I am amused by the hypocrisy of the “specs mean everything" crowd. Apple has been hammered by this crowd incessantly for years. Geekbench tests have been hung around Apple’s neck like a millstone. Now comes Apple’s custom designed processors that smoke the competition and, miracle of miracles, suddenly these tests are flawed and meaningless. Granted, if you were to put the A11 in an Android phone it probably wouldn’t improve performance much, if any, because of the software. But to the spec monkeys the 8 core Snapdragon simply has to outperform the 6 core A11 because, well, 6 is less than 8. Simple arithmetic, right?
Since when do Apple fans care about specs? I thought it was all about user experience?
Oh, please... Do you listen to yourself, what's your actual goal here on this site.
Apple is using the CPU's procesing power for Face ID, that's user experience right there buddy and the fact it's also as always a smaller phone with a bigger battery to feature ratio is also linked to the processing power. Oh, and there is the whole AR thing, lets see if Samsung can actually do anything good there.
Its job is to annoy. Often successful I would say.
I think mot new high end phones are pretty fast. Fast enough!!! You may not really notice how fast Apple's iPhone is when new, but when you hold onto it, 2, 3, 4 years, it does matter. When I had my iPhone 4, which had Apple's first A4 CPU, by the time I got into the 4th year of using it and the newest OS on it, it was dog slow. At times I would want to throw it against the wall to break it giving me a excuse to upgrade. In the end, after 4+ years, I sold it to T-Mobile for $202. Not bad!!!
With my current iPhone 6, now into my 4th year, it's much better speed wise compared to my iPhone 4. It can be poky at times, but much better than the last phone. It's much more usable. That's because the CPU was much more faster when it first came out. It's that extra speed, that maybe is overkill when new most of the time, but if you hold onto your phone longer than 1 or 2 years, you really can see how they're holding up better as they age. This year I'll be upgrading to the iPhone XI or whatever Apple is going to call it. If I'm going to pay a bunch of money for a phone, I want to get my money's worth. I also figured a second generation iPhone X will be better. Any issues worked out. FaceID improvements, and apps a year to adjust to the screen shape and so forth.
I am amused by the hypocrisy of the “specs mean everything" crowd. Apple has been hammered by this crowd incessantly for years. Geekbench tests have been hung around Apple’s neck like a millstone. Now comes Apple’s custom designed processors that smoke the competition and, miracle of miracles, suddenly these tests are flawed and meaningless. Granted, if you were to put the A11 in an Android phone it probably wouldn’t improve performance much, if any, because of the software. But to the spec monkeys the 8 core Snapdragon simply has to outperform the 6 core A11 because, well, 6 is less than 8. Simple arithmetic, right?
Since when do Apple fans care about specs? I thought it was all about user experience?
Clueless about what "specs" are? I am not surprised.
Specs = specifications. What are the details of the product: how many transistors, what is clock speed, pixels, CPU cores, mWh of battery, etc. This is what some of the Android crowd bragged about, regardless of end user performance or experience.
What is discussed in this article is performance. Performance matters, and higher performance out of the hardware + great software = great user experience. Claiming otherwise is being...well...clueless.
I am amused by the hypocrisy of the “specs mean everything" crowd. Apple has been hammered by this crowd incessantly for years. Geekbench tests have been hung around Apple’s neck like a millstone. Now comes Apple’s custom designed processors that smoke the competition and, miracle of miracles, suddenly these tests are flawed and meaningless. Granted, if you were to put the A11 in an Android phone it probably wouldn’t improve performance much, if any, because of the software. But to the spec monkeys the 8 core Snapdragon simply has to outperform the 6 core A11 because, well, 6 is less than 8. Simple arithmetic, right?
Since when do Apple fans care about specs? I thought it was all about user experience?
C’mom as a DF reader I know you know the answer... Gruber nailed it as usual:
You can’t bring this up in public without a certain segment of Android fans losing their goddamn minds over it. “I thought specs don’t matter?” they say, and point to articles I (or whoever else brings this up) wrote in the past arguing that specs aren’t the only thing that matters. [...] For me, it’s the overall experience that matters, and that’s largely defined by the software platform.
But Samsung isn’t the company with the proprietary chips that blow away the industry commodity chips, Apple is. So iPhone users get the best in both regards: they get the iOS experience and Apple-designed hardware, and they get the vastly superior CPU and GPU. And Android users who want industry-leading performance are shit out of luck. This is unprecedented in computing history.
I care about a great experience. Comparing Apple’s A-series chip to a Samsung chip or a Google chip doesn’t matter to me at all. And I do think fans on both sides pick and choose when specs matter. If the company they’re cheerleading for comes out on top then they matter if not then they don’t.
I commented back in September that the 2018 high end Android devices would not come close the 2017 iPhones (many won't outperform iPhone 7), let alone what Apple brings to bear this year.
I am amused by the hypocrisy of the “specs mean everything" crowd. Apple has been hammered by this crowd incessantly for years. Geekbench tests have been hung around Apple’s neck like a millstone. Now comes Apple’s custom designed processors that smoke the competition and, miracle of miracles, suddenly these tests are flawed and meaningless. Granted, if you were to put the A11 in an Android phone it probably wouldn’t improve performance much, if any, because of the software. But to the spec monkeys the 8 core Snapdragon simply has to outperform the 6 core A11 because, well, 6 is less than 8. Simple arithmetic, right?
Since when do Apple fans care about specs? I thought it was all about user experience?
When did the Android “tech savvy” users STOP caring about specs?
That’s easy. When Apple processors surpassed anything Samsung or Qualcomm made and starting winning the spec war. The A7 is what really pissed them off (catching everyone with their pants down by making the first 64bit mobile processor).
Right. People care about specs when their favorite is on top. Once that’s no longer the case then they don’t care. But I would argue Apple fans more than others always care(d) the least. If not they’d be badgering Apple for not using bigger batteries and having more RAM in their iOS devices.
it is now coming down to software optimization. pure processor power is not enough, unless the underlining code is optimize around the processor users will never see the performance. Even though the benchmarks try to work directly with the processor they can not they still have to interface with the operating system to execute code on the processor. The only way to eliminate the operating systems is to remove and replace it with the benchmark software which we know is not happening.
This is why Apple has the advantage and will always have the advantage. Google can not optimize their software to work with all the versions of processors.
Apple is shipping the widest ARM cores out there at 6-issue, everyone else is still playing with 4-issue. Nvidia tried 7 but their binary translation attempt made performance too weird.
Since core complexity goes up exponentially with width, Apple is also spending twice as much silicon per core, or at least were last year as the competition.
Point being it's not just some ambiguous whole banana optimization, Apple is shipping the most advanced ARM CPU cores in a phone period regardless of OS. For the Exynos Anandtech does mention it's a pre-release scheduler so some of it could be software, but even if things were perfectly optimized it would not be as good per clock as Apples wide core.
I agree, Apple processor can not be touched, They are doing things in their designs which no other manufacture is doing, the silicon is even optimize to ensure the data paths are as fast as possible as well as low power. However, that is also like have a 1000HP engine under the hood and no way to get the power to the ground. Software optimization plays an extremely important roll when the processor is fully optimize, OS and API and various other thinks can slow a processor down especially if command sequences are not optimize. Memory management becomes critical as well. You can not just look at the raw numbers of the speed and bits and number of cores, software implementation can slow everything down.
I am amused by the hypocrisy of the “specs mean everything" crowd. Apple has been hammered by this crowd incessantly for years. Geekbench tests have been hung around Apple’s neck like a millstone. Now comes Apple’s custom designed processors that smoke the competition and, miracle of miracles, suddenly these tests are flawed and meaningless. Granted, if you were to put the A11 in an Android phone it probably wouldn’t improve performance much, if any, because of the software. But to the spec monkeys the 8 core Snapdragon simply has to outperform the 6 core A11 because, well, 6 is less than 8. Simple arithmetic, right?
Since when do Apple fans care about specs? I thought it was all about user experience?
C’mom as a DF reader I know you know the answer... Gruber nailed it as usual:
You can’t bring this up in public without a certain segment of Android fans losing their goddamn minds over it. “I thought specs don’t matter?” they say, and point to articles I (or whoever else brings this up) wrote in the past arguing that specs aren’t the only thing that matters. [...] For me, it’s the overall experience that matters, and that’s largely defined by the software platform.
But Samsung isn’t the company with the proprietary chips that blow away the industry commodity chips, Apple is. So iPhone users get the best in both regards: they get the iOS experience and Apple-designed hardware, and they get the vastly superior CPU and GPU. And Android users who want industry-leading performance are shit out of luck. This is unprecedented in computing history.
I care about a great experience. Comparing Apple’s A-series chip to a Samsung chip or a Google chip doesn’t matter to me at all. And I do think fans on both sides pick and choose when specs matter. If the company they’re cheerleading for comes out on top then they matter if not then they don’t.
Re-read the DF article because somehow you're missing Gruber's entire point -- Apple already had the win for "great experience". Now it also has the win for "performance" (specs)... Which is what makes it noteworthy, as previously Apple was known only for the great experience while the neckbeards bragged about their specs.
So what exactly is it that you're complaining about?
Actually the single-core performance is impressive over the previous version. But there is a catch here. That single-core performance is only achievable when one core is being used. Core performance degrades by as much as 33% when all four cores are being used.
Apple has been killing it when it comes to single core performance since the A7. So it begs the question, is this another case of Samsung playing the ,"Hey look! Me too!" game? It also makes you wonder why Anandtech failed to report multi-core benchmarks!?
I wish Anandtech would get around reviewing the A11 already.
Actually the single-core performance is impressive over the previous version. But there is a catch here. That single-core performance is only achievable when one core is being used. Core performance degrades by as much as 33% when all four cores are being used.
Apple has been killing it when it comes to single core performance since the A7. So it begs the question, is this another case of Samsung playing the ,"Hey look! Me too!" game? It also makes you wonder why Anandtech failed to report multi-core benchmarks!?
I wish Anandtech would get around reviewing the A11 already.
Whether that's a me too attempt to cheaply catch up to the A11s appearance on single core tests, in truth that's how a lot of modern processors work now anyways. Look at Intel CPUs, the reason they don't give up single core performance on much more multicore processors is because one core can boost to lets call it 10, two cores can boost to 9, etc etc. So before an 18 core processor would give up a great deal of single threaded performance, now if only one core is active it'll boost up as high as it'll go.
So single core boost isn't really a cheat so much as a valid tactic, but whether Samsungs in specific is useful needs more testing. They're either power limited or else the new scheduler still has teething issues, we'll have to see with two production units.
What's truly impressive is that Apples massive single core performance seems mostly additive, with only slight losses per core with all cores engaged. A11X rumored with three big and five little cores is going to be yummy...And possibly make things look increasingly uncomfortable for ULV CPUs even with fans.
I wish for Anandtechs A11 deep dive too, Apple has been shipping a fully custom GPU for months and no one else has seen fit to look into it...
I am amused by the hypocrisy of the “specs mean everything" crowd. Apple has been hammered by this crowd incessantly for years. Geekbench tests have been hung around Apple’s neck like a millstone. Now comes Apple’s custom designed processors that smoke the competition and, miracle of miracles, suddenly these tests are flawed and meaningless. Granted, if you were to put the A11 in an Android phone it probably wouldn’t improve performance much, if any, because of the software. But to the spec monkeys the 8 core Snapdragon simply has to outperform the 6 core A11 because, well, 6 is less than 8. Simple arithmetic, right?
Since when do Apple fans care about specs? I thought it was all about user experience?
Who said anything abut Apple fans caring about specs? I don't think the OP was referring to Apple fans at all.
I am amused by the hypocrisy of the “specs mean everything" crowd. Apple has been hammered by this crowd incessantly for years. Geekbench tests have been hung around Apple’s neck like a millstone. Now comes Apple’s custom designed processors that smoke the competition and, miracle of miracles, suddenly these tests are flawed and meaningless. Granted, if you were to put the A11 in an Android phone it probably wouldn’t improve performance much, if any, because of the software. But to the spec monkeys the 8 core Snapdragon simply has to outperform the 6 core A11 because, well, 6 is less than 8. Simple arithmetic, right?
Since when do Apple fans care about specs? I thought it was all about user experience?
Who said anything abut Apple fans caring about specs? I don't think the OP was referring to Apple fans at all.
yeah he was reference people who run around an spout about all the benchmark and how that is all matters, now that no one is touch Apple all those people are now quiet and are not say much since it means they will have to play up Apple verses someone else.
I am amused by the hypocrisy of the “specs mean everything" crowd. Apple has been hammered by this crowd incessantly for years. Geekbench tests have been hung around Apple’s neck like a millstone. Now comes Apple’s custom designed processors that smoke the competition and, miracle of miracles, suddenly these tests are flawed and meaningless. Granted, if you were to put the A11 in an Android phone it probably wouldn’t improve performance much, if any, because of the software. But to the spec monkeys the 8 core Snapdragon simply has to outperform the 6 core A11 because, well, 6 is less than 8. Simple arithmetic, right?
Since when do Apple fans care about specs? I thought it was all about user experience?
Who said anything abut Apple fans caring about specs? I don't think the OP was referring to Apple fans at all.
yeah he was reference people who run around an spout about all the benchmark and how that is all matters, now that no one is touch Apple all those people are now quiet and are not say much since it means they will have to play up Apple verses someone else.
Who are all these people? Does the author have specific names? Certain tech website? I can tell you from what I’ve read the Galaxy S9 landed with a big thud. Even the Verge its camera changes are mostly marketing hype. And AR emoji has gotten less than stellar reviews,
I don't think anyone buying a Galaxy S9 would care about the processor being slower than Apple's A-series processor. They're going to be buying the S9 for the Infinity Display, the variable iris camera and the headphone jack. As long as those features work, I would think users would be more than satisfied. The iPhone really doesn't get that much praise for processing power and Apple mostly downplays benchmarks. All people did was whine about the iPhone X's display notch, so everyone has their own preferences about what they feel is most important on a smartphone.
Remember when the Android Apologists used to brag about specs? Yeah. That was a long, long time ago.
Now Android Apologists ask "Since when do Apple fans care about specs? I though it was all about user experience." Well guess what. "Snappy" is part of the user experience.
Hmmm.... the AnTuTu benchmarks shows the S9 ahead...LOL
Then again, the article says the S9 benchmarked about the same as the S8, but all the benchmarks I can fine online show the S9 to be 35-55% faster then the S8.
Good showing from Samsung if those Geekbench scores hold up. Kind of strange Anandtech didn’t post the multithreaded Geekbench scores since it should have been right there too.
However, if the other Android benchmarks from Anandtech don’t have any issues, it’s a very bad showing from Samsung. Those show that the S9 doesn’t outperform the S8 models and the Snapdragon 845 handily outperforms it. Maybe Samsung is hot rodding Geekbench, who knows. Wait and see.
Actually, we don't know if the 845 outperforms it since it has not been in an actual non reference phone (those things are huge (so heat can dissipate) with no other features that would affect thermals). Last year the 835 claimed huge specs too yet didn't really deliver in an actual device.
it is now coming down to software optimization. pure processor power is not enough, unless the underlining code is optimize around the processor users will never see the performance. Even though the benchmarks try to work directly with the processor they can not they still have to interface with the operating system to execute code on the processor. The only way to eliminate the operating systems is to remove and replace it with the benchmark software which we know is not happening.
This is why Apple has the advantage and will always have the advantage. Google can not optimize their software to work with all the versions of processors.
Apple is shipping the widest ARM cores out there at 6-issue, everyone else is still playing with 4-issue. Nvidia tried 7 but their binary translation attempt made performance too weird.
Since core complexity goes up exponentially with width, Apple is also spending twice as much silicon per core, or at least were last year as the competition.
Point being it's not just some ambiguous whole banana optimization, Apple is shipping the most advanced ARM CPU cores in a phone period regardless of OS. For the Exynos Anandtech does mention it's a pre-release scheduler so some of it could be software, but even if things were perfectly optimized it would not be as good per clock as Apples wide core.
I've been looking for more in depth information regarding Apple silicon, where did you get the info on the piplines in the A series? So you are saying these procs can't handle 6 instructions at once per pipe?
it is now coming down to software optimization. pure processor power is not enough, unless the underlining code is optimize around the processor users will never see the performance. Even though the benchmarks try to work directly with the processor they can not they still have to interface with the operating system to execute code on the processor. The only way to eliminate the operating systems is to remove and replace it with the benchmark software which we know is not happening.
This is why Apple has the advantage and will always have the advantage. Google can not optimize their software to work with all the versions of processors.
Apple is shipping the widest ARM cores out there at 6-issue, everyone else is still playing with 4-issue. Nvidia tried 7 but their binary translation attempt made performance too weird.
Since core complexity goes up exponentially with width, Apple is also spending twice as much silicon per core, or at least were last year as the competition.
Point being it's not just some ambiguous whole banana optimization, Apple is shipping the most advanced ARM CPU cores in a phone period regardless of OS. For the Exynos Anandtech does mention it's a pre-release scheduler so some of it could be software, but even if things were perfectly optimized it would not be as good per clock as Apples wide core.
I've been looking for more in depth information regarding Apple silicon, where did you get the info on the piplines in the A series? So you are saying these procs can't handle 6 instructions at once per pipe?
I'd start by searching anandtech for the A series processor. I seem to recall that they have had architectural evaluations.
It's interesting that the iPhone 7 beats the new S9 -- I fully expected the A11 would beat it, but the iPhone 7? That was mildly surprising.
It's worth noting that, unless Qualcomm has loosened its death grip on Samsung, American readers of this article aren't going to be getting the Exynos chip in their S9 anyway ... Samsung usually has to use Snapdragons in the US variant, and just look at how that performs by comparison ...
Comments
With my current iPhone 6, now into my 4th year, it's much better speed wise compared to my iPhone 4. It can be poky at times, but much better than the last phone. It's much more usable. That's because the CPU was much more faster when it first came out. It's that extra speed, that maybe is overkill when new most of the time, but if you hold onto your phone longer than 1 or 2 years, you really can see how they're holding up better as they age. This year I'll be upgrading to the iPhone XI or whatever Apple is going to call it. If I'm going to pay a bunch of money for a phone, I want to get my money's worth. I also figured a second generation iPhone X will be better. Any issues worked out. FaceID improvements, and apps a year to adjust to the screen shape and so forth.
Clueless about what "specs" are? I am not surprised.
What is discussed in this article is performance. Performance matters, and higher performance out of the hardware + great software = great user experience. Claiming otherwise is being...well...clueless.
Right. People care about specs when their favorite is on top. Once that’s no longer the case then they don’t care. But I would argue Apple fans more than others always care(d) the least. If not they’d be badgering Apple for not using bigger batteries and having more RAM in their iOS devices.
I agree, Apple processor can not be touched, They are doing things in their designs which no other manufacture is doing, the silicon is even optimize to ensure the data paths are as fast as possible as well as low power. However, that is also like have a 1000HP engine under the hood and no way to get the power to the ground. Software optimization plays an extremely important roll when the processor is fully optimize, OS and API and various other thinks can slow a processor down especially if command sequences are not optimize. Memory management becomes critical as well. You can not just look at the raw numbers of the speed and bits and number of cores, software implementation can slow everything down.
So what exactly is it that you're complaining about?
Apple has been killing it when it comes to single core performance since the A7. So it begs the question, is this another case of Samsung playing the ,"Hey look! Me too!" game? It also makes you wonder why Anandtech failed to report multi-core benchmarks!?
I wish Anandtech would get around reviewing the A11 already.
What's truly impressive is that Apples massive single core performance seems mostly additive, with only slight losses per core with all cores engaged. A11X rumored with three big and five little cores is going to be yummy...And possibly make things look increasingly uncomfortable for ULV CPUs even with fans.
I wish for Anandtechs A11 deep dive too, Apple has been shipping a fully custom GPU for months and no one else has seen fit to look into it...
yeah he was reference people who run around an spout about all the benchmark and how that is all matters, now that no one is touch Apple all those people are now quiet and are not say much since it means they will have to play up Apple verses someone else.
Yeah. That was a long, long time ago.
Now Android Apologists ask "Since when do Apple fans care about specs? I though it was all about user experience."
Well guess what. "Snappy" is part of the user experience.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/7910/apples-cyclone-microarchitecture-detailed
The A7 was the first A series with 6 micro ops.
It's worth noting that, unless Qualcomm has loosened its death grip on Samsung, American readers of this article aren't going to be getting the Exynos chip in their S9 anyway ... Samsung usually has to use Snapdragons in the US variant, and just look at how that performs by comparison ...