5 ms·

IMHO, Apple's phones were considered fantastic for a few reasons, in order: brand (perceived quality, luxury status, pricing, "Apple"), software lock-in (iMessa

by pradn 6y ago

IMHO, Apple's phones were considered fantastic for a few reasons, in order: brand (perceived quality, luxury status, pricing, "Apple"), software lock-in (iMessage, iCloud), and privacy (also a branding thing since they still use Google for Safari search). The hardware and camera were usually matched or exceeded by top-tier Android manufacturers. Now, Apple-designed CPUs are leaving their competitors in the dust, and provide, perhaps for the first time in a long time, hardware superiority. I don't think consumers quite understand the actual performance gap yet. But once it gets out, it's probably going to be second or third in the list for why people buy iPhones. I'm going to switch from a Pixel to an iPhone this year. The CPU is just clearly better, and seems to actually matter for taking photos and web browsing. (The Pixel still takes like 5 seconds to post-process a photo. iPhones do it instantly.)

harpratap 6y ago
the Pixel 4 has dedicated Visual cores based on their TPUs they developed inhouse. All my Pixel 4 photo processing is near instant.
oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
What are your sources for the claim that the hardware superiority actually matters in real life? Every once in a while when I'm looking to buy a phone, I like to check out videos that do real life speed tests (mainly opening apps but other tasks as well) and iPhones have never been on top. Curious to see if that has changed recently.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  > I like to check out videos that do real life speed tests (mainly opening apps but other tasks as well) Those "tests" almost invariably suck at measuring anything useful or being accurate.
  - oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
    They are certainly better than synthetic benchmarks however. If you know of anything better let us know.
- acdha 6y ago
  You're asking for sources and then citing unnamed “real life speed test” videos without any way for people to see what they're measuring or how solid their methodology was? The main area where normal people notice this is in web usage, where Mobile Safari has handily outpaced Android browsing for many years — see e.g. https://discuss.emberjs.com/t/why-was-ember-3x-5x-slower-on-android/6577 https://discuss.emberjs.com/t/why-was-ember-3x-5x-slower-on-... from 2014. How much that matters depends on how much a particular website is limited by single-core JavaScript performance — well-engineered sites probably don't have a huge impact but it's quite noticeable on anything which has a bloated SPA and the web has been moving in the latter direction for years. Gaming is the other area where this is fairly noticeable but that varies both in where the bottlenecks are (CPU vs. GPU), how prominent the effect is, and the relative quality of the ports so it's harder to do a fair comparison.
  - oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
    Burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim. I'm just asking for some links and I explained why I doubted the claim. I appreciate your effort with giving more background, although I think 2014 is a bit dated with Firefox Quantumn becoming more of a thing on Android. Can't remember if the Preview has it yet or not.
delfinom 6y ago
Pixel 2 and newer have a completely independent processor for photo processing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Visual_Core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Visual_Core It also includes :AI: The Pixel 4 has renamed it the "Pixel Neural Core" and has given it even more machine learning tasks and offloading such as Google Assistant and face unlock.
- pradn 6y ago
  That's true, but I meant the general-purpose CPU.
SomeHacker44 6y ago
I switched for the opposite reason. Phone hardware is plenty fast for anything I want to do, but Apple's really restrictive closed software ecosystem and lack of hardware variety drove me to Android last year after being on Apple since iPhone 3G. I just wanted a touch ID, notcheless, fast and current phone, and Apple did not offer one until recently. I am not going back, and I am also now seeing the same thing with their laptops. Crappy keyboards, non optional and useless touch bars, low performance per dollar and software that gets in your way. No thanks. Windows 10, WSL, Surface Book/Go/Alienware, wow. Just good, open, usable stuff.
- Havoc 6y ago
  I'd do the same if I wasn't concerned about Android privacy. My pi-hole is blocking literally 10x as much phoning home stuff on the Android device I've got vs iPhone. And that is with the iPhone having way more crap installed on it. Literally phoning home every 2 mins: https://i.imgur.com/VJH8Yqa.png https://i.imgur.com/VJH8Yqa.png

by pradn 6y ago

harpratap 6y ago

the Pixel 4 has dedicated Visual cores based on their TPUs they developed inhouse. All my Pixel 4 photo processing is near instant.

oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago

What are your sources for the claim that the hardware superiority actually matters in real life? Every once in a while when I'm looking to buy a phone, I like to check out videos that do real life speed tests (mainly opening apps but other tasks as well) and iPhones have never been on top. Curious to see if that has changed recently.

saagarjha 6y ago
> I like to check out videos that do real life speed tests (mainly opening apps but other tasks as well) Those "tests" almost invariably suck at measuring anything useful or being accurate.
- oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
  They are certainly better than synthetic benchmarks however. If you know of anything better let us know.
acdha 6y ago
You're asking for sources and then citing unnamed “real life speed test” videos without any way for people to see what they're measuring or how solid their methodology was? The main area where normal people notice this is in web usage, where Mobile Safari has handily outpaced Android browsing for many years — see e.g. https://discuss.emberjs.com/t/why-was-ember-3x-5x-slower-on-android/6577 https://discuss.emberjs.com/t/why-was-ember-3x-5x-slower-on-... from 2014. How much that matters depends on how much a particular website is limited by single-core JavaScript performance — well-engineered sites probably don't have a huge impact but it's quite noticeable on anything which has a bloated SPA and the web has been moving in the latter direction for years. Gaming is the other area where this is fairly noticeable but that varies both in where the bottlenecks are (CPU vs. GPU), how prominent the effect is, and the relative quality of the ports so it's harder to do a fair comparison.
- oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
  Burden of proof is on the one who makes the claim. I'm just asking for some links and I explained why I doubted the claim. I appreciate your effort with giving more background, although I think 2014 is a bit dated with Firefox Quantumn becoming more of a thing on Android. Can't remember if the Preview has it yet or not.

delfinom 6y ago

Pixel 2 and newer have a completely independent processor for photo processing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Visual_Core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Visual_Core It also includes :AI: The Pixel 4 has renamed it the "Pixel Neural Core" and has given it even more machine learning tasks and offloading such as Google Assistant and face unlock.

pradn 6y ago
That's true, but I meant the general-purpose CPU.

SomeHacker44 6y ago

I switched for the opposite reason. Phone hardware is plenty fast for anything I want to do, but Apple's really restrictive closed software ecosystem and lack of hardware variety drove me to Android last year after being on Apple since iPhone 3G. I just wanted a touch ID, notcheless, fast and current phone, and Apple did not offer one until recently. I am not going back, and I am also now seeing the same thing with their laptops. Crappy keyboards, non optional and useless touch bars, low performance per dollar and software that gets in your way. No thanks. Windows 10, WSL, Surface Book/Go/Alienware, wow. Just good, open, usable stuff.

Havoc 6y ago
I'd do the same if I wasn't concerned about Android privacy. My pi-hole is blocking literally 10x as much phoning home stuff on the Android device I've got vs iPhone. And that is with the iPhone having way more crap installed on it. Literally phoning home every 2 mins: https://i.imgur.com/VJH8Yqa.png https://i.imgur.com/VJH8Yqa.png