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  • ddriver - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link

    "Thinner phones" - please don't. I'd rather have double the battery life. We've long passed the point of reasonable thinness.
  • Peskarik - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    I know, right? The frigging things are so thin already one has to buy an ugly protective shell to be able to hold them properly!
  • bug77 - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    After all the videos of phones bending, videos of people cutting their fingers on phone's edges are only an evolutionary step :D
  • WorldWithoutMadness - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    evolutionary step... heh, more like devolution.
    If only people who bought the phones get to vote what features should be in the next generation of that phone, maybe we wouldn't be in this madness.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    you vote with your wallet.

    People keep buying the thinnest one, because your average consumer only cares about fashion accessories, and not having a useful tool.

    Its about time we kickstarted our own brand of phone.
  • Omega215D - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    I already did by buying the Moto Z Force over the Moto Z or iPhone 7. If I can't grip the phone comfortably without a case or attachment then it's a no go. It also needs to house a 3000mAH or larger battery.
  • WorldWithoutMadness - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    That's just like America voting all over again :D.

    Kickstart? Heh, if I'm not mistaken, everything failed to even make a dent.
    For me, the moment google had to sell Motorola is the start of the downfall of a good trend (battery-performance-style-size) and motorola under lenovo just don't have that google chemistry anymore, looking at thinkpad series.... far from its legendary history.
  • Leosch - Thursday, January 5, 2017 - link

    The problem is that you can't vote for individual features, only bundles of them in the form of individual products. Then the suits go and interpret the sales figures as "Oh, the thin one did well, we need to go thinner!", when in reality people perhaps bought the thin one because it has the best processor, screen and camera.
  • prisonerX - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    Yeah, unfortunatley the market disagrees with you and other whiners of your ilk.

    Go buy a phone with a removable battery and you can have as many multiples of battery life as you're willing to carry.
  • negusp - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    How can it disagree with us when there aren't any mainstream flagship phones with removable batteries/large batteries?

    Besides, nobody wants to carry a bunch of replacement batteries. It's not that hard to throw an extra 2mm in and have a ~4000-5000 mAh battery.
  • prisonerX - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    Open your eyes and you shall see: http://www.gsmarena.com/lg_v20-8238.php

    No, no-one wants to carry a fat phone, that's why phones aren't getting fatter with substantially larger batteries. What don't seem to be able to understand is most people are happy with battery performance.

    Yeah, 4000-5000 is the magical number, if only phones had that no-one would run out of power, right? No one wants to carry around extra batteries but they want to carry around external battery pack chargers, right? You've really thought this through, haven't you?
  • darkich - Thursday, January 5, 2017 - link

    There are many reasonably compact and well specced phones with large batteries. Check out this newly announced Asus phone, Zenfone 3 Zoom: 5000mah in a small package!
  • jospoortvliet - Thursday, January 5, 2017 - link

    There is one. But because nobody bought the LG G5 it won't be there next year. Clearly nobody wants a high end phone with removable battery, including YOU otherwise you had bought it...
  • Spunjji - Saturday, January 7, 2017 - link

    That phone had SO MANY things wrong with it, none of which had anything to do with the removable battery. All you did there is prove the point that we don't get to choose the features we want, just the best collection of them.
  • niva - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    In general they are right though. We've passed the point of reasonable thin-ness. Now as far as design goes the only things to fix are addressing the size of ridiculous bezels around the screen, making these things sound better, and making sure they actually have sufficient battery life to accommodate junkies who only look at their phone screens all day long.

    Note that Apple devices seem to have a good balance of all of the above. My prediction is that the first manufacturer to offer a flagship android phone with this balance will pocket a good chunk of change. Unfortunately Android is also marred by other issues such as fragmentation and lack of updates from manufacturers, so it's not so simple.
  • leexgx - Tuesday, January 10, 2017 - link

    same here I never change the battery they should come with a larger battery to begin with (especially if its a none removable one) problem is most phones that have large battery or under powered on the CPU (CUBOT H1 that I use or less so the Ulefone power phone but the cam button is in stupid place so I don't use it)

    phones should come with at least a 3500-4000mAh in these high powered CPU phones and high powered screens (what I hate is that they get a more power efficient CPU and clock it as high as they can witch does not save any more power then last phone and turns into a toaster like 820 cpu)

    best non modified phone I ever had was the motorola RAZR MAXX even after 5-6 years of use it still lasted near 2 days on full charge (a smashed screen and finally water damage killed it, not the battery) at the time it was like OK I am now at 10-20% power okkk I just stop streaming video , norm still good for a bunch more hours

    I believe LG has made a Power version of the phone but still not very good spec, why cant they just use a feature phone and make it 2-3mm fatter you be surprised how much longer a phone lasts when it has a 1000-1500 above spec battery that a phone maker stupidly assumes you need get by a day on one charge witch tends not to be a day (under 3000mAh seems to be the limit now for a usable phone now
  • vferg - Monday, February 20, 2017 - link

    I would agree with you if I was still stuck on my 2 year old phone but honestly since trying out 2 phones for the last 6 months with USB C and quick charge I haven't worried or thought about battery like I used to anymore. Between the faster charging, the optimized lower power usage with the newer CPU's, and the OLED screens they come on I normally get about a day and a half with normal use before I need to charge. The phones just 2 years ago though I needed to charge twice a day. I was always for pumping a bigger battery but if they are maintaining a day and a half right now I don't mind them keeping it as is for the moment.
  • R3MF - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link

    HSA?
  • melgross - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link

    This is a nice article and all. But whatever happened to the deep dive we were promised about the iPhone A10 for late OCTOBER? I've looked all over for it. I'm here several times a day, and never saw it.
  • ddriver - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link

    October is 10 months away doh ;)
  • melgross - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link

    Gee. Thanks for that genius level reply.
  • ddriver - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link

    Thank yourself for the genius level not-getting-it.
  • Teo222 - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    Thought it was pretty good. Alas, humor is not for all.
  • doggface - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    While we are at it... The Polaris review?
  • jjj - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link

    "The BoC license allows Qualcomm to make certain changes to a stock ARM core"

    The entire point of this BoC was that ARM makes the changes at their request so accuracy on this makes all the difference.

    Branding all 8 cores the same would be highly unethical and hopefully illegal if the small ones are fundamentally different.
  • colinisation - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link

    Qualcomm almost quits the custom core field, interesting.
    I thought they might as there were rumours of layoffs about 18 months ago.
    Now there is no one but Samsung even trying to compete with Apple CPU wise
  • StrangerGuy - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link

    If your omggodlyamazingbbq high-end custom core on 14nm got embarrassed by A72 fabbed on 28nm, I'll bet you would want to fire the guys in charge of the former too. I'm won't be remotely surprised if 28nm A73 is gonna do the same thing to QC again.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    just imagine how embarrassing 14nm a73 is going to be.....
  • UtilityMax - Tuesday, January 10, 2017 - link

    Kirin 655 is something like that, a 16nm a72. It benches pretty close to SD 820, although the GPU is much weaker in some configurations, the way it ships in Honor 8 for example.
  • lilmoe - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    What's up with the custom core buzz craze? I've said this before, but for all we know, the Exynos M1 might as well be a more heavily customized Cortex A72 (started early on when ARM was designing the core).
    Nonetheless, Apple doesn't apply in this race. They improve the aspects of their CPUs that work best with their tightly integrated OS. If you pare their Ax chips with Android, for example, they might fall flat on their face in performance and/or efficiency. STOP LOOKING AT STUPID BENCHMARKS.

    What matters is the SoC as a whole, and how well the software stack deals with day-to-day tasks of the OS and common workloads. The Kirin 960, for example, might have the most power efficient CPU to run Android, but it doesn't come close to the Exynos 8890 or even the Snapdragon 820 in features, co-processors and overall performance.

    I really dislike the approach everyone is taking in benchmarking these platforms. It's too narrow sighted and completely irrelevant to the end user. It's like saying that an HP Pavilion with a slightly faster processor is better than a same-generation Thinkpad or Macbook. It's not, for reasons that should be obvious. The same analogy applies to SoCs.
  • colinisation - Saturday, January 7, 2017 - link

    I think the custom core buzz was because Qualcomm beat outgeneric ARM cores in the past - think Cortex A8/9 vs Scorpion but also Cortex A15/57 lest a bad taste in peoples mouths when compared to Apple's cores at the time and the popular refrain was "its because they are generic ARM cores". I however thinks things have moved on since then and ARM has poured more resources into their custom cores and A72/73 are more focused on mobile as opposed to being a bridge to the server world.

    I agree with you on the common workloads front - have you got any links for the claim on Kirin 960 vs 8890. I know Huawei are trumpeting their Cortex M7 integration.

    I think in order to properly bench these things you would need to dismatle phone connect it up to a voltmeter and power source to determine how much power is being draw then run it through a number of scenarios - web browsing, gaming, app installs etc Before measuring power draw, app opening speed, performance, responsiveness and then calculate how long it will last given its battery size. This is a LOT of work and not sure its reasonable to ask review sites to put that much time into 1 review
  • lilmoe - Sunday, January 8, 2017 - link

    The Cortex A9 was significantly faster than Scorpion. It wasn't until Krait that Snapdragons really closed the gap, barely. Krait Snapdragons benched better, but Cortex A9 Exynos processors were simply faster and more fluid running as a whole (they got a bit toastier at times though).

    "I think in order to properly bench these things you would need to dismatle phone connect it up to a voltmeter and power source"

    I wish it were that simple. You just can't build a conclusion on any sort of systematic/synthetic test. Even if it were a browser script which is supposed to simulate "real life". Browsing habits differ by user, and the browser used and the governer the OEM implements (among other "secret sauce" ingredients) make a bigger impact than processor efficiency on the readings of your measuring equipment and/or on overall system battery life.

    "have you got any links for the claim on Kirin 960 vs 8890"

    My opinions are generally made from personal, real life experience. I have lots of friends that try out different phones and we usually spend hours comparing.

    But technically speaking, do we really need proof? There's one fact that EVERYONE fails to realize (especially Andre here, the rest of Anandtech don't seem to care); ALL of these processors are mainly running on the small cluster!!! Both the Kirin and Exynos are mostly running on the same 4 Cortex A53 cores. The big/performance cluster works for split seconds and goes back to sleep, mostly when loading a page, or launching an app.

    That being said, there are 2 main things that make Exynos SoCs better than Helios and Kirins IMO:

    1) The interconnects and co-processors are simply better. Samsung's fixed function video decoder, in particular, is industry leading in performance and efficiency (it's been this way since the Hummingbird in my experience).

    2) Two of the M1 cores are always offline. They don't come online unless needed. Not sure how much this makes an impact, but the Kirin has all 8 online at all times.

    A simple Youtube search shows lots of battery tests between the Exynos GS7 Edge and the Mate 9. The GS7 has better battery life even with a smaller battery.

    I won't be upgrading my GS7 until we see an upgrade to the A53 core.
  • SarahKerrigan - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link

    Is Kryo 280 definitely a Cortex derivative? It seems really weird that they'd call it a Kryo instead of stating outright that it was an enhanced A73 or something...
  • shabby - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link

    Probably don't want to admit that the a73 is better than their offering so they went this route and used a slightly tweaked a73 and don't have to divulge any other info about it.
  • prisonerX - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    The terms of the licence dictate that it is indeed a Cortex derivative, and almost all Cortex. The name is pure marketing.
  • name99 - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    More interesting is the issue of what this means for the QC Server chip.
    Did QC conclude there's more money and less competition in ARM servers, so moved the Kryo team there? Because this movie certainly seems to suggest that they've given up trying to really compete in the ARM CPU space --- now they'll just compete, presumably, on the basis of Hexagon, Adreno, and wireless, but with essentially the same CPU as everyone else?
  • prisonerX - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    It could just be priorities and the fact they can't do better than ARM's design in the short/medium term. ARM's design may be getting better as they bring more resources to bear or the design cycles too long at this point to have their own design.

    The server space is ripe for "disruption." Desktops and PCs generally are slowly going the way of the dodo and the future is mobiles and servers. People aren't going to let Intel keep such a strategic segment all to themselves. Single thread performance is flat and power consumption is king and they know Intel is vulnerable. The hyenas are nipping at the wounded and bleeding former lion king.
  • lilmoe - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    Or it simply means that instead of focusing solely on how to achieve the highest brute performance for a given TDP, one should focus more on efficiency of a specific performance target and work more on offloading more tasks to dedicated blocks and co-processors that the very best CPU architecture can never dream to achieve.

    Which is exactly what they did, and what I believe is the right thing to do. You guys are focused on the wrong thing for the wrong form factor. This isn't desktop computing. Heck, even desktop CPUs are moving in that direction. After a certain performance threshold, CPUs get less and less important.
  • lilmoe - Thursday, January 5, 2017 - link

    And just to add something I've been saying over and over for a while. What Qualcomm, Samsung and ARM should be focusing on from this point is NOT the high performance cluster, but the efficiency cluster. The A53 is in dire need for a refresh. If you guys want to focus on the CPU aspect, you need to start focusing on this. Qualcomm are saying that the small cluster is handling 80% of the workload alone; I say 90%. That 1MB of L2 they slapped on the small cluster might mean all the difference they needed on the CPU side.
  • jospoortvliet - Thursday, January 5, 2017 - link

    Well there is the a35 already...
  • colinisation - Saturday, January 7, 2017 - link

    There was a leaked roadmap from 2015 that stated an A53 refresh would occur but it would be segmented into 2. With something called mercury which would attack the lower segment of the A53 power range - mercury turned out to be Cortex A35. The other codename mentioned was Ananke which is currently MIA, might have been cancelled or delayed. One of ARM's engineers did say he thought A53 represented the pinnacle of what could be achieved in terms of in order dual issue, so I do wonder what Ananke would have looked like - really small instruction window (~ 32) perhaps?
  • lilmoe - Sunday, January 8, 2017 - link

    Well, I guess they thought that process node improvements are enough to keep efficiency in check, coupled with higher clocks. That does work for a while, but not for long.

    I'm really interested to see the results of Qualcomm's customization of the core. Some "leaked" documents show the little cluster in the SD 835 clocked at 2.4Ghz, while Samsung chose to stick with 1.7Ghz with no customization. If that's true, keeping in mind the fact that it has just as many CPU cores (better efficiency on Android), I'm guessing this will have a large impact on perceived snappiness of devices running the SD835, making it the better chip in 2017.
  • Nehemoth - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link

    One question, I understand that in Windows 10 for ARM (I don't know the name) 32bits apps are going to work just fine, but what about x64 apps?, I do understand that x64 are extension of x86 but still I don't know if a 64bits apps are going to work over W10.

    If you ask me, I would say yes as the 280 CPU would be a 64bits, but I would like a confirmation.

    Regards
  • Matt Humrick - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link

    The emulation Snapdragon 835 uses for 32-bit x86 does not support x86-64, even though Kryo 280 is 64-bit.
  • Nehemoth - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    Thank you very much for your kindly answer
  • 0iron - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link

    Did Qualcomm mention or someone asking why it is named 835 instead of 830?
  • MrSpadge - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    Their naming nver made much sense. 835 isn't too bad in this context ;)
  • Assimilator87 - Tuesday, January 3, 2017 - link

    **Correction?**

    The article refers to the Snapdragon 835's DSP as the Hexagon 682 but the marketing slide "A heterogeneous computing approach for immersive interactions" on page 3, section "Virtual Reality," which I assume was provided by Qualcomm, says "Hexagon 690."
  • Matt Humrick - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    The Hexagon 690 reference is an error. The final press materials and spec sheet show Hexagon 682.
  • SydneyBlue120d - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    Video encoding still stuck at 2160p30. Let's hope 835 successor will show AV1 2160p60 encoding support.
  • Vishalaestro - Wednesday, January 4, 2017 - link

    It's Apple disrupting the cpu market , snapdragon 801 was the most stable chipset which simple got no love due to not so useful Apple's 64 bit cpu . Qualcomm is seriously feeling some heat from Apple and Samsung .
  • SydneyBlue120d - Thursday, January 5, 2017 - link

    What do You mean? Snapdragon 820/821 are absolutely excellent SOC in every aspect.
  • lolipopman - Thursday, January 5, 2017 - link

    Off topic, but I'm just curious if there's going to be a Mali G71 MP12 like the Mali T880 MP12.

    As an aside, the performance improvements don't seem significant and nothing to brag about, I don't see the new Adreno keeping up with the Mali of this year.
  • lilmoe - Thursday, January 5, 2017 - link

    There are rumors that the new Exynos will have a Mali G71 MP20 configuration. Yes, 20.
  • PhytochromeFr - Thursday, January 5, 2017 - link

    in 2013, they said "You can't take eight lawnmower engines, put them together and now claim you have an eight-cylinder Ferrari".
    Now, Kryo's Performace per core is very lower than Hurricane core. There are just 'many' cores. when will they make 'eight-cylinder Ferrari'???
  • oranos - Thursday, January 5, 2017 - link

    its not possible for thinner phones without significant cuts to power draw. we all saw what happened with the Note 7 - leave it alone like your already anarexic girlfriend.
  • lopri - Saturday, January 7, 2017 - link

    It sounds like Samsung is going with M1 big cores + A53s, and Qualcomm is going with A72/A73s + Kryo little cores. Am I reading it right?
  • Wardrive86 - Monday, July 9, 2018 - link

    Just for someone reading in the future, all Hexagon 500 series (qdsp6v5) and Hexagon 600 series (qdsp6v6) do support floating point in the scalar simd units, up to 8 flops/clock.

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