News - Samsung Galaxy S4 launch and release dates revealed

[watercooled]

The Krait vs Samsung was a bit of a trade-off in terms of performance, Krait would usually offer better single-threaded performance but based on browser benchmarks* is seems the Exynos kept up with or even surpassed it in a lot of tests. However the Mali-M400 GPU on the Exynos is accepted as clearly better than the Adreno 225 used on the Krait version.

*I understand however, a few JS benchmarks tell us very little about genuine real-world performance, despite a number of review sites relying almost entirely on them.

[Djini]

13 is an unlucky number in some cultures too

[watercooled]

From http://forums.hexus.net/cpus/241925-...ml#post2781269

You can see an A7 core isn't much larger than a quarter of an A15 i.e. four A7 cores doesn't add much more die space, in theory, than a single low-power process A15 core, with one advantage being the ability to hide the core swapping from the OS.

[Hicks12]

I seem to recall the GPS in the Nexus 4 is meant to be relatively high end, I get a fix within a few seconds (cold start) and the precision of the fix is brilliant even works indoors .

I wouldnt say the S3 was way ahead, it was ontime really but still better than HTCs attempt ofc. I seem to recall htc and LG announcing their products first though. I dont think much can be taken away from Samsung as yes it was a good device, in terms of improving we are really approaching the same standpoint of desktops where CPUs are powerful but GPUs are the bottleneck, I personally dont think I would see an improvement from my N4 if the S4 has a 16 core cpu and stuff, I dont really play games and my N4 does my work flawlessly just the battery life could be better so the next version should be 2mm thicker and have a larger battery .

[keithwalton]

For good gps reception find a phone that also supports glonass, a fair few of them do now and it massively increases the number of satelites it can lock with. My xperia s cold locks inside in seconds.

I'm still a bit confused over the point of 4 A7's and 4 A15's if the cores are that well gated surely the performance from idle to flat chat is covered by the A15's unless they dont have individual frequency control yet.

GPU cores is pretty meaningless on it's own as it depends on how good each core is more cores isn't always the best way to go, historically mali's have been fairly low core count but still quite fast

[watercooled]

The A7s are made on a lower power process, use less transistors, and run at a lower frequency than the A15s, so they're more efficient for light use.

The difference in efficiency allowed by the different process and clock speed is evident from Nvidia's Tegra 3 SoC, it uses 4 A9 cores plus an additional low-power A9 for greater efficiency.

Gating is not infinitely granular, you can disable whole cores, parts of cache, and so on, but when you enable a core, you get leakage regardless of whether it's actually doing anything. Also, just ramping clock speed based on load doesn't offer the same power savings, and doesn't scale perfectly, again partly because of leakage. There is a trade-off in process between leakage and clock speed, amongst other things.

[kingpotnoodle]

I seem to recall the GPS in the Nexus 4 is meant to be relatively high end, I get a fix within a few seconds (cold start) and the precision of the fix is brilliant even works indoors .

Anecdotally rather than scientifically that's my experience too, it's pretty quick and precise, Google maps navigation is spot on. AFAIK like many recent Qualcomm based devices GLONASS support is included.

The Octa SOC looks interesting, well multi-threaded in all modes, cool and good battery when running low workloads but with power when needed. Will be interesting to see how smooth the transition to the A15 cores is and how well Samsung can balance the power draw, it could be one hot phone when pushed with four A15 cores. Would be good to include a software switch to limit to just the A7 cores - an endurance mode.

[watercooled]

Interesting thought, and it could be possible but it might require a rooted phone. The cores in a standard, symmetrical, big.LITTLE setup are selected by the SoC itself but based on the clock speed 'notch' issued by the OS. I'm not sure if it's more complex than that in practice, but if not, it would just be a case of limiting the CPU governor. I expect when a phone enters a low-power mode on a nearly-depleted battery, something similar would likely happen.

[Spidey1978]

I am out of my current contract (with the S2) in September so reckon the new S (exy) will be a shoein for a replacement as long as the deals are good by that time.

April release date right?

[ksdp37]

I've read about a million launch dates for the S4, but I reckon they're gonna wait till the usual May announcement with a June release.

Defeats the purpose of releasing a new phone when the S3 only came out a few months back.

Just dilutes the purpose of ownership if you can't wait at least a year before launching a successor. It's not that the S3 was completely dwindled with issues that a new phone was required ASAP or the fact that the S3 is so behind the competition.