15 ms·

Cheapest iPhone has a more powerful processor than the most expensive Android

SECProto 6y ago
And yet, my cheap android phone has two things that are infinitely more important to me: an aux port and an SD card slot. My phone would be fundamentally less usable (for me) without them, while quicker switching between apps etc would be a minor benefit at most. Chasing statistics (Fastest processor! Most megapixels! Longest battery life!) becomes useless after a certain point. Processors and megapixels are long past being a deciding criteria, while battery life (and picture quality, for that matter) still are important.
- rad_gruchalski 6y ago
  My wife currently has an android phone with those two. I just picked up the new iphone se for her and explained twice “there is no headphone jack”. She replied: “Cool, so I can keep my headphones plugged in to the laptop and use the other headphones for the phone. In worse case, I have bt headphones”. With the SD card... I mean, it seems not possible to configure any app to store data on it. She has signal, whatsapp, broswer, spotify and a few photos and the phone is constantly complaining that it is low on storage. Androind is working well for my mother though. She is 70+. She doesn’t use any apps, simple text messages, phone calls and that’s it. She just has to buy a new battery like every 6 months...
  - SECProto 6y ago
    I use the sd card for media storage. Music and podcasts. Significantly reduces monthly data usage. My car has an aux port. It has terrible Bluetooth that cuts out every couple minutes. I also use the same headphones at my home plugged into my phone and my desktop. This could by avoided with a dongle or two (or three), but honestly, I hate dongles, so I have thus far been able to buy phones that haven't made the decision to remove a (very useful) port.
- D13Fd 6y ago
  Honestly, what do you use the SD card for? Even with movies for flights, I haven’t filled a phone up in years.
  - vardump 6y ago
    To store 4K & 8K videos my phone takes for instance?
  - SECProto 6y ago
    Carrier data for phones is expensive. I use it to store media (podcasts and music) so I can pay for minimal monthly data. I bought a 128gb microSD card 3 or 4 years ago, meant I could save several hundred dollars (twice now!) by getting a mid-range phone with 64gb storage. Edit: for fun I did a quick cost comparison. I drive a lot and listen to music and podcasts. 40,000km a year. If I streamed, I would have to upgrade my plan (+$10 a month minimum) and my phone (+$150/2yrs). Purchase price at the time was $100. So over the 3.5 years I've had this sd card, I've saved a net $620.
    - pensatoio 6y ago
      I’m not sure this answers the question. I understand why having an SD card feels good, but in practice, you can fit tons of movies, music, and audiobooks in even just 64gb. It’s certainly a balance between all the factors that makes an SD card an attractive choice for you, but I think for the overwhelming majority of people, long-term updates/support are going to be far more valuable, even if they don’t realize it.
      - SECProto 6y ago
        The question was, "what do you use the SD card for?". I answered. Other things you mentioned: * I just checked, and my phone storage is actually only 32gb. I misspoke. * It's quite close to full with just a month worth of pictures and all my audio stored on the SD card. * My last security update was 3 weeks ago. The manufacturer who made my phone committed to 3 or 4 years of security updates. That said, Apple does a much better job of making feature updates available for their products. * The article is about how "powerful" the processor is, and I would still contend that that is irrelevant for any cell phone user I know.
mappu 6y ago
The SD865 still draws less total power for the same workload. The A13 is a huge core with better-than-Skylake IPC, that trades blows with Skylake++ 9900K or Zen 2 3950X in many real-world benchmarks, despite the much lower TDP and clock speed: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15609/SPEC-S865.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15609/SPEC-S865.png
hateMyIdeas 6y ago
I just made a more expensive Android phone in my head, now this article is invalid. It's $100,000,000 if anyone wants to buy it. Samsung is the Apple of Android. Big marketing budget and bright screens to make you THINK quality.
- mcphage 6y ago
  Great, I’ve got $100,000,000, how do I buy that phone of yours?
  - hateMyIdeas 6y ago
    Need to do a credit check and 50% downpayment. Btw, I'm an electrical engineer specializing in embedded. Email me
- plorntus 6y ago
  I own an S10+ and I have to say out of the box it is the most ad ridden phone I have ever owned. Absolute joke that they can be charging as much as they are, definitely had buyers remorse a week in. Apple get a lot of flak for expensive hardware, which of course is true, but at least you get decent hardware with very good UX and software.
TremendousJudge 6y ago
Tell me when it can use that powerful processor to run an engine other than webkit
- new_realist 6y ago
  Use an enterprise cert.
  - Someone1234 6y ago
    To sideload what? Is there a non-WebKit browser around for iOS you can sideload with an enterprise managed iOS device?
  - 0xFFC 6y ago
    What is that?
  - tln 6y ago
    Sounds interesting... And then what? Can one grab the source and compile chromium or firefox in such a way that it can use JIT and all the other things? Would that even be "supported" as a compile option or up-to-date branch? I thought PROT_EXEC was limited to Webkit. Curious what the next steps may be / what details I'm unaware of
- nan0 6y ago
  Could you expand on this comment more? Engines that run on Android vs iOS maybe? Just curious :)
  - Arbalest 6y ago
    Very likely more a point about freedom. Apple does not allow Firefox to use it's own engine under iOS
- NightlyDev 6y ago
  I kinda like the way they're doing things. It reminds me of the IE6 times, but with no decent options. I guess I'm a sucker for nostalgia. At least the browsers can freeze, crash and hit more bugs per hour with a faster CPU, so at least it got that going for it.
simonh 6y ago
Huh, they’re still claiming Android phone screens are better because of bigger numbers. How quaint. https://youtu.be/dcFXEXJicgc https://youtu.be/dcFXEXJicgc
- jayd16 6y ago
  Look at the crap ambient lighting conditions in this pepsi challenge.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  Let's be honest, not all Androids are alike, apparently the Pocophone is half the price of the iPhone in that case, and they both have LCDs screens, so they are both behind the curve in terms of screen tech.
bhhaskin 6y ago
This is just clickbait.
Someone1234 6y ago
The cheapest iPhone is also as expensive as some mid-range Android devices and completely inaccessible to a large chunk of the world's population. When a device that most will spend $449 on is "cheap" you have to admire Apple's price anchoring[0], they release a $1249 flagship and suddenly what the largest iPhone 5S flagshp cost ($442.09 inflation adjusted to 2020) at launch is considered "cheap." It is undeniably a nice phone, but we've all lost sight of how much any of us should be spending on smartphones when $449 is celebrated for being a bargain. We've lost perspective. PS - This isn't exclusively an Apple thing. Google's "bargain" Pixel 3a is essentially the same price. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias) [1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2013/09/16iPhone-5s-iPhone-5c-Arrive-on-Friday-September-20/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2013/09/16iPhone-5s-iPhone-5c...
- Synaesthesia 6y ago
  Amen. It's pretty striking when with say the Samsung A30 you get a 6.4" OLED display, and 4000MAh battery, which costs the same as say an old iPhone 7 here in South Africa (which is still for sale!)
- LeoTinnitus 6y ago
  I still can't get over the fact that apple is still putting in less than 2000hz batteries. Sure the life is great the first year, but as they make updates and increase the processor usage, suddenly that battery can barely last a day. I know people hate phablets, but if that gets me a 2 day battery life, so be it.
  - Someone1234 6y ago
    If I recall correctly the iPhone 8 actually lost battery capacity because they needed space for the wireless charging system. So if they wanted to use the same case design (to save money on re-tooling/re-use existing assembly lines) and keep wireless charging it might not be avoidable. We'll likely know more if IFixIt or similar do a tear-down. I do agree though that even with potential battery savings from the newer CPU architecture, it could be a problem in the latter half of the SE 2's life.
hateMyIdeas 6y ago
Serious question, has anyone installed Android on their iPhone? I love the idea of budget iPhone, but I hated iOS. Does it work as smooth as Pixel?
- google234123 6y ago
  The great software and drivers (IOS) is why Iphones are so smooth. Not the hardware.
  - tssva 6y ago
    I'm confused by your comment. Which is it? Do they run great software or iOS?
    - philosopher1234 6y ago
      What’s wrong with iOS?
      - tssva 6y ago
        Browsers are limited to using the built-in webkit engine, many default applications are fixed to Apple applications and can not be replaced as the default by a 3rd party app, apps can only be installed from the Apple App Store, support for PWAs is poor, and the UI/UX doesn't provide good discoverability of functionality (This seems to affect most Apple products but for some reason people here seem to think Apple has great user interfaces. For the worse example of this see tvOS.). Also when switching providers iOS has a habit of sometimes getting into a state where it will refuse to send SMS or MMS messages. This has plagued it over many versions with the only resolution being to wipe the device and not restoring any backups because restoring will then break the functionality again. I know several people who have been hit by this and the support forums are filled with this happening to people. The latest news is that since version 6 receiving certain email can lead to your phone being compromised even if you don't open the email. Which reminds me of another point. Despite Apple's best efforts there still exists software and/or devices available to governments which can subvert the security protections on iPhones. Also don't forget that time when receiving certain text messages could lock up iPhones. That is just a short list of a few of the ways iOS is not great. You can argue it is better than some other systems but that still doesn't make it great.
baq 6y ago
i don't care. what i care about is that the cheapest iPhone has a longer support period than the most expensive Android. it's actually insane and infuriating because I don't even like Apple but there literally is no other choice if you don't want to switch your phone every two years.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  It really depends on what support you need - yes, the latest and greatest bling is dropped soon, but Samsung offers 4 years of security updates - that's quite a bit of time. You'll probably have a really bad battery by that point and it's probably worth an upgrade. You won't have all the latest and greatest OS bling, but you wouldn't have the latest and greatest anything but that point, and that's probably OK.
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    Security updates that get released months after its supposed to?
  - debian3 6y ago
    I don’t understand; bad battery = phone replacement. Bad battery = battery replacement
    - Anthony-G 6y ago
      Particularly so when you consider the environmental impact of new battery compared to new phone + new battery. The difference in price for the consumer does not reflect the true costs.
  - captn3m0 6y ago
    Does this apply to all Samsung phones or just flagships?
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Apple released a bug fix update last June for phones back to the 2011 iPhone 4s..... https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/07/22/apple-issues-ios-936-and-ios-1034-updates-for-older-iphone-and-ipad-models https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/07/22/apple-issues-ios-...
zzapplezz 6y ago
Clickbait headline. Author conveniently forgets to mention that the 865 has hands down better AI performance which is considered a key benchmark for high end devices. Multi-core perf is neck and neck. https://techyorker.com/qualcomm-snapdragon-865-vs-apple-a13-bionic-comparison/#AI_Machine_Learning https://techyorker.com/qualcomm-snapdragon-865-vs-apple-a13-...
- muizelaar 6y ago
  There's no AI benchmark at that URL.
  - zzapplezz 6y ago
    True, but there is a multi-core benchmark. Makes the claims in the headline and article presented here suspect.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ac29 6y ago
Sure, but its the same processor as in all current iPhones. I guess "most expensive iPhone faster than most expensive Android phone" isn't quite as click-grabbing. Apple's SoCs have been faster than Qualcomm's for a number of years, so this is hardly news worthy either.
mdasen 6y ago
> Apple is laying out a roadmap for exactly what Google needs to do with its own chips. To ask the question: why would Google make better processors than Qualcomm? Apple has immense economies of scale at the high-end because that's the only thing they sell. Google's processor would be more niche than Qualcomm's (since manufacturers would need a Qualcomm modem to go with it rather than just grabbing an integrated Snapdragon modem/CPU) and it would be smaller than Apple's in sales since high-end Android phones aren't the main part of that market. This seems like one of those instances where people believe that Google can do better in any market. Google is a great, smart company, but we've seen them fail a lot too. Android Wear didn't take off with Tizen becoming Samsung's wearable OS and Google eventually buying Fitbit. We saw Google buy Motorola just to sell them off as a failed experiment. We've seen Google Fiber stall out as Google couldn't make it work. The Nexus/Pixel line has been ok, but it hasn't changed the industry. Chromebooks seem to be fading. Why should Google be able to enter the mobile CPU game and do better? Not only that, but would manufacturers even want something better? Manufacturers want customers to keep buying new phones as often as possible. If Google comes out with a CPU that's 70% better and could last a customer for 4-5 years, would they want to buy it? Apple is really unique in that they're the only company really giving you a good experience for an extended period of time. But part of that is that Apple knows that a good device from them creates loyalty because there's no iOS alternative. If you're an Android manufacturer, you know that a customer's choice for their next device could be any number of different brands offering nearly identical Android experiences. Does this even matter for Google? What part of Google's bottom line would this help? More people using Android devices certainly helps, but would a better processor convince iPhone users to move to Android? I guess I'm failing to see how a better processor helps Google enough to justify spending all the R&D on it and why Google would be better at building this processor than the companies already creating mobile processors. For Apple, it gives them a differentiator and the ability to control their platform and their destiny - and likely control their laptop platform in the near future. They can specifically target the CPU and build what makes sense. For Android, this CPU might be 10% of Android devices, but it wouldn't become an assumption. It wouldn't create loyalty for a manufacturer since the same CPU/OS combo could be had via other options. We're just talking about increasing the price and complexity of a device they don't want to continue supporting anyway. And I still haven't seen why Google would be able to beat Qualcomm, Samsung, HiSilicon, etc.
dzhiurgis 6y ago
A lot of people who don't know much what iPhone gets you won't care about CPU. I wanna upgrade my in-laws from cheap, spyware ridden Androids that can't even withstand a video chat. It will be quite hard with the screen that looks like it's half a decade old.
MR4D 6y ago
“Cheapest Porsche has a more powerful engine than the most expensive Hyundai” You’d never read that anywhere, but it’s true. Why people on HN care about phones so much is beyond me. Between fanboys and envy, it’s a weird world. I mean, tech is great, but this “mine is bigger than yours” is kinda old. (Or maybe I’m old....ok, I’m definitely old.) Buy the phone that works for you and be happy with it.
- yowmamasita 6y ago
  Why are you on HN if you do not expect to see such? And this is not fanboy-ing or envy, it's about economy of compute. I'm sure you'd see that in the forum about car engine enthusiasts.
fomine3 6y ago
Apple A processors are continuously performs excellent since Apple A7. Significantly, A7 is almost first ARMv8 SoC that released before 2 years from first ARMv8 Snapdragon(that's worst SD810).
cosmiccatnap 6y ago
All these chip spec articles never talk about the actual performance of the device. If you compare how snappy the UI of an apple and an Android device are they are roughly the same, why? Because apple still uses a modified Unix that is heavily dependent on single core performance while Linux has been very multithreaded for a long time which is why the actual functionality of the devices end up being the same despite the difference in chip performance. The cheapest iPhone is still just an iPhone...and expensive.

And yet, my cheap android phone has two things that are infinitely more important to me: an aux port and an SD card slot. My phone would be fundamentally less usable (for me) without them, while quicker switching between apps etc would be a minor benefit at most. Chasing statistics (Fastest processor! Most megapixels! Longest battery life!) becomes useless after a certain point. Processors and megapixels are long past being a deciding criteria, while battery life (and picture quality, for that matter) still are important.

rad_gruchalski 6y ago
My wife currently has an android phone with those two. I just picked up the new iphone se for her and explained twice “there is no headphone jack”. She replied: “Cool, so I can keep my headphones plugged in to the laptop and use the other headphones for the phone. In worse case, I have bt headphones”. With the SD card... I mean, it seems not possible to configure any app to store data on it. She has signal, whatsapp, broswer, spotify and a few photos and the phone is constantly complaining that it is low on storage. Androind is working well for my mother though. She is 70+. She doesn’t use any apps, simple text messages, phone calls and that’s it. She just has to buy a new battery like every 6 months...
- SECProto 6y ago
  I use the sd card for media storage. Music and podcasts. Significantly reduces monthly data usage. My car has an aux port. It has terrible Bluetooth that cuts out every couple minutes. I also use the same headphones at my home plugged into my phone and my desktop. This could by avoided with a dongle or two (or three), but honestly, I hate dongles, so I have thus far been able to buy phones that haven't made the decision to remove a (very useful) port.
D13Fd 6y ago
Honestly, what do you use the SD card for? Even with movies for flights, I haven’t filled a phone up in years.
- vardump 6y ago
  To store 4K & 8K videos my phone takes for instance?
- SECProto 6y ago
  Carrier data for phones is expensive. I use it to store media (podcasts and music) so I can pay for minimal monthly data. I bought a 128gb microSD card 3 or 4 years ago, meant I could save several hundred dollars (twice now!) by getting a mid-range phone with 64gb storage. Edit: for fun I did a quick cost comparison. I drive a lot and listen to music and podcasts. 40,000km a year. If I streamed, I would have to upgrade my plan (+$10 a month minimum) and my phone (+$150/2yrs). Purchase price at the time was $100. So over the 3.5 years I've had this sd card, I've saved a net $620.
  - pensatoio 6y ago
    I’m not sure this answers the question. I understand why having an SD card feels good, but in practice, you can fit tons of movies, music, and audiobooks in even just 64gb. It’s certainly a balance between all the factors that makes an SD card an attractive choice for you, but I think for the overwhelming majority of people, long-term updates/support are going to be far more valuable, even if they don’t realize it.
    - SECProto 6y ago
      The question was, "what do you use the SD card for?". I answered. Other things you mentioned: * I just checked, and my phone storage is actually only 32gb. I misspoke. * It's quite close to full with just a month worth of pictures and all my audio stored on the SD card. * My last security update was 3 weeks ago. The manufacturer who made my phone committed to 3 or 4 years of security updates. That said, Apple does a much better job of making feature updates available for their products. * The article is about how "powerful" the processor is, and I would still contend that that is irrelevant for any cell phone user I know.

mappu 6y ago

The SD865 still draws less total power for the same workload. The A13 is a huge core with better-than-Skylake IPC, that trades blows with Skylake++ 9900K or Zen 2 3950X in many real-world benchmarks, despite the much lower TDP and clock speed: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15609/SPEC-S865.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15609/SPEC-S865.png

hateMyIdeas 6y ago

I just made a more expensive Android phone in my head, now this article is invalid. It's $100,000,000 if anyone wants to buy it. Samsung is the Apple of Android. Big marketing budget and bright screens to make you THINK quality.

mcphage 6y ago
Great, I’ve got $100,000,000, how do I buy that phone of yours?
- hateMyIdeas 6y ago
  Need to do a credit check and 50% downpayment. Btw, I'm an electrical engineer specializing in embedded. Email me
plorntus 6y ago
I own an S10+ and I have to say out of the box it is the most ad ridden phone I have ever owned. Absolute joke that they can be charging as much as they are, definitely had buyers remorse a week in. Apple get a lot of flak for expensive hardware, which of course is true, but at least you get decent hardware with very good UX and software.

TremendousJudge 6y ago

Tell me when it can use that powerful processor to run an engine other than webkit

new_realist 6y ago
Use an enterprise cert.
- Someone1234 6y ago
  To sideload what? Is there a non-WebKit browser around for iOS you can sideload with an enterprise managed iOS device?
- 0xFFC 6y ago
  What is that?
- tln 6y ago
  Sounds interesting... And then what? Can one grab the source and compile chromium or firefox in such a way that it can use JIT and all the other things? Would that even be "supported" as a compile option or up-to-date branch? I thought PROT_EXEC was limited to Webkit. Curious what the next steps may be / what details I'm unaware of
nan0 6y ago
Could you expand on this comment more? Engines that run on Android vs iOS maybe? Just curious :)
- Arbalest 6y ago
  Very likely more a point about freedom. Apple does not allow Firefox to use it's own engine under iOS
NightlyDev 6y ago
I kinda like the way they're doing things. It reminds me of the IE6 times, but with no decent options. I guess I'm a sucker for nostalgia. At least the browsers can freeze, crash and hit more bugs per hour with a faster CPU, so at least it got that going for it.

simonh 6y ago

Huh, they’re still claiming Android phone screens are better because of bigger numbers. How quaint. https://youtu.be/dcFXEXJicgc https://youtu.be/dcFXEXJicgc

jayd16 6y ago
Look at the crap ambient lighting conditions in this pepsi challenge.
SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
Let's be honest, not all Androids are alike, apparently the Pocophone is half the price of the iPhone in that case, and they both have LCDs screens, so they are both behind the curve in terms of screen tech.

bhhaskin 6y ago

This is just clickbait.

Someone1234 6y ago

The cheapest iPhone is also as expensive as some mid-range Android devices and completely inaccessible to a large chunk of the world's population. When a device that most will spend $449 on is "cheap" you have to admire Apple's price anchoring[0], they release a $1249 flagship and suddenly what the largest iPhone 5S flagshp cost ($442.09 inflation adjusted to 2020) at launch is considered "cheap." It is undeniably a nice phone, but we've all lost sight of how much any of us should be spending on smartphones when $449 is celebrated for being a bargain. We've lost perspective. PS - This isn't exclusively an Apple thing. Google's "bargain" Pixel 3a is essentially the same price. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias) [1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2013/09/16iPhone-5s-iPhone-5c-Arrive-on-Friday-September-20/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2013/09/16iPhone-5s-iPhone-5c...

Synaesthesia 6y ago
Amen. It's pretty striking when with say the Samsung A30 you get a 6.4" OLED display, and 4000MAh battery, which costs the same as say an old iPhone 7 here in South Africa (which is still for sale!)
LeoTinnitus 6y ago
I still can't get over the fact that apple is still putting in less than 2000hz batteries. Sure the life is great the first year, but as they make updates and increase the processor usage, suddenly that battery can barely last a day. I know people hate phablets, but if that gets me a 2 day battery life, so be it.
- Someone1234 6y ago
  If I recall correctly the iPhone 8 actually lost battery capacity because they needed space for the wireless charging system. So if they wanted to use the same case design (to save money on re-tooling/re-use existing assembly lines) and keep wireless charging it might not be avoidable. We'll likely know more if IFixIt or similar do a tear-down. I do agree though that even with potential battery savings from the newer CPU architecture, it could be a problem in the latter half of the SE 2's life.

hateMyIdeas 6y ago

Serious question, has anyone installed Android on their iPhone? I love the idea of budget iPhone, but I hated iOS. Does it work as smooth as Pixel?

google234123 6y ago
The great software and drivers (IOS) is why Iphones are so smooth. Not the hardware.
- tssva 6y ago
  I'm confused by your comment. Which is it? Do they run great software or iOS?
  - philosopher1234 6y ago
    What’s wrong with iOS?
    - tssva 6y ago
      Browsers are limited to using the built-in webkit engine, many default applications are fixed to Apple applications and can not be replaced as the default by a 3rd party app, apps can only be installed from the Apple App Store, support for PWAs is poor, and the UI/UX doesn't provide good discoverability of functionality (This seems to affect most Apple products but for some reason people here seem to think Apple has great user interfaces. For the worse example of this see tvOS.). Also when switching providers iOS has a habit of sometimes getting into a state where it will refuse to send SMS or MMS messages. This has plagued it over many versions with the only resolution being to wipe the device and not restoring any backups because restoring will then break the functionality again. I know several people who have been hit by this and the support forums are filled with this happening to people. The latest news is that since version 6 receiving certain email can lead to your phone being compromised even if you don't open the email. Which reminds me of another point. Despite Apple's best efforts there still exists software and/or devices available to governments which can subvert the security protections on iPhones. Also don't forget that time when receiving certain text messages could lock up iPhones. That is just a short list of a few of the ways iOS is not great. You can argue it is better than some other systems but that still doesn't make it great.

baq 6y ago

i don't care. what i care about is that the cheapest iPhone has a longer support period than the most expensive Android. it's actually insane and infuriating because I don't even like Apple but there literally is no other choice if you don't want to switch your phone every two years.

SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
It really depends on what support you need - yes, the latest and greatest bling is dropped soon, but Samsung offers 4 years of security updates - that's quite a bit of time. You'll probably have a really bad battery by that point and it's probably worth an upgrade. You won't have all the latest and greatest OS bling, but you wouldn't have the latest and greatest anything but that point, and that's probably OK.
- aaomidi 6y ago
  Security updates that get released months after its supposed to?
- debian3 6y ago
  I don’t understand; bad battery = phone replacement. Bad battery = battery replacement
  - Anthony-G 6y ago
    Particularly so when you consider the environmental impact of new battery compared to new phone + new battery. The difference in price for the consumer does not reflect the true costs.
- captn3m0 6y ago
  Does this apply to all Samsung phones or just flagships?
- scarface74 6y ago
  Apple released a bug fix update last June for phones back to the 2011 iPhone 4s..... https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/07/22/apple-issues-ios-936-and-ios-1034-updates-for-older-iphone-and-ipad-models https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/07/22/apple-issues-ios-...

zzapplezz 6y ago

Clickbait headline. Author conveniently forgets to mention that the 865 has hands down better AI performance which is considered a key benchmark for high end devices. Multi-core perf is neck and neck. https://techyorker.com/qualcomm-snapdragon-865-vs-apple-a13-bionic-comparison/#AI_Machine_Learning https://techyorker.com/qualcomm-snapdragon-865-vs-apple-a13-...

muizelaar 6y ago
There's no AI benchmark at that URL.
- zzapplezz 6y ago
  True, but there is a multi-core benchmark. Makes the claims in the headline and article presented here suspect.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ac29 6y ago

Sure, but its the same processor as in all current iPhones. I guess "most expensive iPhone faster than most expensive Android phone" isn't quite as click-grabbing. Apple's SoCs have been faster than Qualcomm's for a number of years, so this is hardly news worthy either.

mdasen 6y ago

> Apple is laying out a roadmap for exactly what Google needs to do with its own chips. To ask the question: why would Google make better processors than Qualcomm? Apple has immense economies of scale at the high-end because that's the only thing they sell. Google's processor would be more niche than Qualcomm's (since manufacturers would need a Qualcomm modem to go with it rather than just grabbing an integrated Snapdragon modem/CPU) and it would be smaller than Apple's in sales since high-end Android phones aren't the main part of that market. This seems like one of those instances where people believe that Google can do better in any market. Google is a great, smart company, but we've seen them fail a lot too. Android Wear didn't take off with Tizen becoming Samsung's wearable OS and Google eventually buying Fitbit. We saw Google buy Motorola just to sell them off as a failed experiment. We've seen Google Fiber stall out as Google couldn't make it work. The Nexus/Pixel line has been ok, but it hasn't changed the industry. Chromebooks seem to be fading. Why should Google be able to enter the mobile CPU game and do better? Not only that, but would manufacturers even want something better? Manufacturers want customers to keep buying new phones as often as possible. If Google comes out with a CPU that's 70% better and could last a customer for 4-5 years, would they want to buy it? Apple is really unique in that they're the only company really giving you a good experience for an extended period of time. But part of that is that Apple knows that a good device from them creates loyalty because there's no iOS alternative. If you're an Android manufacturer, you know that a customer's choice for their next device could be any number of different brands offering nearly identical Android experiences. Does this even matter for Google? What part of Google's bottom line would this help? More people using Android devices certainly helps, but would a better processor convince iPhone users to move to Android? I guess I'm failing to see how a better processor helps Google enough to justify spending all the R&D on it and why Google would be better at building this processor than the companies already creating mobile processors. For Apple, it gives them a differentiator and the ability to control their platform and their destiny - and likely control their laptop platform in the near future. They can specifically target the CPU and build what makes sense. For Android, this CPU might be 10% of Android devices, but it wouldn't become an assumption. It wouldn't create loyalty for a manufacturer since the same CPU/OS combo could be had via other options. We're just talking about increasing the price and complexity of a device they don't want to continue supporting anyway. And I still haven't seen why Google would be able to beat Qualcomm, Samsung, HiSilicon, etc.

dzhiurgis 6y ago

A lot of people who don't know much what iPhone gets you won't care about CPU. I wanna upgrade my in-laws from cheap, spyware ridden Androids that can't even withstand a video chat. It will be quite hard with the screen that looks like it's half a decade old.

MR4D 6y ago

“Cheapest Porsche has a more powerful engine than the most expensive Hyundai” You’d never read that anywhere, but it’s true. Why people on HN care about phones so much is beyond me. Between fanboys and envy, it’s a weird world. I mean, tech is great, but this “mine is bigger than yours” is kinda old. (Or maybe I’m old....ok, I’m definitely old.) Buy the phone that works for you and be happy with it.

yowmamasita 6y ago
Why are you on HN if you do not expect to see such? And this is not fanboy-ing or envy, it's about economy of compute. I'm sure you'd see that in the forum about car engine enthusiasts.

fomine3 6y ago

Apple A processors are continuously performs excellent since Apple A7. Significantly, A7 is almost first ARMv8 SoC that released before 2 years from first ARMv8 Snapdragon(that's worst SD810).

cosmiccatnap 6y ago

All these chip spec articles never talk about the actual performance of the device. If you compare how snappy the UI of an apple and an Android device are they are roughly the same, why? Because apple still uses a modified Unix that is heavily dependent on single core performance while Linux has been very multithreaded for a long time which is why the actual functionality of the devices end up being the same despite the difference in chip performance. The cheapest iPhone is still just an iPhone...and expensive.