avon b7

Nice improvements across the board and a few new things thrown in.

As I watched (I'm stuck in municipal lockdown) I felt a lot of déjà vu which was a clear sign sign that they are adding features that have been on the market for a while now.

Not a bad thing really, competition is good. 

The whole Phantom Black part was a yawn and reminded me of the flower power iMac explanation.

Not much groundbreaking news although there was a lot of focus on the 'outside world' and using the phone as a control centre for other devices. Tighter integration with Google and Microsoft  too.

Design is okay although perhaps it's time for the camera bump to go even if phones end up a little thicker. 

anantksundaram said:

avon b7 said:

muthuk_vanalingam said:

radarthekat said:

The similarities make not only the eventual transition easier, but also make the comparison easier; you pinch to zoom on your $120 Huawei nova 3i and it stutters and then, when it catches up to your intent, zooms too far because you, in exasperation, started repeating and excentuating your pinch gesture.  I’ve seen it on Hauwei, Samsung, Oppo and Vivo phones among friends and dates here in the Philippines.  Then you see your friend or co-worker on an old iPhone 4S (of which there are plenty here) pinch and zoom with real-time smooth response.  You’re sold.  You want to graduate.  Lol

To be honest, I am stunned to see your comment mentioning about performance issue in a basic functionality in the android phones in 2020. I remember reading this exact same comment from you about 3 years back and tried it immediately in my moto g3 (SoC performance comparable to iphone 4s or 5) back then. No, I did NOT observe this basic functionality not working as intended in my phone back then. It was working properly. Even my close to 3-year old Moto g5 plus (SoC performance comparable to 5.5 years old iphone 6) is currently working properly without any performance issues.

I am sure Avon B7 will mention that he has NOT observed this issue EVER in his honor phone (honor 20 if I remember correctly) or his previous android phone(s) in the last 4-5 years. Android has come a long long way when it comes to performance and smoothness while using it in the last 3 to 4 years. I am not doubting your observation. Could it be a case of a buggy app?

No. I've never seen that behaviour. 

My phone is an Honor 10 and even falls under Huawei's 'Born Fast, Stays Fast' claim. It hasn't slowed down at all. 

Everything is working fine after more than two years of permanent use. So much so that I have no need to even upgrade this year. 

Considering an iPhone at the time would have cost more than double and have half the storage, I consider it a great purchase. 

Anyone complaining that Android is in some way 'behind' iOS clearly hasn't used any modern Android variant.

Huawei's migration App will gladly give you the option to migrate from an iPhone too. 

Backups have always been a breeze wuth an OTG cable. Fast Charging out of the box etc

Yeah, yet, it's somewhat sad that not one of these knockoff artists can write their own OS software, don't you think?

Actually, it's somewhat pathetic...

They can, and do write their own software. Android is a base system onto which other layers are added (and GMS if necessary). 

Often, those layers are not simple skins, they have very deep hooks into the system.

When Huawei made that 'Born Fast, Stays Fast' promise, which makes extensive use of AI, it was because it had access to its very own AI runtime tuned to its very own chipset design. The good thing is that third parties weren't required to use it because it ran alongside other AI runtimes (including Google's). It takes advantage of Huawei's own hardware/software stack that scales from earbuds (Ascend Nano) through phones right up to supercomputing clusters (running thousands of Ascend Max cores).

That is one of the huge advantages of Android and why blanket statements like yours are not really correct. Android is a base system and really does not make too much sense to reinvent a wheel, which provided a lot of inspiration to iOS 14.


That is of course unless you are forced to reinvent the wheel due to politics. Hence Huawei Mobile Services/HarmonyOS. 

There is literally a ton of code that has nothing to do with Google and much of it is core code for the phones it runs on.

Even now, without HarmonyOS running on any phone, parts of HarmonyOS are actually running core aspects of Huawei phones. Security for example.

HarmonyOS will maintain Android compatibility but has more APIs than Android and has already cleared some of the highest bars in certified security terms. It is already running on TVs, routers, cars etc. Soon it will be deployed to mobile phones to continue its development course. A lot of EMUI will be lifted from the current Google base and transferred to HarmonyOS. 

A hardware abstracted distributed virtual bus approach consisting of over a thousand modules will see devices pooling their capabilities to provide even higher levels of functionality and security.

It will be open sourced and offered to other handset, car and IoT/IoV manufacturers.

That will probably be about as far from pathetic as you can get (even taking into account all the teething problems which will no doubt arise). For example HarmonyOS has already resolved a key development issue on cars (landscape and portrait support). 

lkrupp said:

xyzzy01 said:

goodbyeranch said:

TLDR Someone doesn't think its worth it to replace his old laptop or learn new tech to support a tiny sliver of a microscopic partcile of a market.

While the first part - not replacing his laptop - sounded strange, the second is an issue. As Apple has gotten bigger, they've moved away from open standards and created their own products. In this case, they've deprecated OpenGL (after not their version for a long time) and created their own graphics API - Metal. That makes porting much more work and less interesting - and as a long time Apple user, it's something I don't like too. It will make porting harder, maintenance harder and create more platform-specific bugs. It will also make less ports happen.

So what you are advocating is that Apple cease being Apple and just become one of the also-rans? Nice. Since when has Apple ever in its long history just acquiesced to whatever the rest of the world was doing? They have always done their own thing and been supremely successful at it. Why do some continue to demand that Apple follow the crowd so that lazy developers can easily ‘port’ their garbage to the Mac?

They switched to Intel. The single biggest 'compatibility' move they ever made. 

They made the system underpinnings unix compliant. 

Those moves were key to platform success at the time. 

Right now, most chargers are small and light enough that any move to smaller, lighter offerings would seem modest to most users.

However, power efficiency should be of real interest to every user so moving to GaN would be nice.

Industry is already using GaN extensively (in 5G base stations for example).

Most gallium is sourced from China and there have been constant rumblings that the trade war could end up affecting supply but nothing has happened yet.

minglok50 said:

FastLane said:

X60 was announced early 2020.  Apple probably missed it by a month for production. 

The bottom line is kinda this... No different from what we went through on 4g/lte modems.

Rev 1 moderns were pretty bad.  Didn't support many bands.  Were power hogs. 

Rev 2 fixed  compatibility and marginally better power.  Didn't have final key features telecoms wanted to roll out. Power not great.

Rev 3 were basically  right on.  All key features present.  Power decent   Marginal improvements made after that. 


Someone asked if the 888 was SoC with X60.  Answer is yes.

So the first phone to use the X60 won't be out until early 2021 - The iPhone 12 was released in October 2020. Not sure the X60 was ready for mass production then?

To be fair the 5G network is still in its infancy so plenty of time for faster 5G modems to be added to mobile phones.

To Apple and all other companies the state of 5G isn't really relevant. It's how users perceive the state of 5G. Just take a look at the iPhone 12 presentation where 5G was cornerstone of the entire event from what I've heard. 

Yes, 5G is in its infancy but last year in China (a major market for Apple) about 1 in every 3 phones sold was a 5G phone with the price of entry to those phones plummeting by the month. That was a huge pie Apple was missing out on. And infancy or not, China is pulling far ahead in its own 5G roll out and is way ahead in services that play off 5G. 

Apple had to deliver something with the iPhone 12. Was it a 'kludge' solution? Depending on how you look at it, very much so. The X55 was EOL in flagships and, in Apple's case, is bolted on to the SoC. 

Now, after the Kirin 9000 from last year, the SD888 is about to ship with the X60 on SoC. . 

That's life. Apple now depends on QC and QC wasn't going to change its rollout plans for Apple and Apple obviously had no plans for QC modems until intel left them high and dry. 

The only other option they had was to release a phone early this year (2021)with the X60 bolted on and that was probably more trouble than it was worth. The result is Apple is shipping last year's 5G tech (technically announced in February 2019) bolted on and probably sacrificing things like high refresh rates as a result which also leaves them behind the flagship curve in that area too. 

Sometimes bets will pay off and sometimes they won't. Apple's 5G strategy imploded. A few years from now we'll probably get the finer details on what went down. Right now though Apple is racing to bring its homebrew modem to market. That's another bet but they always have QC to fall back on if necessary. Having options is always good.