Welcome to the S3 Watering Hole. Feel free to hang out & chat about whatever. No S3 required, all folks are welcome to join the chat no matter what device you have. Remember forum rules do apply.
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There's nothing special about creating a watering hole thread. It was just an idea that was started by a member (she was not a site staff member when she started the thread, btw) to keep the community aspect going while waiting for the device to be released.
To be honest, that's what I've felt that the Verizon pre-release thread has become and why I haven't tried to really tighten the off-topic chatter in there, so a separate thread isn't necessary, IMO.
Hey treb, I saw you post about this in the GNex Watering Hole and figured I'd check it out. Hmm, fresh, new, plenty of room to grow. Kinda nice.
Anyway, let me start by saying congrats to all you proud new SGSIII owners, it looks like a solid device. You get this sucker established and I'll drop by for the conversation, and feel free to visit us in the Galaxy Nexus Watering Hole as well.
What defines a Galaxy S III ? We already know some have a quad processor (Exynos) and some a dual (Snapdragon S4), there are two camera modules being used (Sony and Samsung), 1GB or 2GB of RAM, Wolfson or Samsung sound chip, different radios, ........ The only common attributes seem to be the screen with Gorilla Glass 2, the plastic housing and the "Galaxy S III" logo on the battery cover.
So it all boils down to this, "It's a Galaxy S III because the back cover says so."
While the A9 is a very power efficient core, Krait offers a much wider front end, wider execution back end, faster FPU and an improved cache/memory interface. All of these factors together combined with similar clock speeds to what Tegra 3 is able to hit should result in better absolute performance in single or lightly threaded applications.
Single threaded floating point performance is obviously a strength of the MSM8960 and Krait. Qualcomm tells us that Krait is able to multi-issue floating point instructions, something that the Cortex A9 cannot do. The MSM8960 memory controller also appears to be more efficient than previous designs, contributing to the magnitude of the win here.
Qualcomm's strengths are clearly single/lightly threaded CPU performance as Krait is able to offer some significant steps forward in that department. Tegra 3 can hold onto an advantage in heavily threaded apps, but I'm not entirely convinced that in phones we'll see a lot of that.
Final Words
It goes without saying that MSM8960 is a hugely important SoC release for Qualcomm. It's the first release with Qualcomm's new Krait CPU architecture, an entirely new cellular baseband with support for nearly every air interface, and is manufactured on TSMC's 28nm process. It says something that we're able to hold 28nm TSMC silicon in our hands in the form of the MDP, and it's only a matter of time before we start seeing Krait show up in devices in 2012.
We've gone over basically all of the benchmarks available to us on Android right now, and yet subjective performance impressions are still valuable. The MDP8960 is the absolute fastest we've seen Ice Cream Sandwich thus far - the UI is absolutely butter smooth everywhere, and web browsing in either Chrome or the stock Android Browser is also the smoothest we've seen it. There's no stutter bringing up the application switcher, or taking screenshots, two places that 4.0.3 still drops frames on the Galaxy Nexus.
Krait offers another generational leap in mobile SoC performance. The range of impact depends entirely on the workload but it's safe to say that it's noticeable. The GPU side of the equation has been improved tremendously as well, although that's mostly a function of 28nm enabling a very high clock speed for Qualcomm's Adreno 225.
Both devices are so similar in real usage that almost no one will ever miss the quad core. Apps are still not even maxing the Adreno 225. Yes, the new Mali is a better GPU, and the quad version is capable of faster benchmark scores (provided the benchmark provides multi-core support, which will also apply to app performance!) However, Krait is no slouch. It's a very mature, speedy, and battery efficient platform. It's cost effective as well, which means many of us can purchase a $200 top-tier device rather than the $300 trend many high end smartphones have followed on their release day. Razr release day price? $300. Galaxy Nexus? $300. HTC Rezound? $300. Their price eventually reduced, but the 16GB Galaxy S III goes for $200 with most U.S. carriers (on contract pricing.) I doubt Exynos has the kind of availability too meet such competitive prices with U.S. and European markets combined. I am very happy to pay $200 for this instead of $300, and I'm still getting the Cadillac of all dual core processors. Krait (S4) leaves all current gen dual cores in the dust.
Well, it looks like yall are going with this thread as your Watering Hole. As such, I moved it into the Lounge forum.
Well, it looks like yall are going with this thread as your Watering Hole. As such, I moved it into the Lounge forum.
Just give us a little time to get things going as it's a little crazy over at the S3 threads right now. Not to mention alot of us are still waiting to get out S3's ( that was me throwing Verizon under the bus ). Not to mention the S3 folks have to finger out this thread is now over here in The Lounge. :dontknow:
Hey hey!
I'm always up for a bit of banter with fellow S3 owners, do we get a bar in here too? And maybe a few sofas? Looks like the place needs cheering up a tad
Btw
There are more carriers that the four major US ones ya know, some of us had our S3's a while now, so ner ner :aetsch:
So.... Can someone please define "watering hole" ? I know, I know "newbie".
Is it just a general anything (regarding S3) goes?
So.... Can someone please define "watering hole" ? I know, I know "newbie".
Is it just a general anything (regarding S3) goes?
Think of the S3 forum as the factory floor and the S3 Watering Hole like the break room. You can take off the hardhat and safety goggles and relax a little bit. Hang out and chat, which is why it got moved to the lounge.
In the GNex watering hole we talk about anything. Even spent about 200 posts one time discussing various forms of pulled pork. Some times we throw props about what are kids are doing or ask advise about other things going on in our life.
Ah, well then, count me in ... As I for one would have shut down the pulled pork conversation with my 1 recipe..... After-all, Texas kinda has the meat thing licked (pun intended )!
Now, can you advise me on HOW TO GET MY BLEEPING PHONE ?
lol
Ps, maybe I can bribe them with my pulled pork?