iPhone 5 GeekBench Results 470
EGSonikku writes "The iPhone 5 has been benchmarked using the GeekBench tool. According to the results, Apple's claim of 2x higher performance over the iPhone 4S seems accurate. The results show the iPhone 5's A6 CPU is dual core and clocked at 1.2GHz, and is paired with 1GB of RAM. Despite the fact that the Samsung Galaxy S3 has a quad core CPU at 1.4GHz, and twice as much RAM, it seems the iPhone 5 is faster than the S3, or any other Android handset." Meanwhile, Samsung has launched a marketing campaign that compares some of the hardware specs and features between the new iPhone 5 and the GS3.
Faster is fine - do we need thinner? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather it were the same thickness as the old model if the battery would last longer. Who exactly is it that thinks so they're so horribly thick?
Re:Faster is fine - do we need thinner? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've said the same thing for years about both phones and laptops. Sooner or later they're of a size that is small enough, and continually making components smaller should simply give us more room for more battery capacity. Even if this iPhone 5 gives us similar, or one can hope for slightly better, battery performance compared to the previous model. But one can only imagine how much better it would be if it were still the same size, and all the shrunken components would give us a battery capacity twice that of the previous model.
Re:Faster is fine - do we need thinner? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Faster is fine - do we need thinner? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, despite the Macbook Air being extemely small. They have dedicated a fair amount of size to the battery. Check out this picture [hardmac.com] to see just how much space the battery takes up in the Macbook Air. I only wish my HP thickbook used the same percentage of the volume for the batteries. I'd be able to work an entire day without charging. I'd gladly go without the optical drive if they could replace the entire thing with a battery.
I thought all the laptop vendors had something similar to Lenovo's "Ultrabay" battery that lets you swap out the CD-ROM drive for a battery? I know I've seen a Dell that has the same thing. HP doesn't?
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Re:Faster is fine - do we need thinner? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather it were the same thickness as the old model if the battery would last longer. Who exactly is it that thinks so they're so horribly thick?
Everyone I've seen with an iPhone has a ridicilously huge rubber case protecting the fragile thing. You should see the one my girlfriends mom has. You would think she was using a phone from early 2000. Why is thin such a big deal when everyone has a case that makes it NOT thin?
Re:Faster is fine - do we need thinner? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Faster is fine - do we need thinner? (Score:5, Funny)
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Why is everybody dropping their phones? How does this happen? After years of smartphone use, and over a decade of cell phone use, I've only ever dropped one phone (an old Nokia, circa 2000; ended up with a loose battery connection that would occasionally cause dropped calls if it shifted mid-call).
Maybe rather than a case people should get the Nokia Lumia 920 and wear grippy gloves, since the 920's screen can be used with gloves on.
Re:Faster is fine - do we need thinner? (Score:4, Informative)
I dropped my iphone 3G 4 times twice onto concrete without any ill effects.
One of the times the phone was in my jacket pocket literally while I was on a ladder I must have bounced or moved just right as I felt it slide out and heard the thunk.
One of the times that wasn't on concrete I was carrying a heavy load up a flight of stairs I had to adjust my grip and as I did the phone slipped out of a different pocket. it sort of cartwheeled down the stairs too.
I don't use rubbers on my phones. That phone worked just fine for 3 years before I finally upgraded.
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Why is everybody dropping their phones? How does this happen?
I know someone in China who had his iphone in his back pocket when he went to use one of those squat style toilets. Time to buy a new iphone...
Re:Faster is fine - do we need thinner? (Score:4, Informative)
Why is everybody dropping their phones? How does this happen? After years of smartphone use, and over a decade of cell phone use, I've only ever dropped one phone (an old Nokia, circa 2000; ended up with a loose battery connection that would occasionally cause dropped calls if it shifted mid-call).
Maybe rather than a case people should get the Nokia Lumia 920 and wear grippy gloves, since the 920's screen can be used with gloves on.
Looking at your ID I assume you are an old guy like me. :) The difference is 10 years ago we used our cell phones for phone calls. Aside from an outlier realtor or on-the-go professional that usage didn't add up to a lot of minutes during the day, and often for me there were many days between calls. Fast forward to today where "our" noses are buried in the phone most of the day. It's constantly in and out of our hands for social networking, music, news, texting, reading, pictures, whatever. And folks aren't stopping what they're doing to do all that. I see phones in use driving, walking, jogging, bike riding besides the normal multitasking during a meal or other more mundane activities (including the "dropped it in a toilet" horror stories). I'll also add the the current form factor (thin and wide) is more prone to an accidental ejection from a hand than the thicker candy-bar or slider styles. My lawn? Get off it.
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Why is everybody dropping their phones? How does this happen?
Partly because people are careless and/or clumsy, but it's mainly because people are constantly pulling out their phones and messing with them.
Back in the day, when cell phones were actually used solely as phones, a person might receive (or make) a call on his cell phone a few times a day. Now that cell phones are essentially portable computers that also happen to make calls, people (myself included) will reflexively pull them out (to check email, Facebook, browse web pages, play games, etc) whenever 30 se
Re:Faster is fine - do we need thinner? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a friend who dropped her iPhone off the kitchen counter and that impact shattered the glass. She's done this twice, once with an iPhone 4 and once with an iPhone 4S. I think I'll take my chances with a better-constructed device.
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The first time he dropped it on cement, the back fractured, which was about a year after owning it.
Now it gets better, in that time, he had somehow slightly contorted the metal band around it.
Now after breaking the back, he finally went out and bought a 3rd party case that would hide the back damage. After putting on the new case, the sturdiness of its design helped to
Re:Faster is fine - do we need thinner? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Faster is fine - do we need thinner? (Score:5, Funny)
I have dropped my caseless iphone 4 and 4s at least 5 times each (yes I am clumsy) without breakage. It is not fragile even with glass on both sides. The main way gorilla glass is broken is a drop on to concrete, even asphalt seems not to do it at hand height. Almost half the people I work with have the iPhone 4 or 4s, out of maybe 10 phones I have seen one broken from a drop. I have had Samsung phones that break on the first drop and Erikson that took only a few drops. None of my Moto's ever broke from droppage.
My iphone4 fell out of an ultralight onto a construction site where it was run over by a steamroller and it was fine, but a cotton-wool ball touched up against my samsung and the screen shattered.
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My iphone4 fell out of an ultralight onto a construction site where it was run over by a steamroller and it was fine, but a cotton-wool ball touched up against my samsung and the screen shattered.
Well, I'm glad the steamroller was fine!
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The Razr was notorious for falling apart and the outside screen cracking. I lost count how many keyboards fell out of friend's phones.
Thinner is thinner (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone I've seen with an iPhone has a ridicilously huge rubber case protecting the fragile thing.
Well the cases are not all that large that I have seen, but let's proceed as if they were.
Why is thin such a big deal when everyone has a case that makes it NOT thin?
Because the combination of a thinner device + a case is still thinner than the thicker device + a case. If the case, as you claim, is a constant - then thinner really does mean thinner to the user.
However one thing of note with the iPhone 5 is th
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So, what do you think a tautology proves? A thicker device is still thicker - have I proved a counterpoint?
Exactly what advantage (besides bragging rights to a a win in some pissing contest) does a 7.6 mm thick phone over a 9.3 mm phone? It's no different the the old Detroit "longer, lower, wider" marketing BS, which was about (marketed) style, not utility, performace, or any other competitive advant
Watch where that stone is going sir (Score:3, Interesting)
Look, I think the Abercrombie shirts are silly as well, but only because who loves Abercrombie enough to tell you you should go there?
But think twice before you laugh at them. You are saying you have NO t-shirts from bands? No t-shirts with beloved science fiction characters, say perhaps Star Wars?
Again I can't see advertising Abercrombie myself but I cannot really say anything against the practice because I do have band t-shirts and other shirts advertising commercial entities I like. It's not just that
Trend Alert. (Score:3)
One other factor you forgot about is weight, the new phone is lighter - that does matter to people, I jog for instance and the iPhone 4 really produces a lot of pull in the pocket.
Pocket? Jog? Dude if you're trendy enough to have an iPhone, you're trendy enough to have an arm strap for it.
I joke but in all seriousness try it, get a $5 one off ebay. Having the phone rigid on your arm rather than bouncing in your pocket makes a world of difference when jogging.
Not everyone. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't have a case for my 4S, I didn't have one for my 3GS, and I didn't have one for my original iPhone, which I got from my brother when he upgraded to a 3G. My brother also is on his third phone and doesn't use a case. In all that time only one's ever fallen on the ground. My friend asked to hold it, and immediately dropped it onto a concrete floor when I handed it to him. It was the original iPhone. It put a small dent in the corner of the case, but it didn't really damage it. I'd hardly call the device fragile.
The population of iPhone owners seems pretty evenly split between people with cases and people without. I certainly appreciate a device that looks good and feels good in my hand. I'm not really concerned with breaking it since I look after my things. A lot of other iPhone users are the same.
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I've been through 3 iphones - a 3g, 3g-s and 4-s.
None have had cases. In my experience it all depends very much on the luck of the draw - how they land. The 3g-s was dropped at least 10-15 times, often onto bitumen, tiles, concrete, etc. It had a crack in the screen after about drop number 3 (bad luck drop!), but it was still fine. Eventually it died when it fell out of my pocket onto CARPET whilst ferretting around under a desk. I suspect the ribbon cable came loose to the screen.
The 3g was dropp
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And the thinner/lighter formula has been just that.
Except 'the new ipad' where it was thicker and heavier.
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And the thinner/lighter formula has been just that.
Except 'the new ipad' where it was thicker and heavier.
IOW, Apple is bad for making their devices thinner - unless they make them thicker, then that's evil.
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Check your countries. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please note the summary is obviously about the "International" version of the Galaxy SIII.
The USA version of the Galaxy SIII, and the Evo LTE, and the One X all use the faster Qualcomm S4 chip, not the Tegra 3 they are trying to compare against. And "twice the RAM" should generally have nothing to do with performance.
What does this all mean? Generally, that the high-end [USA] Android phones perform easily as well as the new iphone 5.
Re:Check your countries. (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but they do this with twice the cores and a highernclock frequency. That makes the A6 pretty impressive.
Imagine if they put a higher clocked, quad-core version of this in an iPad.
Re:Check your countries. (Score:5, Informative)
From the blurb: "it seems the iPhone 5 is faster than the S3", from the linked article: S3 has a higher score than iPhone5 by roughly the relative clock ratio. Most tests are single-threaded so the number of cores doesn't matter, but in the few multi-threaded tests, S3 gets far better edge (duh!). The only part where iPhone5 wins is memory bandwidth.
Whoever misquoted the results this badly must be some incorrigible Apple fanboy.
Re:Check your countries. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, I can't find the text you mention as "from the linked article". Can you please point out where one of the linked articles says that?
The only thing I could find is this page [primatelabs.com] saying that the A6 running at 1.02 GHz scored 1601, while this chart [primatelabs.com] says that the average Galaxy S3 running at 1400 MHz gets a score of 1560, i.e., the S3 scores slightly lower even though the clock runs 37% faster.
What am I missing?
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That chart is not an average.
See here [primatelabs.com] a list of all Galaxy S III scores.
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Yes, but by a very small margin:
There are in total 106 entries in that table, 87 are "non-overclocked" and 19 that we believe are "overclocked". The 87 that are no overclocked have an average score of 1612.6, i.e., slightly faster than the iPhone 5, but with a huge standard deviation of 243.6.
Unfortunately we only have one data point for the iPhone 5, which kind of sucks. But based on the information we have it seems that the the speeds of the processors in the iPhone 5 and the non-overclocked S III are sta
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I believe the 1.8 GHz ones are overclocked. The 1.4 GHz 4-core ones aren't, and they kick the iPhone 5's ass. The 1.4 GHz one with three cores is slightly less than the iPhone 5 -- for unclear reasons, that's the number that shows up on the graph you originally linked.
Expanding on my reply [slashdot.org] to the sibling post of yours:
Of the 87 presumably non-overclocked S III in the list, 43 are quad-cores. Those 43 have an average score of 1739.6 which is clearly higher (8.66%) than the only score known for an iPhone 5, but I wouldn't call that "kicking its ass". (They also have a bizarrely high standard deviation of 213.1).
Still, they are statistically faster on average than the iPhone 5. Too bad that according to the table here [wikipedia.org] in the USA we only get a dual core version (n=10, averag
Interesting bandwidth results (Score:5, Informative)
As you say, while the S3 has a consistent edge elsewhere, the iPhone destroys the S3 in the memory bandwidth tests. But those tests are strangely inconsistent, for both devices.
The S3 is a lot slower for sequential read bandwidth (578MB/s vs 1.73GB/s), but actually faster for sequential writes (1.53GB/s vs 1.35/GB/s). It's interesting that write speed is so much faster than reading; usually read speeds are faster than writes (as with the iPhone). This appears common to many Android devices though.
OTOH, the iPhone 5 is ridiculously fast in the stdlib write test - over 6GB/s. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the tests, but I don't see how this result can be three times higher than sequential writes; I'd expect a little slower. Perhaps the iPhone has a large enough cache that the test fits within it?
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Comparing apples and oranges (Score:3, Interesting)
What does this all mean? Generally, that the high-end [USA] Android phones perform easily as well as the new iphone 5.
I don't know that I'd draw any conclusions, given the two devices run totally different OS's, the software written for them is in two totally different languages... I know some software for Android is written against the NDK but lots of it is not, is it fair to compare that against all the iPhone apps that are native?
Re:Comparing apples and oranges (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as the end user is concerned, whether it is native code or not is irrelevant. The available apps should be compared. If they run fast, that's all the user cares about. Some theoretical e-peen contest about "oh my smartphone has a quad core CPU that is way faster" doesn't matter if the software available consumes far more resources and doesn't run as fast.
Re:Check your countries. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually it's exynos, Samsung's ARM, not tegra.
Not sure I'd call the USA phones high end, necessarily. They have less cores because samsung have to compromise and use third party chips in order to get LTE. I know the Qualcomm stuff is good, but I'm not sure I'd wager on it being *that* good.
Geekbench also seems to have recorded multiple scores for the S III that are above the 1601 reported for the iPhone 5.
All in all I'd say that there's actually no useful information here at all,
You cannot compare specs directly (Score:5, Informative)
It's really wrong to compare specs between Android and iOS devices directly without considering how the underlying systems are actually used.
For instance, an Android phone needs more memory than an iOS device as it tends to have more background processes. iOS has a tighter control over memory so it simply does not need as much to accomplish most things (unless you start getting into talking about image processing applications).
Also, what about the performance difference between Android apps and iOS apps? Android apps have to rely on a garbage collector to reclaim memory, iOS uses ARC which means memory is reclaimed without that overhead. Not to mention the VM in Android.
Also how many Android apps are written in such a way as to take advantage of all those cores? With so many Android devices still being on 2.x, lots of developers target that spec. iOS developers at worst are targeting about two versions back, currently switching from iOS4 to iOS5 as the lowest level supported - that means use of a LOT of libraries that actually make use of multiple cores for many tasks.
I can see comparing specs from on Android device to another or one iOS device to another, but comparing specs between an iOS device and an Android device seems kind of pointless unless you are giving very specific parameters for a task either might accomplish. Running GeekBench is not really a task a user would do every day...
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Frankly we are at the point where it's pointless to compare those specs, except perhaps for the GPU. iPhones have had smooth, fast UI for ages. Android is finally there with ICS as well (judging by my Galaxy Nexus, at least). Why would I care if that is achieved by a super-powerful CPU, or many cores, or a bunch of neckbeards doing assembly-level micro-optimizations, or unicorn poop? All I care about is that it works fast enough (i.e. no lag, no stuttering, no command delays), doesn't cost me a fortune, and
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S3 has that crappy Sammy's own and very special bastardized version of Android, right?
You want to see smooth, get stock ICS. For silky smooth, get stock Jelly Bean.
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I'm not sure if you are familiar with what garbage collection actually does....
I can tell you are not if you think the GC is free. I'm not sure you understand what ARC does either if you think the cost the same. Since I spent a decade in corporate IT development working with Java I think I understand both Arc and garbage collectors better than you.
They don't have to be. The fact you can run multiple apps at a time means multiple cores can be utilized.
Yes, I can also do that in iOS. But most of the time t
You continue to claim you understand? (Score:5, Informative)
Reference counting (ARC) is EXACTLY a form of garbage collection, not particularly better or worse than any other.
It's not the same as garbage collection, it's exactly what the name says - AUTOMATED reference counting. The moment your code no longer needs an object code is inserted to release it for you. It has no cost over the code you would have written manually.
It is superior to traditional GC because there is no processor time taken in deciding what to collect, no examination of the object tree to find what is still in scope. That means no overhead, and no "pauses" in application flow as a GC fires up to collect things.
You DO realise that ARC imposes a runtime cost which some other garbage collectors do not?
Compile time feature, moron. Even the weak reference zeroing is just code inserted around properties.
You DO realise that ARC is sensitive to some forms of data structure that it cannot collect? (circular references)
It's not "sensitive" to anything, that is simply an artifact of reference counting. By the way, in almost a year of developing multiple applications using ARC you know how many circular references I have seen in real life? Zero. Over-retention is still possible, but cycles are quite rare.
And no, iOS cannot just run multiple apps at the same time to use multiple cores, as iOS only supports specifically
written background tasks
Which then run in the background doing whatever they were designed to do in the background. For instance what do you think Pandora does, genius? What happens when I have Pandora running AND have backgrounded a navigation application? Why in fact they ARE both running.
Of course the system tasks all do run in the background so you really come off as quite ignorant claiming iOS cannot do this arbitrarily when it's a limitation specifically imposed on a subset of applications on the system. A jailbroken iPhone can run any user application in the background simply by a tweak to Launchpad, not the OS or app.
it cannot just continue normal execution of a non-foreground task.
Actually it can for about ten seconds for any app even without jailbreaking. You just have to let the OS know.
You also, I bet, dont know what a process scheduler is,
I've written several thanks. That was a while ago as I moved on from such trivial things.
I do also know what an apostrophe is. Zing!
that addresses your idiocy about primary apps being slower.
Might want to watch the word idiocy when you are so prone to misunderstanding what is being said - I am talking about an foreground application that is not taking full advantage of the system resources. Pretty obviously an application that runs on one core when it could make use of two would be slower than it could be. Duh.
I kind of feel sorry for the corporate IR development teams you worked with
Imagine the concern I feel for whatever company must put up with your constant misunderstandings of technology! I sure hope you are not in charge of any iOS work for sometime to come.
Really, your UID is low enough that you should know better..
My UID is low enough you should have known to do more research rather than spout off on technologies you have not used.
I will allow you the last response, you may either choose the path of wisdom and grovel for forgiveness at your iOS 101 level of understanding, or you may continue down the path of proving beyond all doubt you enjoy staying ignorant. Your choice, but I'll respond no more as I have already spent too much time on your education.
If I were you though I would go watch all of the Stanford introductory iOS course and read some of the iOS documentation to understand how the system works. Oh and find a good white paper on what ARC does, because Damn.
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Reference counting is certainly a runtime cost.
Reference counting is. It's a single increment when a memory location is referenced and a decrement and possible delete when it's unreferenced. AUTOMATIC reference counting does not add any additional code to that, and in fact often needs less code.
There are important trivial cases where it can be determined that refcounting is not required.
Correct, and the LLVM compiler spots those and doesn't add ref-counting code in those cases. That's why it often needs less code than manual reference counting.
Now, compare these small amounts of trivial ref-counting code to the 100s of milliseconds of time that
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Please note the summary is obviously about the "International" version of the Galaxy SIII.
Actually, Canada which is the country this benchmark was made in, also has faster Android phones [androinica.com].
Selecting (out-of-the-country) phones for this benchmark which have slower processors was most likely a deliberate choice on their part. It's a well known fact that if you post negative news [dailytech.com] news about Apple (it doesn't matter how big you are), or post negative reviews [zdnet.com], you and all your colleagues at your company get blacklisted from their VIP events and most importantly, you and all your colleagues (including
Re:Check your countries. (Score:5, Informative)
o_O
He's right. The programs either fit in the RAM or they don't. On a PC you might get performance improvement by installing extra RAM, but that's only because you get more filesystem cache and get less swapping.
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Once the program has loaded, sure. But for the user, more RAM in a phone still means more caching, which means more responsiveness. Not just filesystem caching either - programs don't have to be closed and re-opened as often, and browsers can cache more page elements without re-fetching them. RAM in a phone can make a huge difference.
Android logo? (Score:5, Insightful)
The android logo on an iPhone story? Really?!?!
Re:Android logo? (Score:5, Interesting)
Thats just to pour fuel on the flames Slashdot seems to be degenerating to flamebait, remember when stories were generally interesting and not just to annoy various factions. Hearing the same comments repeated gets boring after a while.
Any way good on apple at bringing a more powerful iPhone to market. So how good are the next generation android phones going to have to be, to compete against this latest generation iPhone.
See this is where the battle for market share should be fought not in the court room.
With that much power under the hood (Score:5, Funny)
Since it is faster than all the other phones I can get all my phone calls done faster. That's the way it works.
Plus, all the video encoding gets done that much faster while I text and drive.
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Right. If you want a mobile device with a better benchmark, get a laptop. Even an anemic netbook should be faster. Smartphones are for making calls and playing Angry Birds.
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Exactly, I have a friend who claims he's only computer is an android phone. Now he is in charge of creating and maintaining the website os his new venture and have much trouble just getting wordpress installed on his server... I advised him to remove the dust from one of his computer and use it... we'll see how it goes.
Phones and tablets are consumption devices, period. You need to be productive? get a computer.
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Going for the S3 (Score:5, Interesting)
I've decided that my next phone (soon, I hope) is going to be the S3. I'd been holding out with my iPhone 4 for a while, waiting (like many others, I suspect) to see what Apple would wow us with for the iPhone 5. Needless to say, I wasn't that impressed, though to be honest, part of me really didn't expect to be, given that there are only so many innovations they could have come up with. What could they have done? An even bigger screen? NFC? A phone you could roll up? The first two would hardly have been groundbreaking and the latter is tech that doesn't really exist yet.
Still, at the end of the day, I'm sure I could be happy with the 5, but I'm ready to play with a new toy. I've never had an Android device before, but got a chance to play with a tablet and some phones over my vacation, and I liked what I saw.
Captcha: revenues
Re:Going for the S3 (Score:4, Interesting)
Uh. You do realize that you just completely contradicted yourself. If Samsung is making chips for Apple in Texas, then it's really Apple and iPhone buyers supporting that manufacturing, not Samsung phones. That article you linked to About A6 chips in fact is very complementary to Apple.
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The cable that it comes with plugs into any USB port. It also ships with a USB charger (although one that can delivery much higher recharge rates than standard USB ports).
There is convenience in being able to find cables even in places you weren't expecting to need it, more than a couple times I've asked friends if they've had micro-usb cables so I could charge my phone and found one. Doing the same results in far less success with the iphone, likely even less so with the iphone5 considering they are using a new connector.
Why do you need one when the phone lasts for at least a day even on LTE? I have an external battery for the iPhone (smaller than a standard phone battery BTW) but I stopped bringing it along on even international plane flights because the battery lasted longer than the whole flight for what I was doing.
Some people may need more than a few hours (the time of a flight) of battery with continual usage. But more so in a couple years when the battery dies of o
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Micro USB i'll give you, but for many myself included the battery/sd slot are "meh" features I'll never use.
It's not just the irritation of having to basically throw the phone away when the battery inevitably fails, it's the fact that you can't ever actually turn your phone off. Doesn't that creep you out? Or perhaps by Apple standards, that amount of creepiness doesn't even move the needle.
As for flash slot and *standard* USB port *on the phone* like all Android devices have... did it ever occur to you that just apologizing for it doesn't get back all those customers who bought Androids just because of that blat
I'm going for an S3 (Score:3, Interesting)
(Grrr, thought I was logged in.)
I've decided that my next phone (soon, I hope) is going to be the S3. I'd been holding out with my iPhone 4 for a while, waiting (like many others, I suspect) to see what Apple would wow us with for the iPhone 5. Needless to say, I wasn't that impressed, though to be honest, part of me really didn't expect to be, given that there are only so many innovations they could have come up with. What could they have done? An even bigger screen? NFC? A phone you could roll up? The first two would hardly have been groundbreaking and the latter is tech that doesn't really exist yet.
Still, at the end of the day, I'm sure I could be happy with the 5, but I'm ready to play with a new toy. I've never had an Android device before, but got a chance to play with a tablet and some phones over my vacation, and I liked what I saw.
Captcha: revenues
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Honestly, if you're going to go for an Android-based phone I'd go with one of the Nexus devices. ... The Galaxy Nexus is available on all carriers and is fairly similar to the S3, spec wise.
No, it's not "fairly similar", spec-wise. The Galaxy Nexus is noticeably inferior to the GS3, much more like the iPhone 5, in fact. The only thing it has going for it - which is a BIG point for many - is that it's a stock Android experience.
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"Honestly, if you're going to go for an Android-based phone I'd go with one of the Nexus devices. They're a lot easier to modify and get software updates before any other phone."
Unless you get a Nexus that works on the largest carrier in the US....
http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/09/11/verizon-galaxy-nexus-jelly-bean-update-excuses-roll-out/ [gottabemobile.com]
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"A phone you could roll up? The first two would hardly have been groundbreaking and the latter is tech that doesn't really exist yet."
Haha. Hopefully, we'll be wearing our next smartphone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Glass [wikipedia.org]
Odd conclusion... (Score:5, Interesting)
Needless to say, I wasn't that impressed
Why? It is in fact very impressive hardware; it's simply the case that most of the details about it were leaked beforehand.
I do not know what aspect of the phone would fail to impress compared to current top-end Android phones unless you were into huge screens. The main thing I wanted was a great camera upgrade from the iPhone4; the iPhone 5 has an excellent camera. It runs iOS apps quite quickly, and has a somewhat larger screen without being physically huge.
I just don't understand the pure spec-based comparison that takes place without consideration of what software you might want to run...
Re:Odd conclusion... (Score:5, Insightful)
But its *not* impressive. Its totally *meh*. It looks so similar to a 4S that it barely deserves the '5' monkier.
Who cares how it looks? A good design is a good design. And I thought people claimed iOS users were just buying for the looks...
And even then, it actually looks pretty different with the metal back. In person it will not look that much like a 4s between the different back and taller form factor. I actually preferred the older size but the other aspects of the device are compelling enough for an upgrade.
The camera is almost exactly the same as the 4S
Incorrect. Google sample photos, you can see clear improvement in detail. Also, it's improved over the 4s in many other ways - up to two stops better low light performance for one thing (that is not at all nearly the same), and 40% faster to operate which is important in a mobile camera. The camera is actually what I am most interested in, along with greater processing power and more memory to handle some interesting photo manipulations or faster panoramic assembly. [tuaw.com]
We all were expecting better than what we got.
We were? I was expecting exactly what we got since it's now impossible for Apple to release a week after an announcement and have any secrets left to reveal, too many leaks along the assembly chain. Even then some aspects are better than I thought they might be, like the front camera for example.
Im more impressed with the S3.
And again you ignore the real core consideration that shoudl be present in the selection of any smartphone - what can you run on it? The iOS marketplace is still ahead of the Android marketplace, more in quality than quantity at this point - and that will continue as long as most Android phones are stuck at 2.x, while iOS apps are built atop more and more advanced libraries. You'll get some apps that take advantage of Android 4.0 but a tiny fraction of how many will be coding even against iOS6 at launch much less iOS5...
Re:Odd conclusion... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll take the bait, what app do you have on iphone that there is no equivalent functionality within the android market?
iPhoto for one. I use it for review of DSLR images since I can quickly zoom to 100% on a 15MP JPG file to make sure focus was correct in specific locations.
It's also very lame but twitter clients are better. It annoys me that it matters at all to me but it does.
There are also some specialized weather apps like Dark Sky that I like. (though it looks like you will be getting that particular one [kickstarter.com] eventually).
There are a LOT of interesting photo apps. There are some on Android but I don't think at the same level of functionality.
I have a MINI Coper and the MINI Connected smartphone integration is IOS only at the moment and has been for years (that one I think is silly on their part).
Possibly Android has astronomy apps as good as Hidden Sky and Star Walk, but I'm not sure...
Also a ton of interesting drawing apps, like Paper to pick a recent example. I know Android has some drawing apps but I'm not sure they are at the same level.
There are others I'm sure, those are just what I use most often...
Just in general if any mobile application comes out you know there will be an iOS version at least, and maybe or maybe not an Android version.
Re: (Score:3)
iPhoto for one. I use it for review of DSLR images since I can quickly zoom to 100% on a 15MP JPG file to make sure focus was correct in specific locations.
How are you getting it to your iDevice? the only thing I could think of is by means of those eye-fi cards unless you are going really high-end like the wft-e6 with the canon 1dx, the eye-fi option would really limit your photo taking ability because of the lack of storage on the idevice and on the card.
If you are using wireless ftp or the like nothing is stopping an android device from having the same functionality, zooming to 100% is not exactly hard.
Darksky is pretty useless to most android and ios users
Better camera, not the same (Score:5, Informative)
The camera is almost exactly the same as in 4S?
No it is not. [tuaw.com]
Up to two stops better performance is a good upgrade. And also there happen to be sample pics on DPReview from an iPhone 4s that match one of the shots the iPhone 5 was demoed with - the iPhone 5 captures detail better. Also I cannot find details on how the 4s camera was constructed but I believe the iPhone 5 is a step up in terms of the lens used.
I have a DSLR and profesional compact cameras too. What I want out of a cell phone camera is an image that does not make me wish I also had a compact camera, and the iPhone 5 meets that goal (really the 4s did as well, but the 5 has a nice boost beyond even that).
OS change doesn't bother you? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know I have a lot of money tied up in software for my phone. Whether it be remote control software, or specialty apps which are only available for a premium, or just games I paid for - there's a $100-150+ in software I would have to re-buy. I don't want to have to think about switching my media management over. Not that iTunes isn't a steaming pile of shit on Windows, but I've finally gotten it to work acceptably (most of the time) with my 80+GB of music, 400+GB of movies, audio and ebooks, podcasts, etc. I'm sure there are better managers, but the number of hours required to switch that stuff into another management app just makes my insides curl. I'm doubly tied as I have an iOS tablet.
At this point, the "competitor" from Android would have to be pretty fucking amazingly better to make it worth while to switch, and while the S3 is very nice and there are things about it I like better, it's hard to find a reason for the extra expense and time to switch.
Oh samsung... (Score:3, Insightful)
That ad makes me giggle. Samsung is so deathly afraid of Apple that they are flaunting all of their silly useless(to me... I guess... maybe someone can use them) gadgets in hopes that people will think the I5 is inferior. The numbers will speak for themselves, and Samsung is wasting their advertising dollars... they should save up to pay their patent debts.
Seriously though, I never liked the Mac Vs PC ads, I feel like if you can't sell your product on its own merit, you shouldn't release ads trashing the other guys. When you have an awesome product, people will buy it... when you stoop to trash talk, you're showing your weakness. Apple showed their weakness with the MacVPC ads. Samsung is showing theirs with this.
Also, if Android didn't almost require 2GB of memory to run I'd feel like that is a lot. My 1GB android devices slug up so fast it is silly. If Android had the memory management of iOS, 2GB would scream.
Silly large companies...
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, 1GB should be enough for anyone right?
I don't think Samsung are "deathly afraid of Apple". Not then they're currently the leaders in market share, and actually supply the hardware to Apple, to make their phones/tablets/laptops. It's kind of a win-win...
Re: (Score:3)
Let me just Google that for you... http://www.bgr.com/2012/08/14/mobile-phone-q2-2012-market-share-sales/ [bgr.com]
Re:Oh samsung... (Score:4, Informative)
Hmmm, my wife now has an android phone running Jelly Bean on only 384 meg. Runs pretty nice too, despite using an old processor.
The difference doesn't seem to be Android itself, but all the other bloatware that gets stuffed on some phones.
So many errors! (Score:5, Informative)
Does the processor matter that much? (Score:5, Insightful)
At least in the US, the carriers seem determined to ensure that you upgrade every two years anyway, so it's not like you're going to be stuck with a phone which is all that old. It seems more like "fast enough" is simply a responsive GUI and a generally imperceptible execution time for the kinds of activities you do on a phone. I'm not running CFD models, transcoding movies, or running a popular web service on the thing - I'm tweaking photos, or asking it to make simple calculations my HP48 might do, streaming media or rendering a web page (without flash; thanks Steve).
Now that a couple of generations have past for Android and iOS, the options for switching are getting far more expensive and time consuming. Switch all my media to a new program for syncing - major PITA. Re-buy all my apps (not an insignificant endeavor) for the other platform - $$$. Learn where the fuck the Android/iOS developers decide to put some obscure setting I want to change? Heck, even just setting up my icons and replicating a useful look & feel means dropping at least a couple, if not several, hours.
Megapixels, streaming video chat, resolution, memory amount, memory speed - the numbers mean almost nothing. They mean even less when you can't even run the opposing OS on the hardware. But I suppose everybody has to have a ruler handy at some point.
Re: (Score:3)
This isn't true of many apps for iOS. It's to keep things easier to use.
I made a mistake in the story write up... (Score:5, Informative)
Just wanted to fess up to a typo in the story. I accidentally typed that the iPhone 5 runs at 1.2GHz, meant to type 1.02GHz.
Re:I made a mistake in the story write up... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Slashdot editors?
Sorry, your autocomplete must have put the wrong word there.
There is no compelling physical evidence that Slashdot Editors exist or have ever existed.
Here at slashdot, we expect to see dupes, typos, troll summaries, poor grammar, incorrect numbers, slashvertisements etc etc in the article summaries.
samsung s3's with LTE use a dual core snapdragon (Score:2)
samsung s3 with LTE use a dual core snapdragon, clocked at 1.5ghz with 2gb of ram. how come they didn't compare apples to apples?
The numbers are liars (Score:4, Informative)
One should note that the score given for the SGS3 is an average score from thousands of benchmarks which they range everywhere form 1271 to 2211.
The Iphone 5 however only has a single result, and that's on a phone that is probably not burdened by a bunch of crap which seemingly tends to give really varying results..
I won't trust this before they have at least 250 benchmarks done after the release.
And who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, no matter the hardware specs, iOS will keep being more responsive and iOS phones will keep getting software updates for years after launch. Clock speed and number of cores has stopped being relevant even in phones (it's not really relevant on the desktop any more as well) already.
Note: i've owned two Android phones before switching to iOS.
Re: (Score:2)
Can you provide a citation for those numbers? TFA links here [primatelabs.com], which lists Galaxy SIII and Galaxy Nexus at 1560 and 1039 respectively.
Re: (Score:2)
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/search?page=1&q=S+III&utf8=%E2%9C%93 [primatelabs.com]
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/1012560 [primatelabs.com]
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/995810 [primatelabs.com]
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/912975 [primatelabs.com]
s3 is not slower. my bet that the variance in benchmarks is totally related to the cpu wantonly clocking down to save power while running the benchmark (eg it wasn't plugged into power at the time and the benchmark doesn't have root access to force the cpu to to clock speed). thus
Re: (Score:3)
I see a lot of Galaxy S III there with processors running at 1,800 MHz, yet everywhere I look for the specifications of the SIII I only find 1.4 and 1.5 GHz. Are those phones overclocked?
If they are overclocked, the relevance of the comparison is greatly diminished. If they are not overclocked, it would be interesting to know where Samsung is selling S III handsets with those processors.
Re: (Score:2)
sorta proves a good dual core design beats a bad quad core design, i'm pretty sure it also scores higher than the tegra 3 in other benchmarks. i'm not an apple fan and i'm not gonna buy it, but the tegra3 is really poorly designed...
Agreed, which is why many people prefer the US variant of the GSIII, which has a dual-core Cortex-A15-based design.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:WGAF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WGAF? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:WGAF? (Score:5, Interesting)
This might be because samsung is marketing a dual core and quad core phone under the same brand, despite the obvious difference in capability. That is, without a doubt, my biggest gripe with Samsung in the industry. A Galaxy S III should be the same everywhere, or failing that a Galaxy S III DC, or QC should be clearly the same everywhere. Having different versions of the same product is unnecessarily confusing.
Re:WGAF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, but the south koreans get quad core, some countries get different amounts of RAM etc.
If all you heard was the launch announcement of 'quad core*' and ignored the asterix of different countries getting different products you'd be confused by the whole thing.
As a developer by the way, this is a fucking nightmare. I work at a university, so we have, every year and every christmas people with phones from all over the world trying to use our mobile app. We need to test on the indian version, the korean version the chinese versions, the hong kong version, the taiwanese version, etc. etc. etc. And we need someone to keep track of what all the different versions are. I know the guys at big blue bubble in town who make mobile games have a big lab but I think they only care about europe and north america rather than everywhere else too.
Re:WGAF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Odd considering the dual core snapdragon S4 is faster than the quad core one in almost every single benchmark. Only the really parallel ones (Which face it, never happens on a smartphone) pull ahead, and even then, just.
Re:WGAF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WGAF? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's like with PCs. Smartphones are so fast nowadays that whatever you buy is good enough to do 90% of the things people want a smartphone to do. So even a 100% speed increase is no compelling reason to upgrade for most people.
Re:WGAF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Smartphones are so fast nowadays that whatever you buy is good enough to do 90% of the things people want a smartphone to do.
That's because smart phones are basically 5 year old PC's with small screens.
But for some people the new network (LTE) will be radically different, especially if the 3G in your area has serious congestion issues.
Re:WGAF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Try 10 year old PCs. I have a Core 2 Quad here that's pretty much 5 years old and is still 5x faster than any phone in the geekbench data. Linpack is 1000x slower on any ARM than it is on a current x86 too.
Jack Dongarra published a paper how he got about 800 MFlops out of an iPad 2, using only one core, and estimates that about 1.5 GFlops should be possible. The iPhone 5 chip should run a lot faster. And no current x86 does 1500 GFlops.
Re:WGAF? (Score:4, Informative)