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Do we really need Quad core phones? |
jplacson
Joined: Apr 21, 2002
Posts: > 500
From: Philippines
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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 ] | |
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NoroBiik
Joined: Dec 30, 2008
Posts: 277
PM |
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 doesnt 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 doesnt 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 doesnt 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 iOSs original design constraints, which remember didnt 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 ] |
Bonovox
Joined: Apr 13, 2008
Posts: > 500
PM |
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
Phone?? What phone?? |
Tsepz_GP
Joined: Dec 27, 2006
Posts: > 500
From: Johannesburg, South Africa
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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.
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false_morel
Joined: Feb 24, 2010
Posts: 375
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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!
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false_morel
Joined: Feb 24, 2010
Posts: 375
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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! |
false_morel
Joined: Feb 24, 2010
Posts: 375
PM |
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! |
Bonovox
Joined: Apr 13, 2008
Posts: > 500
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Multitasking on WP now is excellent!!
Phone?? What phone?? |
masseur
Joined: Jan 03, 2003
Posts: > 500
From: Sydney, London
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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?
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laffen
Joined: Aug 07, 2001
Posts: > 500
From: Oslo, Norway
PM |
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.
Its 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 |
Bonovox
Joined: Apr 13, 2008
Posts: > 500
PM |
Interesting read Laffen 
Phone?? What phone?? |
argiriano
Joined: Jun 16, 2004
Posts: 305
From: Bulgaria
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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. |
paulmcauley
Joined: Jan 16, 2007
Posts: 17
PM |
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). |
goldenface
Joined: Dec 17, 2003
Posts: > 500
From: Liverpool City Centre
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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.
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Bonovox
Joined: Apr 13, 2008
Posts: > 500
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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 ] Phone?? What phone?? | |
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Posted: 2012-01-21 15:01
