Posted by Bonovox
http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_t[....]e_on_february_26-news-3689.php
With the soon to be announced HTC Quad Core device to emerged I have been wondering alot about this. Do we really need Quad Core phones?? Is it just me or is this a bit over kill?? As far as I can see even my single core Lumia @ 1.4ghz is enough. Surely in such small handheld devices dual core would be the limit. Or are manufacturers doing this just cos they can?? Where will the size of devices stop at with ever increasing power & batteries needing to be bigger?? Screens becoming HD quality which is seen on a TV on a small device will quad core be enough to run HD displays etc?? I for one think I will never need quad core in a mobile device. I barely even use my pc to it's full potential which is also quad core. I put the question to you do we need it do you need it?? I don't
[ This Message was edited by: Bonovox on 2012-01-20 19:30 ]
Posted by Tsepz_GP
Do we need 1.4GHz phones??? We had phones like the N95 that ran at 300mhz just fine.
You must remember that CPUs arent just about UI speed, your Lumia may run fine on a single-core but can it handle HD1080P media? Can it run a complex game like GTAIII with minimal conversion as the iPhone4S and Galaxy S2 do? etc...For some people those things are important especialy for us "geeks".
At the same time that is simply how hardware is evolving, and to stay competitive manufacturers are willing to get whatever is the latest which at this point is Quad-core.
We dont realy "need" them, but thats where technology is going. Why stop when we can keep pushing the boundaries, its what keeps the enthusiam alive. IMO.
Posted by Bonovox
Good answer
Posted by admad
Well the good thing is, there won't be anything bigger than quad-cores for some time. Phone chipsets had a big gap for example N95 with 300mhz, PC at that time with 2GHz dual-core was something quite normal. It was a 13x difference in processing speed. Now with quad-core phones. The difference is around 1-2x in processing speed. It's a huge fix. I just hope that after core race there will be race for new technology and xenon flash
Posted by false_morel
To me if I'm to choose between a 1Ghz and Xenon, and 2 Ghz quad-core and LED flash, I'd go with the Xenon 1Ghz.. Preferably a WP though..
Two important points:
- Every couple of years, regardless of the tech department we're in, we always reach another tipping point that changes our use of the devices in this department, or opens a new dimnesion of functionality..
In mobile processing power, that was the 1Ghz chipsets..
Yes, multi-cores and faster clock speeds with time do enable extra functionality or capability over a single 1Ghz, but nothing revolutionary..
I opened a similar thread in this very section not a while ago.. And had very interesting links tackling this specific topic:
The new mobile spec race - Multicore processors and Clock Speed
- It's not only about clock speed and number of cores, the very basic architecture is meant for a certain purpose!
I don't know if many realise already, but the war between ARM and Intel that took place more than a decade ago and Intel emerging as clear winner, had recently just restarted and there are only speculations at the moment where it could lead us this time!!
ARM chipsets, SOCs, are meant to be very power efficient on the expense of performance, while x-86 architecture CPUs are all about performance!
So if you compare an ARM 1.5Ghz dual-core on a smartphone or tablet to an Intel 1.5Ghz core duo 2 for instance, the difference is still huge!
Heck even the Atom processors used in netbooks still outperform current batch ARM multi-cores by a considerable margin but the gap is definitely nearing between those..
This is another big topic anyway.. And what each end user needs depends really on the usage pattern.. This debate concerns tablets of course.. Specially with the coming x-86 W8 tablets later this year..
But regarding this very topic, I'm not against moving forward with the evolutionary process and produce better specced chipsets year after year, but it's the focus the media is putting on such a feature (chipset) is annoying to say the least! This focus is coming on the expsense of other areas which to the majority of smartphone users could be of more priority than the power of the chipset!!
But people are taken away by all this hype and can't accept to get a high-end smartphone without getting the best chipset in the market as well... Delusion..
Same happened with PCs through last decade btw.. We never learn!
Posted by Bonovox
Yes,I would too as my WP is perfectly fast enough for what I do. I see that even my phone internet speeds never reflect on the processor only they reflect on network too. Pages on my N8 loaded just as fast as they did on a 1 ghz Samsung running Android that was my experience.
[ This Message was edited by: Bonovox on 2012-01-20 22:56 ]
Posted by Tsepz_GP
I cant believe that, the N8 has one of the slowest browsers ive ever used, were you using Opera Mini on it? As then id totaly agree.
The thing is about web browsing is its down to a number of things, some of them being:
1. How the browser is coded and set up
2. The sort of network speeds your phone is capable of.
The browser could be coded to get 40% of the data then begin displaying the page in , and that depends on how fast it can get the data so this kind of nullyfies the speed of the CPU. What matters is how smooth, fast and functional the browser is.
Ive noticed between my GS2 and X10 that the X10 in its browser begins loading data as it gets it, whilest my GS2 will gather the data up until i guess 25%? Wild guess, and it will begin displaying, in the end though the GS2 manages the pages very well with much faster and smoother handling of Flash, HTML5 and Javascript, even while it loads the page the GS2 browser is much better to browse, where the CPU/GPU REALY helps is with handling animation, flash and zooming.
Posted by Bonovox
No the updated browser in Anna and it loaded pages very fast. That is the truth
Posted by djin
if i am getting a quad core phone at the same price as dual core or single core then i would prefer them. Comparing x86 quad core with an arm9 quadcore is silly, mobile cpu's are still way behhind desktop cpus. more processors with a good os management will mean more efficiency as cores will run at lower clock speeds requiring lesser power. The main problem now is the screen (and os) efficiency which imo uses more power than the cpus itself on average basis.
Posted by razec
QuadCore right now is a gimmick, but as new SoCs with powerful graphics usually came with >2 integer cores It is inevitable that we need them, but then again there will also be redundancy. Personally I would be more than happy enough with a dual core SoC with power gatin; something like what we've seen in recent Intel/AMD processors, I actually hated the heterogenous computing which is applied to our modern SoCs (combining GPU/ IMC/ Interger Cores/ FPU on one die) since we have no choice but to get what we don't need just because "that" thing had the one we needed more. that's why I always prefer using desktop over laptops as their modular nature enables me to pick the hardware I would needing the most.
Posted by jplacson
Currently... We need more efficient coding more than we need 4 cores. We need better battery tech more than we need 4 cores.
Posted by Bonovox
Yeah I was always thinking that too. Battery life is still a major hurdle.
Posted by masseur
On 2012-01-21 06:54:32, jplacson wrote:
Currently... We need more efficient coding more than we need 4 cores. We need better battery tech more than we need 4 cores.
interesting comment about more efficient coding, and as a developer myself I'm curious if you have access to android/iOS/Windows mobile sources that brings you to this conclusion?
I'm not familar with android SDK but the iOS SDK makes coding VERY efficient unless you are a stupidly bad programmer that goes out of their way to write bad code.
In regards to batteries, thats always the case but in my experience, multiple cores generally bring better battery life.
Posted by Bonovox
Well an example of bad programming was actually a case in the Nokia Lumia recently but has been resolved. The battery life was quite poor due to apps were not getting the full capacity from the battery. Nokia released the update the other day and now battery life is a million times better. Its excellent now.
Posted by masseur
ah, so this was meant at operating system level rather than app level.
There is certainly more opportunity for bugs at that level, and indeed many iOS upgrades include fixes to the API's and lower levels, I'll grant you that.
I'm a firm believer in Moore's law and believe we'll need quad core, and more, as our device needs and speed requirements increase. eventually we won't be counting cores as I believe its largely a marketing thing. we'll have some other standard by which to compare processors.
Posted by jplacson
On 2012-01-21 12:28:03, masseur wrote:
On 2012-01-21 06:54:32, jplacson wrote:
Currently... We need more efficient coding more than we need 4 cores. We need better battery tech more than we need 4 cores.
interesting comment about more efficient coding, and as a developer myself I'm curious if you have access to android/iOS/Windows mobile sources that brings you to this conclusion?
I'm not familar with android SDK but the iOS SDK makes coding VERY efficient unless you are a stupidly bad programmer that goes out of their way to write bad code.
In regards to batteries, thats always the case but in my experience, multiple cores generally bring better battery life.
Masseur, it's mostly behavioral differences between iOS and Android. There was an article written by one of the early Android devs that states that the Touchscreen UI of Android was an after thought. Which is why Android (even Gingerbread) will still lag (or even hang) compared to iOS. I never became a programmer after my programming classes in college, but I can understand the complexity of having to redo the GUI had it not been planned from day 1.
iOS makes interface and animation a priority. Most techies will see this as just "cosmetic" but this also improves consumer experience without having to resort to battery sucking quad cores. That "superficial" approach makes even 1st gen iPhones "seem" more responsive than most current Androids.
**in regards to your observation on multi-cores... yes it's supposed to be more efficient, unless an app wasn't written properly and doesn't shut down in the background...**
[ This Message was edited by: jplacson on 2012-01-21 14:04 ]
Posted by NoroBiik
On 2012-01-21 15:01:02, jplacson wrote:
On 2012-01-21 12:28:03, masseur wrote:
On 2012-01-21 06:54:32, jplacson wrote:
Currently... We need more efficient coding more than we need 4 cores. We need better battery tech more than we need 4 cores.
interesting comment about more efficient coding, and as a developer myself I'm curious if you have access to android/iOS/Windows mobile sources that brings you to this conclusion?
I'm not familar with android SDK but the iOS SDK makes coding VERY efficient unless you are a stupidly bad programmer that goes out of their way to write bad code.
In regards to batteries, thats always the case but in my experience, multiple cores generally bring better battery life.
Masseur, it's mostly behavioral differences between iOS and Android. There was an article written by one of the early Android devs that states that the Touchscreen UI of Android was an after thought. Which is why Android (even Gingerbread) will still lag (or even hang) compared to iOS. I never became a programmer after my programming classes in college, but I can understand the complexity of having to redo the GUI had it not been planned from day 1.
[ This Message was edited by: jplacson on 2012-01-21 14:04 ]
You mean the article Andrew Munn wrote ie. "Android Graphics true facts" - Google+ link here : http://plus.google.com/100838276097451809262/posts/VDkV9XaJRGS
This was corrected by Dianne Hackborn in a post that Andrew acknowledged as being more factually correct than his own :
Dianne's post here : http://plus.google.com/u/1/10[....]738280261832/posts/XAZ4CeVP6DC
She writes:
"One issue that has been raised is that Android doesn’t use thread priorities to reduce how much background work interrupts the user interface. This is outright wrong. It actually uses a number of priorities, which you can even find defined right here http://developer.android.com/[....]ess.html#THREAD_PRIORITY_AUDIO in the SDK.
The most important of these are the background and default priorities. User interface threads normally run at the default priority; background threads run in the background priority. Application processes that are in the background have all of their threads forced to the background priority."
*and*
"I have also seen a number of claims that the basic Android design is fundamentally flawed and archaic because it doesn’t use a rendering thread like iOS. There are certainly some advantages to how iOS work, but this view is too focused on one specific detail to be useful, and glosses over actual similarities in how they behave.
Android had a number of very different original design goals than iOS did. A key goal of Android was to provide an open application platform, using application sandboxes to create a much more secure environment that doesn’t rely on a central authority to verify that applications do what they claim. To achieve this, it uses Linux process isolation and user IDs to prevent each application from being able to access the system or other application in ways that are not controlled and secure.
This is very different from iOS’s original design constraints, which remember didn’t allow any third party applications at all."
Dianne's role in the Google Android team seems to be the final authority in how the Android framework evolves or works -I'd take her word over Andrew's.
ps. between quadcore & longer battery life , I'll take better battery life every time
[ This Message was edited by: NoroBiik on 2012-01-21 16:14 ]
Posted by Bonovox
Well if it reaches 1080p screens on mobile devices that's gonna not just need processing power but a bloody fat battery. Call me biased with my Nokia Lumia but it seems to me Android needs these Quad core & Dual Core's inside them. I see my Windows does everything Android or iOS can do(apart from a a few restrictions) at decent speeds & more fluid than Android. And I feel it does not need quad core & WP does not seem to have a thousand standard apps running in the background hogging everything. It's much improved from the old Windows. Android seems to suffer from lag more than any other imo
Posted by Tsepz_GP
Android doesnt need dual or quad core,it needs the manufacturers to learn to optimize their SW to work well with the HW, SAMSUNG have done an excellent job of this on the GS2 and even better on the GNote, they had VERY NEARLY done that with the original GS but made a poor choice in FS and mem chip which let it down. SE also show this with the Xperia Arc S but again, poor choice in memory. I have absolutely no lag in my GS2 it runs just as fast as a 4S.
Im not suprised WP is fast, it doesnt realy multitask, and is still missing many things that Android has.
If you put a full house Range Rover against a Mini Cooper S the Mini will be faster and more nimble to drive thanks to the fact that its super lite and doesnt have as much to deal with as the Range, although its capable of higher speeds.
Most dual-core Androids are on 2.3.3, Android doesnt take advantage of the 2nd core in versions before 2.3.4 and even in 2.3.4 the 2nd core doesnt do much, ICS4.0 is where both cores are fully utilized as well as the GPU, lets see how ICS does in these skinned droids.
Posted by false_morel
On 2012-01-21 17:26:08, Bonovox wrote:
Well if it reaches 1080p screens on mobile devices that's gonna not just need processing power but a bloody fat battery. Call me biased with my Nokia Lumia but it seems to me Android needs these Quad core & Dual Core's inside them. I see my Windows does everything Android or iOS can do(apart from a a few restrictions) at decent speeds & more fluid than Android. And I feel it does not need quad core & WP does not seem to have a thousand standard apps running in the background hogging everything. It's much improved from the old Windows. Android seems to suffer from lag more than any other imo
The human eye can't tell the difference between a 720p and 1080p on a smartphone screen!
That's the idea behind the Retina display.. Up from a certain ppi (around the 320ppi I guess) it becomes pointless to higher the screen resolution!
Posted by false_morel
On 2012-01-21 18:31:31, Tsepz_GP wrote:
Android doesnt need dual or quad core,it needs the manufacturers to learn to optimize their SW to work well with the HW, SAMSUNG have done an excellent job of this on the GS2 and even better on the GNote, they had VERY NEARLY done that with the original GS but made a poor choice in FS and mem chip which let it down. SE also show this with the Xperia Arc S but again, poor choice in memory. I have absolutely no lag in my GS2 it runs just as fast as a 4S.
Im not suprised WP is fast, it doesnt realy multitask, and is still missing many things that Android has.
If you put a full house Range Rover against a Mini Cooper S the Mini will be faster and more nimble to drive thanks to the fact that its super lite and doesnt have as much to deal with as the Range, although its capable of higher speeds.
Most dual-core Androids are on 2.3.3, Android doesnt take advantage of the 2nd core in versions before 2.3.4 and even in 2.3.4 the 2nd core doesnt do much, ICS4.0 is where both cores are fully utilized as well as the GPU, lets see how ICS does in these skinned droids.
And who told you that Android does a real time proper multi-tasking anyway?!
Difference between the implementations of iOS, WP, and Android in the multi-tasking system is marginal! And to be honest, regarding a smartphone where I'd like to avoid spend more time taking control of things, in contrast to my PC, I prefer the WP way!
Regarding ISC, yes it's a huge step forward for Google and Android! They almost reformed Android!
But be it with HW acceleration or not, and with deep multi-core optimizations or not, Android will always suffer at inconsistencies!
Reasons for that are very complicated to explain.. And the links above from Google+ shed a just little light on the matter..
And one of the factors you raised hold of course, but it's of a bigger degree than you're putting it! That "if" you pulled about OEMs optimizing their software for hardware is not a trivial job to do! This is indeed a very big "if"!!
Last but not least, regarding Samsung and their latest high-ends, yes they did a way better job than others, but they're still some steps behind iOS and WP in terms of fuildness, stability, and consistency!
Posted by false_morel
On 2012-01-21 17:07:17, NoroBiik wrote:
Dianne's role in the Google Android team seems to be the final authority in how the Android framework evolves or works -I'd take her word over Andrew's.
Dianne did correct Andrew on more than one front, but didn't provide any answers however!!
Andrew was trying to figure out what Android lacks or implements wrong that it lags behind iOS and WP in terms of fluidity..
He got some things wrong.. But some rights as well. And Dianne did only correct some stuff but didn't provide any answers!
And note here that Andrew's info aren't outdated either, he mainly basing his theories and comments on the GN and ISC!
And there are many other responses and lenghty informative comments and contributions from developers, to Google engineers, to other people who took part in that debate!
If you have the background to go through all that, there are many stuff to discover and know about!
And that's just one bad side of Android, the fragmentation part and missing any UI development guidelines are of way bigger problems to the platform and the UX!
Google introduced new guidelines with ISC, but it's too late I believe!
And of course there are good sides of Android, it's not all black, but this all makes room for all of iOS, WP, and Android to find place in the market and earn considerable user bases!
Posted by Bonovox
Multitasking on WP now is excellent!!
Posted by masseur
what are your metrics for making this statement?
is it simple comparison with previous WM versions (for which there is no real comparison) or is it a statement based on comparison of similar apps on iOS and android?
Posted by laffen
I do not know if you guys have read the news article from yesterday about a leaked LG X3 smartphone having a supposedly quad core processor.
I linked to an article at ST-Ericsson named Should you be saving up for a quad-core Smartphone? Interesting reading. The author Marco Cornero knows what he talks about.
Smartphones are being caught up in the "processor race", a battle we have seen for a many years with our PCs. Gigahertz and multi-cores becomes part of the buying criteria for your phone alongside the operating system and design - the more, the better, right?. Well, maybe not in this case.
It’s all about the software
The dilemma comes from the fact that the additional cores come at the expense of lower peak frequencies per core, since there is more overhead in the communication and synchronization among the cores. So the extra cores are useful only if the software uses them so effectively that the overhead is more than compensated by the gains. However, in practice only a few software applications can take advantage of multi-core chips.
..... On a mobile device, the opportunities for parallelism are even smaller since many computing intensive tasks such as video encoding and decoding and graphic processing are done with dedicated hardware to drastically lower power consumption.
continue reading
Posted by Bonovox
Interesting read Laffen
Posted by argiriano
I think no user need quad-cores for pure power but every user need better battery life. So if quad cores bring better power life they are welcomed. What hardware manifacturers try with multi-core is just that, using different architectures, companion cores, ect... power efficiency it`s what counts.
For pure power mobile phones need beter GPUs not CPUs... that`s why I think in next years power race will end and efficiency race will emerge. Let`s see.
Posted by paulmcauley
I agree with the general sentiment of posters here in that there really has been a lot of BS spoken about mutli-core processing.
If any of you on Android Gingerbread want to boost web browsing performance, the best thing you can do is switch from the stock Android browser to Dolphin Browser HD - I was sceptical at first (and had to do a few UI tweaks in the settings menu to adjust to my taste) but Dolphin is SO much smoother; switching to Dolphin will probably make more difference than any dual core will.
The ST-Ericsson article is also correct -I used to work in the industry and a mere "single core" SoC in reality actually has about 9 or 10 cores doing various functions perfectly in parallel! The "dual core" is only referring to the Application Engine, but there are many others such as telecom DSPs (more than one - usually a 2G + 3G + HSPA), video processors, GPUs, touch-screen controller, wi-fi baseband, Bluetooth baseband, fm radio baseband, camera processor, GPS baseband etc. Etc.).
I'm also very satisfied with the performance of my Xperia Pro and its 1GHz single core. Can't believe many reviewers slated the 2011 Xperias for "only" being single core (and ignored that they were also much cheaper than the competition). Xperia Pro's QWERTY also pwns the competition and that is much more important to me than the CPU (the same camera as Arc and price also great).
Posted by goldenface
The processor didn't even matter when I bought my T610 all those years ago - the colour screen and built in camera was amazing back then.
Look at what our phones can do today - all because of the immense processing power under the hood! Ultimately, we will always be demanding quicker, faster and more efficient devices that can do more tasks effortlessly. If multi core is the way forward then so be it.
I'm certainly not complaining.
Posted by Bonovox
I used Dolphin HD browser it's lightning quick. But I really am finding EVERYTHING on WP really totally lag free compared to Android
[ This Message was edited by: Bonovox on 2012-01-22 15:53 ]
Posted by goldenface
Bono, I bet you £10 that you'll have a different phone in three months time and you'll be singing the praises of that too
Posted by Bonovox
I have found my ideal phone & OS now much better than anything I ever used. I don't miss Android at all. And this year now I can't afford to cos I am gonna be doing other stuff
Posted by Tsepz_GP
On 2012-01-22 16:40:56, goldenface wrote:
The processor didn't even matter when I bought my T610 all those years ago - the colour screen and built in camera was amazing back then.
Look at what our phones can do today - all because of the immense processing power under the hood! Ultimately, we will always be demanding quicker, faster and more efficient devices that can do more tasks effortlessly. If multi core is the way forward then so be it.
I'm certainly not complaining.
+1 Completely agree.
Paulmcauley
Im also satified with 2011 Xperia models performance, especialy the Xperia Arc S, BUT i can understand why reviewers slated them due to no dual-core and thats because their competition; mainly Samsung and Apple smartphones, both had devices running on dual-core with more features, HD1080P video, even better performance and competetively priced for what they brought.
Posted by NoroBiik
On 2012-01-22 17:52:27, goldenface wrote:
Bono, I bet you £10 that you'll have a different phone in three months time and you'll be singing the praises of that too
That's a bet you"re certain to win
On a more serious note, the only way WP is going to get traction is to have strong, rich and rapidly growing number of apps. The more fluid UI isn't going to cut it unless there are (many) apps that users can actually take advantage of.
re:Android performance, I"m waiting to see how it evolves through this year, I still don't think though that quadcore ARM cpus are the way to solve any lag issues.
Posted by Bonovox
There is loads of excellent apps for Windows. Many useful ones and many which you cannot get anywhere else.
Posted by Marly
On 2012-01-22 17:59:01, Bonovox wrote:
I have found my ideal phone & OS now much better than anything I ever used. I don't miss Android at all. And this year now I can't afford to cos I am gonna be doing other stuff
And today an HTC Incredible S popped up in your sig
Nice phone btw, a colleague has one.
Posted by Bonovox
Yep spare phone
I take back the Android words Well,HTC is the only one I miss on Android it's still the most feature packed. It now has Sense 3.0 & GB as it started out with Froyo. The phone was over £400 on release now is £250 sim free at Carphone stores[ This Message was edited by: Bonovox on 2012-01-26 23:17 ]
Posted by Tsepz_GP
tut tut Bono.
How does the Incredible S compare to the Lumia800 performance wise?
Posted by Bonovox
Both about the same the Lumia is smoother but HTC seems slightly faster especially for browsing.
Posted by Tsepz_GP
Yet interestingly enough, the Incredible S uses the same CPU as Lumia800, but its underclocked to 1GHz.
Posted by Bonovox
Yep no need for dual core [ This Message was edited by: Bonovox on 2012-01-27 17:12 ]
Posted by Bonovox
Here is a phone to change battery life on dual core
Monster battery on this one & it ain't that thick either
http://blog.gsmarena.com/moto[....]-goodness-to-our-office-video/