speeds and benchmarks were meaningless. Those claims were lies, as history has proven. The Power PC couldn't deliver and when Apple switched to Inel chips, the performance of Macs rocketed. I remember clearly the hardware/software synergy Apple could deliver, being touted as a superiority - decades ago. It just wasn't, apart from a marketing tool and as a salve for the egos of Mac users, myself being one of them.
Pure bull dust - sorry. The Orion SoC (Hummingbird successor) will blow away anything Samsung or Apple currently make, performance wise. The peak power consumption will be higher, but due to multiple efficiency improvements, the average power consumption will actually be lower - reportedly 30% lower!:
You mean “generalized” like the above quote text? You can deny the benefits of efficient code and tailored chips, but any reasonable person with a modicum of technical understanding will knowing you are full of it.
In video playback, yes, but in the general usage test, no.
The reviews of the two devices state the iPhone 4 managed almost 3 days while the Wave managed 3 and a half. I think the iPhone 4 test was even slightly biased in that it didn't include navigation, as the Wave test did, but I'm not going to quibble about 10min
GPS receivers are easily the biggest battery killers in phones in my experience
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The Bada-running Samsung S8500 Wave withstood so much torture that at one point we were wondering if it would ever die. Well it finally did after 3 and a half days, after going through the following:
* 90 minutes of video playback
* 2 hours music playback through loudspeaker
* 40 minutes voice call
* 20 minutes games
* 50 minutes browsing
* 30 minutes general usage
* 10 minutes navigation
* 20 minutes shooting photos and videos
We should also keep in mind that the wave was hooked to a 3G network at all times so stand-by also took its toll on the battery.
Update 09 July: We just concluded our dedicated iPhone 4 battery life test and we are pretty pleased with it. The iPhone 4 managed almost three days on a single charge under some normal usage (or at least what we consider normal) including the following:
Remember, the Samsung Wave has a LARGER battery, SMALLER display, and LESS pixels than the iPhone.
That's fewer pixels.
You are desperate aren't you. The battery in the Wave has 80 mAh more capacity, which is only 1.35% more I think. The Wave screen is a whopping 5mm smaller (-6%?).
I'll concede on the pixels but no matter how you try and spin it, the Hummingbird based wave is not a battery hog so all those arguments of Apples superior power management and better battery life just don't hold water - or enough water to be worth a damn in the real world. A lot of Apple's power optimisations seem to have gone into music playback, where the iP4 is amazing.
"Beyond that, there is the benefit of creating some jobs in the US but, as mentioned above, this would need to be weighed against the longer supply chain. Is it possible that this is a first step in returning some final assembly to the US? That seems very unlikely."
What if the devices were so easy to assemble that fewer, or no, dexterous hands were needed to it make, and Apple has some innovative patents pertaining to manufacturing. And that's not even factoring in the LiquidMetal license which I think changes everything.
I for one would love to have Apple, and many other companies, make stuff here again.
You are desperate aren't you. The battery in the Wave has 80 mAh more capacity, which is only 1.35% more I think. The Wave screen is a whopping 5mm smaller (-6%?).
I'll concede on the pixels but no matter how you try and spin it, the Hummingbird based wave is not a battery hog so all those arguments of Apples superior power management and better battery life just don't hold water - or enough water to be worth a damn in the real world. A lot of Apple's power optimisations seem to have gone into music playback, where the iP4 is amazing.
Hummingbird, Samsung Wave or Bada being power efficient does not mean that Apple's A4, iPhone 4 or iOS are not power efficient or that they aren't more power efficient in key areas.
PS: Many months after the iPhone 4 was released Jobs announced they would be tightening up their battery testing even more. Since they already have the most accurate measure in the industry why would they do this? I suspect they have made a significant leap in power efficiency in one or more areas that will included in upcoming products.
Samsung are in a better position to do HW/Software synergy and integration than Apple. The S8500 Wave already has Samsung's own Bada operating system on it. It is quite possible that there isn't a single component in the Wave that isn't made by Samsung themselves. Despite Sol's piss poor joke, Bada is actually a very impressive OS. It is Unix based like iOS and C++ apps written for it execute way faster than the equivalents on Android, I understand.
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yellow hill. answer this.
Why would Bada execute any better than Objective C on it, as objective C is also compiled down to native ( unlike Android, in general). The HW and software integration depends more on the software team.
Samsung dont really have an OS team. Apple have chip designers, a compiler team, a kernel team, a lower level API team ( writing plenty of API in C, as well as Objective C), an energy management team and so on.
Samsung are throwing this stuff together. If you cant imagine Samsun writing an OS to compete with a MacBook , you cant imagine them writing one to compete with a tablet.
The reviews of the two devices state the iPhone 4 managed almost 3 days while the Wave managed 3 and a half. I think the iPhone 4 test was even slightly biased in that it didn't include navigation, as the Wave test did, but I'm not going to quibble about 10min
My guess is that Apple are less efficient in the stuff they are not historically good at doing - i.e. not OS type stuff. Movies and music you admit are amazing. Phone calls have always seemed to drain my battery.
My guess is that Apple are less efficient in the stuff they are not historically good at doing - i.e. not OS type stuff. Movies and music you admit are amazing. Phone calls have always seemed to drain my battery.
They have surely improved on that front, but the iPhone was never poor at talk time when you look at other GSM and UMTS talk times and compare battery mAh and consider the other HW aspects.
A more recent change ? if the rumours are correct ? is Apple sending less notifications to the towers. I think this was first noted by 02 in the UK or T-Mobile in Germany, and was assisted by AT&T here in the US. There is always room to improve and they do seem uniquely positioned to make improvements across more areas than anyone else.
AnandTech does some pretty good tests. The ones from GSMArena are too inconsistent to be useful. There is a reason we isolate areas of usage in these tests. If they we the same tests and durations across all devices it would be at least be consistent, even though ultimately useless, but they don?t even do that.
Why would Bada execute any better than Objective C on it, as objective C is also compiled down to native ( unlike Android, in general). The HW and software integration depends more on the software team.
I am not 100% sure of the question you are asking. Are you referring to where I said:
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It is Unix based like iOS and C++ apps written for it execute way faster than the equivalents on Android, I understand.
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If so, I based that on a comment I read by a Bada app developer who stated:
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Applications written for Bada are based on the native programming language called C++ which has pure raw speed and runs blindingly faster than Android applications which uses the dalvikvm to enable it to run
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Samsung dont really have an OS team. Apple have chip designers, a compiler team, a kernel team, a lower level API team ( writing plenty of API in C, as well as Objective C), an energy management team and so on.
So who wrote Bada?
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Justin Hong: ...We have a tech support team at our R&D center in Bangalore with about 2,400 engineers.
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Samsung are throwing this stuff together. If you cant imagine Samsun writing an OS to compete with a MacBook , you cant imagine them writing one to compete with a tablet.
I have a Wave myself. For something with a non-existent OS - a result of not being developed by a non-existent OS team - and a bunch of parts just thrown together, it's pretty amazing. You are right, I can't see Samsung taking on OSX, but you are wrong about tablets. I can certainly see a Bada variant on a tablet, though I suspect Samsung will stick to Android for that application.
Movies were originally 4x3. The reason they began producing wider aspect ratios is because of television. Movies needed to offer a bigger experience than television and the most effective way to do that is to make the aspect ratio wider to provide a more expansive experience.
For over 70 years television has been 4x3. The migration to 16x9 has only been in the last 10 years. The reason television is switching to 16x9 is to provide more of an experience like that of the movies.
As the screen gets smaller and you sit closer to it. The expansive field of the wide screen effect is less effective. All you really end up doing is having a smaller picture. That is the reason why HD television uses 1.77 (16x9) and not 1.85 or 2.4 that movies use.
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Originally Posted by wizard69
4:3 is popular and suitable for one thing, that is portraits of a single person. Beyond that you end up making compromises to fit the format.
For video it should be pretty obvious that wider simply works better considering how human vision works. 16:9 is a compromize but it does work well. The important thing is that it accommodates many cine ratios without the extensive wasted space seen on 4:3 screens.
Comments
Reaching back to the distant past of Apple naming conventions: A4 Plus, A4 Classic, A4 GS--oh what the hell, A4 Turbo and A4 SuperSport!
Oh, I understand what you're saying there, I'm simply wondering which way they'll go with it. A4 sounds good. I'm just curious if they'll simply call the chip the A4 regardless of the changes made to it, sort of like they call a Mac Pro a Mac Pro regardless of internal revisions.
It seems to me that Apple and Samsung are sort of in lockstep with regards to hardware. Despite all the chest thumping that goes on about Apple's custom chip design capabilities and them consequently pulling ahead of the pack as a result, it just isn't going to happen. Samsung will always have at least equivalent or superior HW available for their own devices. The A4 is most likely a custom variant of Samsung's S5PC110A01 Hummingbird, since that design existed prior to the A4
I think you are discounting an important aspect of the A4 - what's more important is all the stuff the A4 doesn't have. By jettisoning the stuff Apple doesn't use vs general purpose everything- and-the-kitchen-sink designs like hummingbird Apple gets smaller and more power effecient chips.
Also as Sol' pointed out, the iOS devices are more than just their hardware specs. Apples tight integration with their software allows them to get better performance.
So while other phones may have higher CPU speeds, and from a geek perpective higher is better, in portable electronics higher speed means higher power consumption and more heat - not desirable characteristics for battery life.
This is why I don't see Apple talking specifics about the hardware - first, it really is irrelevant - the device either delivers a good user experience or it doesn't. More importantly, the vast majority of people are wholly unqualified to interpret the mix of hardware and software and state with any reasonableness what raw specs like CPU speed mean.
Also if you remember back to early articles about the A4, in addition to leaving all but the essential stuff out it has extra power management. Apples combination if battery life, small size/weight and aggressive price points aren't an accident.
In mobile devices where every decision has a much more cascading effect on overall performance, the total control Apple has over all of their components allows them to have a significant edge over their competitors. It's pretty obvious now, but with the next generation of hardware I expect this gap to widen even more.
This isn't a desktop world where to match or exceede Apple performance you can just crank the clock speed or throw in the latest cutting edge chip that is unoptimized in hardware and software - every decision has a significant impact if the holy trinity of mobile: size/weight, battery and cost.
By the time the iPad 3 and iPhone 6 hit, if there isn't at least one other company tightly integrating hardware AND software like Apple, no one will be able to catch them.
The only one I can see is HP with WebOS. HP has also ran custom chip architectures in the past - whether they still have that expertise or not I'm not sure.
MS could do it if they wanted. Will wait until it's too late like the Zune or will they just "Zune" their WP7 partners now and get it over with? I'm banking on timidity until it's too late - unfortunately
Their is a limit to what optimization can do for you. Besides it is software that takes advantage of that hardware. As we have seen on many Android systems software that ignores the built in hardware just sucks.
The reverse is true as well... You can add hardware that can help out software as well. So, optimization goes both ways. Just as with hardware H.264 decoders, there is a lot that can be done in hardware to make a system run more efficient.
OS X is full of technologies that can benefit from hardware optimizations. The more processing you can offload to co-processors, the more performance you can squeeze out of the same main CPU. This is why it is extremely important for Apple to design its own SoCs, they can continue to design systems with specialized processors that can take over from CPU duties.
This is also why Apple has done a lot of work in getting OpenCL standardized and put a lot of work into technologies like LLVM, 'C' Blocks and have helped developers adopt threading and parallelism in their applications by removing a lot of the complexity of scheduling via GCD.
Yes, it would be great to see Apple "keep up" with competitors and release a Cortex-A9 based SoC, but the reality is, they don't need it to keep up performance wise. There are many other ways to tackle performance issues. Heading down the same path Intel took a decade ago is not the best path to follow. With desktops it was okay because there was an endless supply of power. Mobile processors have to keep pace with battery technology and right now, they're out pacing batteries. ARM is great at designing highly efficient general purpose processors, but still can't compete with highly optimized, special purpose processors.
Right now, of all the mobile operating systems, Apple is in the best position as far allowing them to squeeze performance out of hardware and allowing them to offload more and more processing to coprocessors.
Yeah, but it still seems like a major risk for Apple to be putting such a critical element of its success in the hands of someone who trying their darnedest to compete with them. It's not like Apple doesn't have the volume to justify, or couldn't afford to set up its own manufacture.
Sorry, but Apple's volume doesn't come close to justifying getting into the IC business. They could dump $10 billion into it tomorrow and never get a return on that investment. Worse, they would not be big enough to keep up with the process innovations to remain competitive - so they'd always be generations behind everyone else.
Smart businesses know their core strengths and how to build on them. IC manufacture is clearly not a core strength for Apple, so it would be incredibly foolish for Apple to start doing it. Others can do it far better, faster, and less expensively than Apple can.
As for Samsung competing with Apple? Completely irrelevant. First, this is common practice in this industry. People buy from competitors all the time. Second, Apple is important enough that Samsung isn't going to screw them. Third, I'm sure Apple has alternate vendors lined up. Finally, they'll know instantly if Samsung messes up. The risk is miniscule.
They most certainly do have to compete! Their is a limit to what optimization can do for you. Besides it is software that takes advantage of that hardware.
So you think Apple would make custom hardware for their own devices and not take advantage of that customization in their system software?
As we have seen on many Android systems software that ignores the built in hardware just sucks.
Okay, but Apple system software does not ignore built-in hardware. The hardware and software are made/optimized for each other.
Processor speed is only one part of the system. It's not simply, " the fastest processor wins".
Sorry, but Apple's volume doesn't come close to justifying getting into the IC business. They could dump $10 billion into it tomorrow and never get a return on that investment. Worse, they would not be big enough to keep up with the process innovations to remain competitive - so they'd always be generations behind everyone else.
Smart businesses know their core strengths and how to build on them. IC manufacture is clearly not a core strength for Apple, so it would be incredibly foolish for Apple to start doing it. Others can do it far better, faster, and less expensively than Apple can.
As for Samsung competing with Apple? Completely irrelevant. First, this is common practice in this industry. People buy from competitors all the time. Second, Apple is important enough that Samsung isn't going to screw them. Third, I'm sure Apple has alternate vendors lined up. Finally, they'll know instantly if Samsung messes up. The risk is miniscule.
Thanks for clearing that up. You're probably right. But it's interesting that you could substitute smart phone for IC in your second paragraph and get what conventional wisdom was three or four years ago.
I think you are discounting an important aspect of the A4 - what's more important is all the stuff the A4 doesn't have. By jettisoning the stuff Apple doesn't use vs general purpose everything- and-the-kitchen-sink designs like hummingbird Apple gets smaller and more power effecient chips.
Funny how that 'theory' doesn't pan out in the real world. The Samsung S8500 Wave, which has a Hummingbird processor, gets better battery life results in GSM-Arena tests than the iPhone 4.
Also as Sol' pointed out, the iOS devices are more than just their hardware specs. Apples tight integration with their software allows them to get better performance.
Without a performance metric that can actually be tested in the real world, such genaralised waffle is meaningless. It's reminiscent of the days when Apple and their fans used to declare Macs running on Power PC chips outperformed PC's running on Intel chips and that clock speeds and benchmarks were meaningless. Those claims were lies, as history has proven. The Power PC couldn't deliver and when Apple switched to Inel chips, the performance of Macs rocketed. I remember clearly the hardware/software synergy Apple could deliver, being touted as a superiority - decades ago. It just wasn't, apart from a marketing tool and as a salve for the egos of Mac users, myself being one of them.
Apple's raison d'être is profit, not performance.
Apple do better software and they are absolute masters at leveraging that advantage to reduce HW costs and maximise profit margins. A classic example of that would be the iPad. The biggest differnce between the A4 SoC in the iPad and the Hummingbird was the deletion of 250 Mb of Ram
So while other phones may have higher CPU speeds, and from a geek perpective higher is better, in portable electronics higher speed means higher power consumption and more heat - not desirable characteristics for battery life.
Pure bull dust - sorry. The Orion SoC (Hummingbird successor) will blow away anything Samsung or Apple currently make, performance wise. The peak power consumption will be higher, but due to multiple efficiency improvements, the average power consumption will actually be lower - reportedly 30% lower!:
The Cortex-A9 chipsets also should deliver 30% reduction in power consumption, so all the goodies above will come in an even thriftier package that will further enhance battery life on mobile devices.
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Samsu...hipset_id13089
Also if you remember back to early articles about the A4, in addition to leaving all but the essential stuff out it has extra power management. Apples combination if battery life, small size/weight and aggressive price points aren't an accident.
And such generalised statements aren't proven either.
In mobile devices where every decision has a much more cascading effect on overall performance, the total control Apple has over all of their components allows them to have a significant edge over their competitors. It's pretty obvious now, but with the next generation of hardware I expect this gap to widen even more.
That's bordering on delusional.
'Total control over their components' applies more to Samsung than it does Apple due to them being an actual HW manufacturer of vast scale and comprehensive vertical integration.
By the time the iPad 3 and iPhone 6 hit, if there isn't at least one other company tightly integrating hardware AND software like Apple, no one will be able to catch them.
Samsung are in a better position to do HW/Software synergy and integration than Apple. The S8500 Wave already has Samsung's own Bada operating system on it. It is quite possible that there isn't a single component in the Wave that isn't made by Samsung themselves. Despite Sol's piss poor joke, Bada is actually a very impressive OS. It is Unix based like iOS and C++ apps written for it execute way faster than the equivalents on Android, I understand.
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Funny how that 'theory' doesn't pan out in the real world. The Samsung S8500 Wave, which has a Hummingbird processor, gets better battery life results in GSM-Arena tests than the iPhone 4.
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Doesn't this GSMArena post say the iPhone 4 wins?
http://blog.gsmarena.com/iphone-4-ba...layback-champ/
Funny how that 'theory' doesn't pan out in the real world. The Samsung S8500 Wave, which has a Hummingbird processor, gets better battery life results in GSM-Arena tests than the iPhone 4.
You are saying that the Samsung Wave S5800 that can get 7 hours of ‘3G’ talk time, just like the iPhone 4 has better battery life? Note to the readers at home: the Samsung Wave has a LARGER battery, a SMALLER display (read: smaller area to light, thus using less power), LESS resolution and HALF the RAM, yet only gets the same ‘3G’ talk time.
The only relevant test that is does seem to best the iPhone is standby time. We also have to consider that Apple and Sony use the most accurate battery life testing in CE and others try to slide on by with the bare minimum which is probably why they don’t list video playback, audio playback, or internet usage of the device. This is something Apple prominently displays.
Without a performance metric that can actually be tested in the real world, such genaralised waffle is meaningless. It's reminiscent of the days when Apple and their fans used to declare Macs running on Power PC chips outperformed PC's running on Intel chips and that clock speeds and benchmarks were meaningless. Those claims were lies, as history has proven. The Power PC couldn't deliver and when Apple switched to Inel chips, the performance of Macs rocketed. I remember clearly the hardware/software synergy Apple could deliver, being touted as a superiority - decades ago. It just wasn't, apart from a marketing tool and as a salve for the egos of Mac users, myself being one of them.
Pure bull dust - sorry. The Orion SoC (Hummingbird successor) will blow away anything Samsung or Apple currently make, performance wise. The peak power consumption will be higher, but due to multiple efficiency improvements, the average power consumption will actually be lower - reportedly 30% lower!:
You mean “generalized” like the above quote text?
Doesn't this GSMArena post say the iPhone 4 wins?
http://blog.gsmarena.com/iphone-4-ba...layback-champ/
The iPhone 4 scored 9 hours and 40 minutes of video.
The Samsung Wave scored 8 hours and 40 minutes in the same challenge.
Remember, the Samsung Wave has a LARGER battery, SMALLER display, and LESS pixels than the iPhone.
Doesn't this GSMArena post say the iPhone 4 wins?
http://blog.gsmarena.com/iphone-4-ba...layback-champ/
In video playback, yes, but in the general usage test, no.
The reviews of the two devices state the iPhone 4 managed almost 3 days while the Wave managed 3 and a half. I think the iPhone 4 test was even slightly biased in that it didn't include navigation, as the Wave test did, but I'm not going to quibble about 10min
GPS receivers are easily the biggest battery killers in phones in my experience
The Bada-running Samsung S8500 Wave withstood so much torture that at one point we were wondering if it would ever die. Well it finally did after 3 and a half days, after going through the following:
* 90 minutes of video playback
* 2 hours music playback through loudspeaker
* 40 minutes voice call
* 20 minutes games
* 50 minutes browsing
* 30 minutes general usage
* 10 minutes navigation
* 20 minutes shooting photos and videos
We should also keep in mind that the wave was hooked to a 3G network at all times so stand-by also took its toll on the battery.
http://blog.gsmarena.com/the-king-is...life-champion/
Update 09 July: We just concluded our dedicated iPhone 4 battery life test and we are pretty pleased with it. The iPhone 4 managed almost three days on a single charge under some normal usage (or at least what we consider normal) including the following:
* 30 min of general usage
* 90 minutes of video playback
* 40 minutes of voice calls
* 40 minutes of web browsing
* 40 minutes of gaming
* 40 minutes of photo browsing
* 2 hours of music playback
http://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_4-review-490p3.php
Remember, the Samsung Wave has a LARGER battery, SMALLER display, and LESS pixels than the iPhone.
That's fewer pixels.
You are desperate aren't you. The battery in the Wave has 80 mAh more capacity, which is only 1.35% more I think. The Wave screen is a whopping 5mm smaller (-6%?).
I'll concede on the pixels but no matter how you try and spin it, the Hummingbird based wave is not a battery hog so all those arguments of Apples superior power management and better battery life just don't hold water - or enough water to be worth a damn in the real world. A lot of Apple's power optimisations seem to have gone into music playback, where the iP4 is amazing.
I can only deal with so much BS so I can only address some of your lies and misdirection.
I do not appreciate being called a liar.
What if the devices were so easy to assemble that fewer, or no, dexterous hands were needed to it make, and Apple has some innovative patents pertaining to manufacturing. And that's not even factoring in the LiquidMetal license which I think changes everything.
I for one would love to have Apple, and many other companies, make stuff here again.
That's fewer pixels.
You are desperate aren't you. The battery in the Wave has 80 mAh more capacity, which is only 1.35% more I think. The Wave screen is a whopping 5mm smaller (-6%?).
I'll concede on the pixels but no matter how you try and spin it, the Hummingbird based wave is not a battery hog so all those arguments of Apples superior power management and better battery life just don't hold water - or enough water to be worth a damn in the real world. A lot of Apple's power optimisations seem to have gone into music playback, where the iP4 is amazing.
Hummingbird, Samsung Wave or Bada being power efficient does not mean that Apple's A4, iPhone 4 or iOS are not power efficient or that they aren't more power efficient in key areas.
PS: Many months after the iPhone 4 was released Jobs announced they would be tightening up their battery testing even more. Since they already have the most accurate measure in the industry why would they do this? I suspect they have made a significant leap in power efficiency in one or more areas that will included in upcoming products.
Samsung are in a better position to do HW/Software synergy and integration than Apple. The S8500 Wave already has Samsung's own Bada operating system on it. It is quite possible that there isn't a single component in the Wave that isn't made by Samsung themselves. Despite Sol's piss poor joke, Bada is actually a very impressive OS. It is Unix based like iOS and C++ apps written for it execute way faster than the equivalents on Android, I understand.
.
yellow hill. answer this.
Why would Bada execute any better than Objective C on it, as objective C is also compiled down to native ( unlike Android, in general). The HW and software integration depends more on the software team.
Samsung dont really have an OS team. Apple have chip designers, a compiler team, a kernel team, a lower level API team ( writing plenty of API in C, as well as Objective C), an energy management team and so on.
Samsung are throwing this stuff together. If you cant imagine Samsun writing an OS to compete with a MacBook , you cant imagine them writing one to compete with a tablet.
The reviews of the two devices state the iPhone 4 managed almost 3 days while the Wave managed 3 and a half. I think the iPhone 4 test was even slightly biased in that it didn't include navigation, as the Wave test did, but I'm not going to quibble about 10min
My guess is that Apple are less efficient in the stuff they are not historically good at doing - i.e. not OS type stuff. Movies and music you admit are amazing. Phone calls have always seemed to drain my battery.
My guess is that Apple are less efficient in the stuff they are not historically good at doing - i.e. not OS type stuff. Movies and music you admit are amazing. Phone calls have always seemed to drain my battery.
They have surely improved on that front, but the iPhone was never poor at talk time when you look at other GSM and UMTS talk times and compare battery mAh and consider the other HW aspects.
A more recent change ? if the rumours are correct ? is Apple sending less notifications to the towers. I think this was first noted by 02 in the UK or T-Mobile in Germany, and was assisted by AT&T here in the US. There is always room to improve and they do seem uniquely positioned to make improvements across more areas than anyone else.
AnandTech does some pretty good tests. The ones from GSMArena are too inconsistent to be useful. There is a reason we isolate areas of usage in these tests. If they we the same tests and durations across all devices it would be at least be consistent, even though ultimately useless, but they don?t even do that.
yellow hill. answer this.
Why would Bada execute any better than Objective C on it, as objective C is also compiled down to native ( unlike Android, in general). The HW and software integration depends more on the software team.
I am not 100% sure of the question you are asking. Are you referring to where I said:
It is Unix based like iOS and C++ apps written for it execute way faster than the equivalents on Android, I understand.
?
If so, I based that on a comment I read by a Bada app developer who stated:
Applications written for Bada are based on the native programming language called C++ which has pure raw speed and runs blindingly faster than Android applications which uses the dalvikvm to enable it to run
Samsung dont really have an OS team. Apple have chip designers, a compiler team, a kernel team, a lower level API team ( writing plenty of API in C, as well as Objective C), an energy management team and so on.
So who wrote Bada?
Justin Hong: ...We have a tech support team at our R&D center in Bangalore with about 2,400 engineers.
Samsung are throwing this stuff together. If you cant imagine Samsun writing an OS to compete with a MacBook , you cant imagine them writing one to compete with a tablet.
I have a Wave myself. For something with a non-existent OS - a result of not being developed by a non-existent OS team - and a bunch of parts just thrown together, it's pretty amazing. You are right, I can't see Samsung taking on OSX, but you are wrong about tablets. I can certainly see a Bada variant on a tablet, though I suspect Samsung will stick to Android for that application.
Movies were originally 4x3. The reason they began producing wider aspect ratios is because of television. Movies needed to offer a bigger experience than television and the most effective way to do that is to make the aspect ratio wider to provide a more expansive experience.
For over 70 years television has been 4x3. The migration to 16x9 has only been in the last 10 years. The reason television is switching to 16x9 is to provide more of an experience like that of the movies.
As the screen gets smaller and you sit closer to it. The expansive field of the wide screen effect is less effective. All you really end up doing is having a smaller picture. That is the reason why HD television uses 1.77 (16x9) and not 1.85 or 2.4 that movies use.
4:3 is popular and suitable for one thing, that is portraits of a single person. Beyond that you end up making compromises to fit the format.
For video it should be pretty obvious that wider simply works better considering how human vision works. 16:9 is a compromize but it does work well. The important thing is that it accommodates many cine ratios without the extensive wasted space seen on 4:3 screens.