All about Samsung Galaxy S4

[grkM3]

For the record look at who brings Apple into these threads. First it was Mr. grkM3 who apparently has the best S3 ever made and HAS to compare it to the iPhone and then it was Mr. jpeyton bringing up "Apple going on the defensive" article. Don't tell me about how Apple fans troll Android topics, Android fans like to do it themselves.

Really I brought up the iphone

I talked about the gs3 battery life and the thread was already itrolled about how android has horrible battery life and MX bragging about his 8 hours of usage time.heck I can listen to music for 10 hours and it won't budge my on screen time but he keeps trying to compare iOS usage time to how android people compare screen on times with other android phones.

 

[badb0y]

Your usage is time while the phone is not sleeping/idle I don't see your on screen time here and like Itold you it doesn't show the on screen time like android does.if you are saying you get 8 hours of usage then I get 20+ easily lol

There octo core is arms official big little design and will blow the doors off of any hybrid others are making.Samsung has always stuck to official arm cores with there socs and have been ahead of everyone in performance for doing so.

They were the first to build an a15 core last year but had no use for it and yes if they wanted to they could of used it in the note 2 but wasted there resources building the apple soc for the iPhone 5

Yea I am going to call BS on your claims because every single review suggests the exact opposite of what your saying. I am not saying the SGS3 has bad battery life I am just saying that the iPhone 5 has better battery life. If you can find evidence to dispute that besides your anecdotal stories then by all means post it here and I will reconsider my stance.

 

[grkM3]

Yea I am going to call BS on your claims because every single review suggests the exact opposite of what your saying. I am not saying the SGS3 has bad battery life I am just saying that the iPhone 5 has better battery life. If you can find evidence to dispute that besides your anecdotal stories then by all means post it here and I will reconsider my stance.

I'm at 40% now with 11 hours of use and the phone was idle/standby for 2% so basically I have been power using my phone without it going to sleep and still have plenty more left to go.

Maybe just maybe the first reviews of the gs3 were on ICS and not jelly bean and with the latest updates battery life got better

Im also pretty sure a crap load of people are getting 5 hours of on screen time with there gs3 and its nothing special with my phone

 

[grkM3]

I'm uploading screen shots to drop box now for you.

IM at 33% with about 12 hours of use with full push and sync on that includes gmail,email,facebook,snapchat,ruzzle and instantgram and so far I have 4 hours of on screen time and the device has been idle for 2%and standby for 3% I had a 2 hour gym session that had 70 min of cardio and was streaming music off google music the whole time.

basically got this whole day out of my phone as I unplugged it around 11 this morning and still have about 1.5 hours of screen time left.My gs3 is almost 2x as good at battery life as my galaxy nexus I came from,I would be lucky to get 3 hours of on screen time and that was with custom lean kernel and underclocked gpu and cpus along with liquid smooth rom and could not get 6 hours total phone use without the phone dying on me.

Here is a battery test and the gs3 getting 2x the battery life of the iPhone 5 and it had its screen brightness on max

http://www.androidauthority.com/whi...allenge-heavily-beats-apples-iphone-5-122142/

 

[WelshBloke]

... There octo core is arms official big little design and will blow the doors off of any hybrid others are making.Samsung has always stuck to official arm cores with there socs and have been ahead of everyone in performance for doing so...

I thought that just the international version was getting the octo core?

 

[grkM3]

I thought that just the international version was getting the octo core?

We don't know who is getting what but the point was mx was saying Samsung needed to make the octo to get a15 to be efficient when in fact the octocore is directly from arms big little design and was made from the gound up to be used the way Samsung is using it.The funny part is that he thinks they just read a recipe from apple and arm and just make the chips.Ohh and the arm reference a15 uses there own mali gpu and if the rumors are right Samsung jammed a powervr gpu in there so I guess arm told them how to get that to work also

 

[Narse]

I have tried and tried to like Android and I just can't. Also never cared much for Samsung phones.

 

[WelshBloke]

I have tried and tried to like Android and I just can't. Also never cared much for Samsung phones.

Don't get one then. I know that they are popular but they aren't compulsory yet.

 

[scaramoosh]

Have you seen how much power the A15 draws? It's fine in something the size of as tablet, though the Nexus 10 still doesn't have great battery life either.

http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/nexus10-multitasking-annotated.png

Look at the power that dual core chip is drawing, fucking mental considering the Tegra 3 chip combined draws less than 2.

It's obviously why they're doing this A7 + A15 thing, however that isn't 8 cores, it's a 4 core CPU that'll be using the A7 all the time because as soon as the A15 gets enabled it'll drain your battery in 40 mins. Probably why they're using the power vr 544mp3 instead of the Mali 600, it uses less power.

 

[scaramoosh]

"When you take an Android device out of the box, you have to sign up to nine accounts with different vendors to get the experience iOS comes with," he said. "They don't work seamlessly together."

This is so retarded that "retarded" is an understatement. I signed in with 1 account on my Android (gmail) and it synced pretty much everything. Then I have the option to go with other accounts if I have them (facebook, outlook, for instance), but my google account holds pretty much everything.

Yeh I found Android easier than IOS to setup. All I did was login to my Google account after installing new firmware and it instantly downloads all the settings you had before the wipe and the phone is back to how it was before.

With IOS I still cannot figure out how to bring over contacts. Like FFS I DONT WANT TO MAKE A BACKUP, IT TAKES AN HOUR! You don't have all your apps or music in a backup, no you have to redownload all that shit manually.

With Android, it was all automatic and instant.

In fact my Mother called me after getting the iPhone 5 asking "how do I transfer my contacts and settings"... I dunno just get an Android phone.

 

[thunng8]

Here is a battery test and the gs3 getting 2x the battery life of the iPhone 5 and it had its screen brightness on max

http://www.androidauthority.com/whi...allenge-heavily-beats-apples-iphone-5-122142/

Which battery tests are rubbish. They test all phones on max brightness. It is a well known fact that the iPhone 5 on max brightness is over 2x brighter than the S3. Most sites test on standard calibrated brightness settings. For example, anandtech tests all phones at 200nits.

 

[scaramoosh]

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/13/4102174/samsung-galaxy-s-iv-revealed-in-detailed-images

Here it is people!

I doubt that's a fake at this point.

 

[bearxor]

Probably why they're using the power vr 544mp3 instead of the Mali 600, it uses less power.

They're using the SGX544MP3 because it out performs the Mali. The Mali 604 in the Nexus 10 gets beat pretty soundly compared to an iPhone 5. PowerVR simply has the edge here.

This is Samsung basically saying "We're not going to let Apple dominate in GPU power anymore."

I think the problem may be that Appl devices this fall will include a SGX600 series GPU, and will probably jump the SGS4 in performance, at least GPU-wise. But if the rumors hold, they're clocking the GPU at almost twice the amount of Apple, so that should definitely give it legs.

Who knows what Apple will do on the CPU side this year though. The iPhone doesn't need a quad A7 + quad A15. I imagine we'll just see an improvement of the Swift core, kind of like how Qualcomm is improving their chips. I doubt we'll even see quad core in a iPhone 5S. The SGS4 will definitely be a CPU powerhouse, but I'd imagine it'll largely go to waste for the vast majority of the users. That's why I really expected to see a 2x2 configuration, as that would probably cover 95%+ of your users needs and would be cheaper to fab, and you could fit more on a wafer so your production capability goes up.

 

[scaramoosh]

Well to be fair to the Mali 600 the Nexus 10 has a stupidly high resolution and the iPhone 5 is only like 680p or something...

http://mobile.it168.com/a2013/0313/1461/000001461394_3.shtml

More on the Galaxy S4.

iPhone 5 display resolution is 1136 x 640

The Nexus 10 with a 2560×1600


Probably why the Mali 600 gets beat pretty easily.

 

[bearxor]

Well to be fair to the Mali 600 the Nexus 10 has a stupidly high resolution and the iPhone 5 is only like 680p or something...

http://mobile.it168.com/a2013/0313/1461/000001461394_3.shtml

More on the Galaxy S4.

iPhone 5 display resolution is 1136 x 640

The Nexus 10 with a 2560×1600


Probably why the Mali 600 gets beat pretty easily.

Most of the benchmarks are rendered offscreen as 1080p, rendering the actual screen resolution of the device moot.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6426/ipad-4-gpu-performance-analyzed-powervr-sgx-554mp4-under-the-hood

 

[MrX8503]

Your usage is time while the phone is not sleeping/idle I don't see your on screen time here and like Itold you it doesn't show the on screen time like android does.if you are saying you get 8 hours of usage then I get 20+ easily lol

34 minutes usage (screen on) and it didn't drain the phone even 1%. I get 8hrs from using half LTE and half wifi.

There octo core is arms official big little design and will blow the doors off of any hybrid others are making.Samsung has always stuck to official arm cores with there socs and have been ahead of everyone in performance for doing so.

They stick to reference design because they don't have the design chops. Samsung's SOCs have been first to market because of sticking with reference designs. Custom chips that come out later are better performing, for example A6 dual core outperforming Samsung's quad.

They were the first to build an a15 core last year but had no use for it and yes if they wanted to they could of used it in the note 2 but wasted there resources building the apple soc for the iPhone 5

No, they couldn't have if they did have a use for it.

 

[scaramoosh]

Most of the benchmarks are rendered offscreen as 1080p, rendering the actual screen resolution of the device moot.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6426/ipad-4-gpu-performance-analyzed-powervr-sgx-554mp4-under-the-hood

Well the GS4 is a higher clock speed and a 544 not a 543 so it should perform better than the 554 in the ipad 4 seeing that resolution.

 

[dawheat]

34 minutes usage (screen on) and it didn't drain the phone even 1%. I get 8hrs from using half LTE and half wifi.

You guys have to stop this pissing contest. grkM3, as a fellow S3 owner who loves his phone, I have to say your battery experience is completely out of the norm. Over on xda developers, there are huge battery threads with hundreds of fellow owners posting their experiences and screenshots - and your numbers are abnormal. So be glad you somehow get amazing life out of your phone, but your experience is definitely nor normal.

One thing I assume though - is you're outside the US so you have the intl version? The US version with LTE and the Snapdragon S4 processor seems to only get about 2-3 hours (depending on config) of screen time before being fully drained.

 

[grkM3]

34 minutes usage (screen on) and it didn't drain the phone even 1%. I get 8hrs from using half LTE and half wifi.



They stick to reference design because they don't have the design chops. Samsung's SOCs have been first to market because of sticking with reference designs. Custom chips that come out later are better performing, for example A6 dual core outperforming Samsung's quad.



No, they couldn't have if they did have a use for it.

Man you have no clue what your talking about.First everyone lecenses the arm designs and then you have choices to make them the way you want and you can mix and change things the way you want to fit your power envelope and your fab capabilities.the arm15 can be configured a few ways and can have up to 15 stage integer / 17-25 stage floating point pipeline so a true a15 can have 17-25 stage long pipe line depending on how much performance and power draw you want.

the a6 is based off of a15 but not a true a15 core and shares many features with it and its crazy that you compared it to a exynos 4 that is a true a9 setup,why don't you go back and see how bad the exynos 4 beat the crap out of every hybrid a9 setup that was done,it rocked anything from apple and QUALCOMM and the same thing is happening now,they used a hybrid a15 and Samsung is using the best design and the higher performing one vs the hybrids to save power or not having the fabs that could pull it off.I think its funny how the cpu from the gs2 is still competing with the a6,you do know all they did was add 2 more cores and upped the clocks and threw it in the gs3 and note 2 right?so a design done by arm and the one Samsung used from 2 years ago is still competing today

the exynos 5 will be king until cortex comes out with there next design and people start hybrids again and then Samsung will use true nextgen cores and pull ahead again.The a7 cores in the exynos 5 are brand new cores and are made for the a15 soc,they are not using an old design and using arms(you know the people that build the chips in the first places)purebred design.

now back to your stupid battery test,if you play music for 2 hours with you screen off it will up your usage time,do you not get that?your usage time is anytime the phone is not sleeping,its not the same as the on screen time that we are talking about.

btw im at 5:10 on screen time now and over 20 hours and just hit 10%,I might break 6 hours on this run and might match the 6.5 that was done in the review I posted.

 

[grkM3]

You guys have to stop this pissing contest. grkM3, as a fellow S3 owner who loves his phone, I have to say your battery experience is completely out of the norm. Over on xda developers, there are huge battery threads with hundreds of fellow owners posting their experiences and screenshots - and your numbers are abnormal. So be glad you somehow get amazing life out of your phone, but your experience is definitely nor normal.

One thing I assume though - is you're outside the US so you have the intl version? The US version with LTE and the Snapdragon S4 processor seems to only get about 2-3 hours (depending on config) of screen time before being fully drained.

its because of the roms and kernals I tried those all and went back to the stock ota rom and the phone is running way better then it was with custom stuff on it.

 

[TuxDave]

In fact my Mother called me after getting the iPhone 5 asking "how do I transfer my contacts and settings"... I dunno just get an Android phone.

Settings, iCloud, turn on contacts and whatever else you want to sync between devices on both phones

Twiddle thumbs for ten seconds or so

Done

That's how I synced over bookmarks, contacts, whatever.

 

[thunng8]

Man you have no clue what your talking about.First everyone lecenses the arm designs and then you have choices to make them the way you want and you can mix and change things the way you want to fit your power envelope and your fab capabilities.the arm15 can be configured a few ways and can have up to 15 stage integer / 17-25 stage floating point pipeline so a true a15 can have 17-25 stage long pipe line depending on how much performance and power draw you want.

the a6 is based off of a15 but not a true a15 core and shares many features with it and its crazy that you compared it to a exynos 4 that is a true a9 setup,why don't you go back and see how bad the exynos 4 beat the crap out of every hybrid a9 setup that was done,it rocked anything from apple and QUALCOMM and the same thing is happening now,they used a hybrid a15 and Samsung is using the best design and the higher performing one vs the hybrids to save power or not having the fabs that could pull it off.I think its funny how the cpu from the gs2 is still competing with the a6,you do know all they did was add 2 more cores and upped the clocks and threw it in the gs3 and note 2 right?so a design done by arm and the one Samsung used from 2 years ago is still competing today

the exynos 5 will be king until cortex comes out with there next design and people start hybrids again and then Samsung will use true nextgen cores and pull ahead again.The a7 cores in the exynos 5 are brand new cores and are made for the a15 soc,they are not using an old design and using arms(you know the people that build the chips in the first places)purebred design.

now back to your stupid battery test,if you play music for 2 hours with you screen off it will up your usage time,do you not get that?your usage time is anytime the phone is not sleeping,its not the same as the on screen time that we are talking about.

btw im at 5:10 on screen time now and over 20 hours and just hit 10%,I might break 6 hours on this run and might match the 6.5 that was done in the review I posted.

That rant did not make sense at all. Firstly Apple's A6 or Qualcomm chips are not based on the Arm a15. How could it be when the basic pipeline is different and both chips were released before the A15? It is an independent design. What the heck is a hybrid A9 design? Btw, I just checked my battery status on my iphone 5 and am up to 7:25 usage with 25% left. And no I have not listened to any music during this time so it is all screen time.

 

[grkM3]

That rant did not make sense at all. Firstly Apple's A6 or Qualcomm chips are not based on the Arm a15. How could it be when the basic pipeline is different and both chips were released before the A15? It is an independent design. What the heck is a hybrid A9 design? Btw, I just checked my battery status on my iphone 5 and am up to 7:25 usage with 25% left. And no I have not listened to any music during this time so it is all screen time.

a15 is almost 2 years old now arm showed it off a long time ago,go do some searching on what the snapdragon soc and what others do with arms reference designs.the snapdragon s4 and a6 is between the a9 and a15 it shares both archs designs.

here is what the a6 is

Manufactured by Samsung on a High-κ metal gate (HKMG) 32 nm process, the chip is 96.71 mm2 large[2] which is 22% smaller than the A5 and it consumes less power than its predecessor.[8]
Information is scarce but the Swift core uses a new tweaked instruction set, ARMv7s, featuring some elements of the ARM Cortex-A15 such as support for the Advanced SIMD v2, and VFPv4.[6] Analysis suggests that the Swift core has a triple-wide frontend and two FPUs, compared to a two-wide core with a single FPU in the Cortex-A9 based predecessor.[3]

that is a hybrid core as its using a9 and a15 tech to make a custom chip,same with what QUALCOMM does with its snapdragon chips but nothing has beating true arm reference designs in performance,if the a6 used purebred a15 it would of rocked in performance,look at the Samsung chrome book performance stats with with a exynos 5 dual core,it blows the doors off of the snapdragon s4 dual core and scores a 600 in sunspider and that's using only 2 a15 cores.

and on your battery stats there is still no way to tell your actual screen time on as the os is not recording it.maybe in ios 7 they will add it.

I posted a battery review of both phones used on same 3g signal and both ran web searches and the iphone 5 got 200 min on a full charge and the gs3 got 399 min on a full charge and both were loading the same websites looping with the screens on.

 

[thunng8]

Well the GS4 is a higher clock speed and a 544 not a 543 so it should perform better than the 554 in the ipad 4 seeing that resolution.

543 and 544 performance is the same if clocked the same. Only difference between the chips is dx9 compatibility on the 544. 554 offers doubled ALU performance on the 54x series.

 

[thunng8]

a15 is almost 2 years old now arm showed it off a long time ago,go do some searching on what the snapdragon soc and what others do with arms reference designs.the snapdragon s4 and a6 is between the a9 and a15 it shares both archs designs.

The A15's first implementation was only late last year. Apple have worked on the swift core up to 3 years before its first implementation

here is what the a6 is

Manufactured by Samsung on a High-κ metal gate (HKMG) 32 nm process, the chip is 96.71 mm2 large[2] which is 22% smaller than the A5 and it consumes less power than its predecessor.[8]
Information is scarce but the Swift core uses a new tweaked instruction set, ARMv7s, featuring some elements of the ARM Cortex-A15 such as support for the Advanced SIMD v2, and VFPv4.[6] Analysis suggests that the Swift core has a triple-wide frontend and two FPUs, compared to a two-wide core with a single FPU in the Cortex-A9 based predecessor.[3]

[/quote]

Where in the above paragraph does it say that the core is a hybrid A9 design?