ArmageddonX
Android Expert
No worries. We're definitely on the same page, I think I was just reading it upside down. lolSincere apologies if I've over-reacted - I just hate the gaming of benchmarks.
Does it show?
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If Sprint released the Evo3D and SGS2 and Photon on the same day which would you pick?
- Thread starter you2
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- htc evo 3d
'Pedantic'... damn.
You're my new favorite mod. You break the stigma of the pasty 20 something in mom's basement that I once imagined, haha! Although... I bet you have a lot of time on your hands in the desert.
ROTFLMA0
I work in semiconductor R&D, travel all over that for - have lived my share in several Asian countries (usually in 2, 3, or 6 month stints).
I do quite a bit from my home office and just videochat everyone to coordinate things - with customers, suppliers and our operations worldwide, I keep bizarre hours, and I'll often work in sprints and rests, so it often looks like I'm lazing about with all the time in the world posting here. When a supplier or partner is really pissing me off, I put them on the carpet and let them babble while I mod - I've done this for decades, when they have something new to tell me, I'll generally let them know.
Home office is a small server farm (6 machines + laptops) looking out onto the natural beauty of one of our mountain ranges, with east-south-west 6 and 8' foot tall windowing - and with our sun, I'm hardly pasty.
Favorite OS - Android, all the way.
Long story short, it is not possible to fix this problem with Tegra 2. There is no driver or firmware remedy (confirmed more or less, by nvidia), it is in fact hw related, despite how paradoxical that may sound.
Do tell! I'd like to forecast the day when I may have such sprawling windows (written from my meek 2 bed condo in the Bay)!
Understood on waste heat, and the rest was informative, ty. aSMP seems to further the platform greatly as a whole. But is Android taking advantage of this yet? More so, how would you say it compares to apps in iOS written to full utilize GCD (grand central dispatch) or other thread-like APIs? That to me, would harness its true potential (as I digress to multi-core cpu design as a whole).
On another note, I noticed the SGS2's wiki says:
ARM Mali-400 MP (GT-i9100) or GeForce ULP (8 cores)[4] (GT-i9103)
Say it ain't so Joe! If it ends up being GeForce, the wind in my sails is gone!
I have a fabulous post on that somewhere here, iOS approach vs. SMP but I'm bushed from a long session so I'll just quickly summarize.
iOS uses cooperative multitasking - like Windows 95, except they're getting it all grown up.
With cooperative multitasking, pretty much just app runs at a time, and each app is large because it carries with it all the support services it needs (iPhones have more memory because the app approach requires more memory).
Android is preemptive multitasking - it's a combo of Linux plus apps running inside the Dalvik Virtual Machine. Android apps are lightweight and compact because they call upon and draw from a pool of common, super-stable services that come along for the ride with Linux.
OK - now that you got that - here's the answer:
Because an iOS app can totally hog resources however it pleases without affecting other apps, it's reasonable to expect for the far future that there will always be iOS apps that are 100% taking advantage of every bit of the processor - they could even peel off one of the gpu cores and hog it to do vector math or whatever at insane rates compared to a general-purpose cpu core.
Because Android apps must share and share alike with services, they cannot do that, they cannot hog.
Complexity - iOS wins.
However - there's more to the story.
The SMP OS architecture, while not overly-advanced, is quite stable - Linux has been running multicore for _many years_.
Android apps do not have to be rebuilt or redesigned to take advantage of the dual cores. The OS job control is going to handle all of that for the services, and any app dev in Android that followed Da Rules and broke his code into various threads - those threads can distribute across cores as the OS sees fit.
Long-term app supportability, sustainability: Android wins.
Android - being heavyweight, runs slow compared to iOS. The charge is true, it takes more processor resources to run Android quickly. The charge is also true that the killer app may in all likelihood always be an iOS app.
However - the chip industry always abides. As more silicon is brought to bear on the problem, Android's slowness goes away. This isn't Android wasting resources - it's the price you pay for running a preemptive multitasking SMP operating system - that gives you sustainability in the long run.
For the Apple apps to compete, they rapidly hit the point where a platform change requires an app change.
You want the dual core benefit of your existing apps? Install them on a dual core Android.
You want the dual core benefit on iOS? Unless Apple radically changes something, you wait for the app to be re-written.
Anyway - it's kinda like that.
PS - With higher app complexity comes higher potential for bugs. Do I predict that the day will come that unless Apple changes things radically, their approach will collapse under the weight of its own complexities? Yes. Example: how about that Windows 98, that solved everything, didn't it?
iOS uses cooperative multitasking - like Windows 95, except they're getting it all grown up.
With cooperative multitasking, pretty much just app runs at a time, and each app is large because it carries with it all the support services it needs (iPhones have more memory because the app approach requires more memory).
Android is preemptive multitasking - it's a combo of Linux plus apps running inside the Dalvik Virtual Machine. Android apps are lightweight and compact because they call upon and draw from a pool of common, super-stable services that come along for the ride with Linux.
OK - now that you got that - here's the answer:
Because an iOS app can totally hog resources however it pleases without affecting other apps, it's reasonable to expect for the far future that there will always be iOS apps that are 100% taking advantage of every bit of the processor - they could even peel off one of the gpu cores and hog it to do vector math or whatever at insane rates compared to a general-purpose cpu core.
Because Android apps must share and share alike with services, they cannot do that, they cannot hog.
Complexity - iOS wins.
However - there's more to the story.
The SMP OS architecture, while not overly-advanced, is quite stable - Linux has been running multicore for _many years_.
Android apps do not have to be rebuilt or redesigned to take advantage of the dual cores. The OS job control is going to handle all of that for the services, and any app dev in Android that followed Da Rules and broke his code into various threads - those threads can distribute across cores as the OS sees fit.
Long-term app supportability, sustainability: Android wins.
Android - being heavyweight, runs slow compared to iOS. The charge is true, it takes more processor resources to run Android quickly. The charge is also true that the killer app may in all likelihood always be an iOS app.
However - the chip industry always abides. As more silicon is brought to bear on the problem, Android's slowness goes away. This isn't Android wasting resources - it's the price you pay for running a preemptive multitasking SMP operating system - that gives you sustainability in the long run.
For the Apple apps to compete, they rapidly hit the point where a platform change requires an app change.
You want the dual core benefit of your existing apps? Install them on a dual core Android.
You want the dual core benefit on iOS? Unless Apple radically changes something, you wait for the app to be re-written.
Anyway - it's kinda like that.
PS - With higher app complexity comes higher potential for bugs. Do I predict that the day will come that unless Apple changes things radically, their approach will collapse under the weight of its own complexities? Yes. Example: how about that Windows 98, that solved everything, didn't it?
PS - Yeap - SGS2 is Exynos or Tegra-2 depending on region.
I asked a UK guy about it, and he said his research was that UK and US phones are getting the Exynos.
My takeaway was trust but verify.
I asked a UK guy about it, and he said his research was that UK and US phones are getting the Exynos.
My takeaway was trust but verify.
Thanks EarlyMon, all highly informative and very digestible (thank you for that), but one thing I'm curious about...
I thought the jist of GCD was that apps would NOT necessarily have to be rewritten to take advantage (albeit not complete advantage) of multi-core. Isn't that the idea behind it, just a hardware flag in the app or something to that effect, though I doubt this is full optimization as would be the core services which are undoubtedly rewritten.
I'm sure EarlyMon can expound but I'd say yes, in certain applications where it is able to harness ARM's SIMD engine. But it gaming performance, I dunno. It may actually outshine in some instances.
I thought the jist of GCD was that apps would NOT necessarily have to be rewritten to take advantage (albeit not complete advantage) of multi-core. Isn't that the idea behind it, just a hardware flag in the app or something to that effect, though I doubt this is full optimization as would be the core services which are undoubtedly rewritten.
I'm sure EarlyMon can expound but I'd say yes, in certain applications where it is able to harness ARM's SIMD engine. But it gaming performance, I dunno. It may actually outshine in some instances.
GaryColeman
Well-Known Member
Real world web browsing comparison of Samsung S II and HTC Sensation (same basic hardware as 3D).
Youtube Video
Youtube Video
Is that the one where he goes nuts showing his idea of pinch-zoom flash video browsing?
If so, thanks but no thanks, I don't configure or use my browser that way at all, nor would I think would anyone in their right mind - and if he's not using the HTC browser like a normal person, why would I trust he's using the Sammy any better? I don't know the Sammy browser to judge what he's doing on that side.
If it's a different vid, I apologize, say and I'll look - otherwise, I'm going to go back to waiting for the real real-world comparisons you and I agreed were essential before.
Maybe he comes to fair conclusion despite my concerns - or maybe he doesn't. I only object to the use cases - if I don't trust the test use cases, I don't trust results, but that's me.
(I actually can think of several design reasons why the SGS2 might excel over the Sensation - but theory isn't data, neither Sammy nor HTC signs my checks, so I'm not biased for the outcome.)
GaryColeman
Well-Known Member
Would I "trick" you in to watching that one again? By the way, I agree the flash pinch to zoom gripe was lame.
No, this is a new video with an actual side by side going to a few different websites. If there is some slight of hand he is doing, I look forward to critique.
ArmageddonX
Android Expert
Interesting:
Rumor: Moto and Sprint to announce Photon 4G at June 9 event | Android Atlas - CNET Reviews
Probably just a standard "news" report but they included "possible" features.
Rumor: Moto and Sprint to announce Photon 4G at June 9 event | Android Atlas - CNET Reviews
Probably just a standard "news" report but they included "possible" features.
novox77
Leeeroy Jennnkinnns!
A pretty convincing win by the Samsung, IMO. Not quite as scientific and controlled for my taste, but from just what was presented, Samsung has the edge. And the display looked much better on the Samsung through the lens of this video camera. Definitely a phone I'd like to check out in person, but not sure if it excites me enough to want it as soon as it's released...
GaryColeman
Well-Known Member
I agree not scientific, but if I brought two phones home to test, that would probably be the extent of my "science" when trying to pick one. After watching it a second time I paid more attention to the displays and I did like the Samsung better overall, I don't know how the display settings were set on each, but the blacks on amoled are nice. However, I did prefer the high rez on the Sensation when looking at the icon text on the home screens. Maybe that's why the S II had such large fonts on the browser settings menu compared to the HTC.
I agree this wasn't a terribly scientific test... seems weird that the technobuffalo site wouldn't load at all on the sensation. The SGS2 did win but not as much as I thought it would based on some of the comments.
On the engadget and youtube sites they were close enough in load times that I'd be happy with either one. He made comments about the smoothness of the UI being better on the SGS2... maybe you need to have the phone in-hand to notice it, but in the video they both looked about the same smoothness to me (different scroll speeds make it hard to judge actual smoothness). Pinch to zoom seemed about the same with the edge going to the sensation to my eyes.
drexappeal
Extreme Android User
You know, I noticed all the sites reporting the 6/9 event had mentioned comparisons to the Atrix and/or the Droid X2...BUT a few mentioning the Bionic.
I honestly feel like it'll be Sprint's version of the Bionic that was supposed to be out on Verizon and is supposedly coming out soon. All the specs for the Bionic make more sense as far as comparison is concerned, compared to the Droid X2 or the Atrix. Granted, I'd love for the phone to be thinner than the Bionic, but considering a KICKSTAND was talked about on a few of the websites, I'm banking on the phone being similar in thickness to the EVO 4G and EVO 3D.
Just thought I'd throw that comparison out there.
ArmageddonX
Android Expert
You know, I don't know why, but I never thought the Photon might be the Sprint version of the Bionic. That's a good point. I was assuming it was the Sprint Atrix or Sprint X2. It could be the Sprint Bionic. Time will tell...
drexappeal
Extreme Android User
Here's the thing, if they were able to make the phone as thin as the X2, but same form factor as the Atrix or the Bionic overall, to me that's absolutely perfect! I actually don't mind the size of the EVO 4G, as far as thickness is concerned, but if they were able to make the phone even thinner, that's a bonus.
It's only 2 weeks away, but I'm glad I didn't just go ahead and place a pre-order for the 3D. I'll likely place a pre-order on the Photon, if the specs live up to the rumors.
ArmageddonX
Android Expert
I pre-ordered the Evo3D; but I'm not going to buy it. It's fine. I'll just use the $50 gift card to buy my phone later this year.
I don't mind big phones at all either. I really don't. I'd carry around a 10 inch Tablet if they'd give one calling/texting abilities.
I don't mind big phones at all either. I really don't. I'd carry around a 10 inch Tablet if they'd give one calling/texting abilities.
thelonewizard
Android Enthusiast
I just have 1 question... is it really worth it to pre-order? Or should I just risk it and go in on launch day and try to get one? I'll camp at the store if need be.. haha
drexappeal
Extreme Android User
I pre-ordered the Evo3D; but I'm not going to buy it. It's fine. I'll just use the $50 gift card to buy my phone later this year.
I don't mind big phones at all either. I really don't. I'd carry around a 10 inch Tablet if they'd give one calling/texting abilities.
Well, I don't know if I'd really want a phone bigger than the EVO. That's pretty much the limit as far as overall dimensions are concerned.
Carrying a tablet as a phone would be going a little too far for my tastes...LOL.
drexappeal
Extreme Android User
Blur=Irrelevant for me because of Launcher Pro Plus and/or Go Launcher (if they develop more widgets).
Just driving by, quick question, maybe I've skimmed this wrong - if encrypted on the 3vo is a driver away from it, how does anything Moto (also encrypted) make any sense?
Full NAND or nothing.
Full NAND or nothing.
1. True, but moot.1. Universal compiles lead to more bloated apps in the cases I've seen on computers (so, I'd assume the same true of mobile).
2. Android underpinnings are described accurately.
3. I think I'll enter early dementia if I'm going to be quoted out of context!
Plus, I still need to check out the new vid from Gary - can't wait!
2. Like I said, NO reason to doubt you.
3. I didn't mean to!