Ok, time once again to debunk the whole optimization of software vs. cores.
When dual cores hit in 2011, Android apps immediately took advantage of them without change - screenshots to prove that upon request.
Why?
Apps are written with what we call threads - threads of control. A properly written app has as few or as many as is required. Each thread operates to do a job, and communicates with other threads to maintain synchronization.
A music app for example may have a thread for the UI and one to to manage accessing storage where the songs are and sending them off to the underlying Linux services that actually plays the music - and that will be in another thread.
That's really a Mickey Mouse example but it illustrates clearly enough.
Android apps have been built that way since all we had were single cores in the world.
No re-writing or optimizing is required for threads to be split out to separate cores.
Linux has been doing that for ages and the job control ability for that has been there all along - and significantly improved at ICS when we got in line with desktop Linux on that.
Qualcomm was the first to build asynchronous multicore processors, now they all are.
In a quad core, it will run 1, 2, 3 or all 4 cores - all at independent speeds and voltages - depending on the apps at the time.
If an app design calls for 2 threads, 4 cores won't help and you can't rewrite it to somehow be optimized for that.
If an app design calls for 6 threads but they can't parallelize because of intended sequencing, then they won't be distributed to any more cores than the scheduler determines.
Multicore optimization outside the primitive iOS world is simply a non-sequitur here.
whats even more interesting is that they could have given this phone a quad core and kept a lot of the battery efficiency the dual core has. The tech is there RIGHT NOW, they just chose not to use it.
That's simply not true at all.
A quad core _might_ have performed as efficiently - provided that two of the cores went unused, in which case you don't care.
Or - a quad core _might_ have performed as efficiently - provided that all cores were active and running slower to accomplish the same thing as two cores running faster.
No software optimization required - that's luck of the draw.
To be fair the specs are mid level overall...
Each CPU core here is a Krait 300.
No other dual core uses that CPU.
It's the same CPU being using on the top-of-the-line Qualcomm quadcore.
It uses the same GPU as the top of the line Qualcomm quadcore.
It uses specialize low-power cores for its additional features - other phones are relying on the high-power CPUs for everything, and hence - use quads.
The truth is here. Not a mid-level processor.
