Potentially the longest thread in history...

[Oreo]

There are actually quite a few dual cores that are worthless for 1080p playback, Tegra 2 is completely useless for it and Snapdragon S3 isn't much better. OMAP 4 and A5 can handle most content but Exynos is the only dual core SoC that will handle any 1080p content you throw at it.

I've got my GS2 at stock since it's more than fast enough running a custom rom. I'm waiting to see the Note 2 before upgrading.

So are you saying I am correct, there is no need for a faster SoC at this point in time?

Guess my post was ignored. I actually have my phone downclocked since I out the new ROM on.

I have also listed all the things I do with my phone without a data plan. I use more when I have data.

I did see it it's just a lot of talk on here about CPU speeds in phones recently, so was speaking in general.

 

[carnageX]

Guess my post was ignored. I actually have my phone downclocked since I out the new ROM on.

I have also listed all the things I do with my phone without a data plan. I use more when I have data.

I usually have my phone downclocked to save battery as well, but the ICS kernel for my phone isn't out yet, so setting CPU profiles actually hurts battery life because there's a perflock bug with the modified Gingerbread kernel on ICS ROMs.

So are you saying I am correct, there is no need for a faster SoC at this point in time?

I did see it it's just a lot of talk on here about CPU speeds in phones recently, so was speaking in general.

What's the point of having a super-fast, over-the-top computer? Because you can. Same reason for super-fast phones. Why have one? Because we can .

 

[PP Mguire]

This was an interesting read.

The Curious Case of the Durango Devkit Leak • Articles • Eurogamer.net

 

[Oreo]

I usually have my phone downclocked to save battery as well, but the ICS kernel for my phone isn't out yet, so setting CPU profiles actually hurts battery life because there's a perflock bug with the modified Gingerbread kernel on ICS ROMs.



What's the point of having a super-fast, over-the-top computer? Because you can. Same reason for super-fast phones. Why have one? Because we can .

I like having one because of the benefits it brings. Extracting compressed files, playing games, having 100 tabs open with no slow down, very heavy multitasking, peace of mind that I know anything I throw at it will run fine, finite element modeling, computational fluid dynamics, rendering, ray tracing.

None of which I have any desire to do on a phone.

I pick up my iphone and either:

Take a picture
Take a video
Tell siri to remind me to do something
Text someone
Watch a video
Watch a HD video over HDMI
Play a sidescroller
Text someone
Browse teh internetz

^All of that can be accomplished just fine on a duel core SoC, and all of that bar HD video on a single core SoC. So why everyone is so desperate for quad core in the next generation of phones is beyond me. Maybe if you are a business user with no access to a PC or Laptop, and are constantly on the move.. then yeah a powerful smartphone which can go someway to replacing a full PC I can understand why you would want so much power.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

So are you saying I am correct, there is no need for a faster SoC at this point in time?

Faster is always better, I just don't bother with overclocking because power consumption becomes a concern at any clock speed high enough to offer a meaningful performance increase.

I'd probably get a S3 anyways if the next Note wasn't on the horizon, but seeing as anything released in the US this year will probably be Krait powered I might as well wait for the form factor I really want.

 

[carnageX]

^All of that can be accomplished just fine on a duel core SoC, and all of that bar HD video on a single core SoC. So why everyone is so desperate for quad core in the next generation of phones is beyond me. Maybe if you are a business user with no access to a PC or Laptop, and are constantly on the move.. then yeah a powerful smartphone which can go someway to replacing a full PC I can understand why you would want so much power.

You weren't talking about the amount of cores. You were just wondering why somebody would need so much power.

Faster phone = tasks that you listed can startup / be accomplished better. If you want to bring up your camera quick to take a picture of something that's happening right in front of you, you'd want it to come up as quick as possible. A more powerful phone can do that.

 

[Yami]

Half a second off app launches is actually really good, but you still have a point.

Also lol

 

[Oreo]

You weren't talking about the amount of cores. You were just wondering why somebody would need so much power.

Faster phone = tasks that you listed can startup / be accomplished better. If you want to bring up your camera quick to take a picture of something that's happening right in front of you, you'd want it to come up as quick as possible. A more powerful phone can do that.

Amount of cores.. power.. whatever, i'm not trying to be technically correct in what i'm saying. I just mean what is the obsession with so much speed on a phone.


I understand that. But apps start up very very quickly anyway, Safari opens up and loads google in under a second, email is loaded up in half a second, mynetdiary diet app is loaded in half a second, the camera app loads ready to take a picture in a second, Dominos pizza app starts up, finds my location, and loads my local restaurant menu in under 3 seconds. And those are from cold launches with the app fully closed. If I leave all the apps in a paused state like I do 99.9% of the time every app bar big games and stuff are up and ready practically instantaneously.

I'm not sure I need it any quicker really. For small <20mb apps which is most, it could physically not be much quicker. It is as quick as leaving a window open on a proper PC and then selecting it.

It's like the old days, I would buy a new processor to make the desktop more responsive. Well now we have reached the point where all top end CPU's matched with SSD's within the last 2 years are basically just as fast as each other on desktop use such as browsing your documents, opening control panel or chrome etc. Upgrading your rig for a more responsive desktop is now essentially impossible, unless you do an insane amount of multitasking their is very little difference between last years top cpu and this years top cpu. This is where smartphones are at now in my opinion. But the difference is desktop PC's are always going to have games and professional level applications that benefit from as much power as you give it, and this is the reason to upgrade. But I don't think this exists on smartphones, people are happy playing Angry Birds and Temple Run. No one wants Crysis 3 on phones. Even if Crysis 3 was on phones people would play it for 5 minutes realise it's awkward as **** and never play it again, and yet again launch temple run which would of worked on any decent smartphone in the past 3 years.

So we have established apps on iOS atleast launch very fast (I don't know about android, i'm sure they launch quick though). It's pretty clear by looking at top games in the app store that every single one of them is not graphically intensive or very cpu intensive, so more power isn't really needed there either. The newest smartphones play 1080P great now as well. What else is left ? barely anything. Higher quality cameras that capture at higher resolutions with less compression (Especially true of video) is actually the only decent thing I can think of where a faster CPU would come in handy.


I think phone manufacturers should focus their efforts now on properly new features, both hardware and software. The speed race was good and definitely necessary for a few years but now we've got very fast phones that do what 99.99% of the population need their phone to do, so it's time to invest and research elsewhere.

 

[Yami]

Re: Today I have...

My mum hates them since she thinks they get really bad fuel economy, but they actually get about 50MPG on average...

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Re: Today I have...

My mum hates them since she thinks they get really bad fuel economy, but they actually get about 50MPG on average...

Once you factor in the cost of the car, plus the cost of replacing and recycling that precious battery, they are some of the worst cars for the environment AND cost more than a typical car maintenance wise IMO.

I will stick with my 2.4 that gets ~30mpg, and has no stupid battery of hell to worry about.