Android Samsung Galaxy S4 - Discussion Thread

[agantuk]

Are there other use cases? Say we have a user (like me for instance) whose most complex game might be Angry Birds or something like that. Would I be well off with a phone which has a decent dual core proc? And may be 1 GB RAM?

^ To drive the high end games.....

I have a DHD into which I have installed the JB ROM from XDA and it works pretty fine - yes it does freeze once in a while (like for 2 - 3 seconds) - but otherwise seems to handle things pretty well. My point is it isn't even a dual core and it is working fine. Does that mean newer phones are marketing gimmicks to keep shareholders happy or am I missing something.

What I haven't been able to understand (and this isn't just because of this phone) is why hardware seems to be getting so much attention nowadays. Are the days of software innovation over?

 

[thatsashok]

And probably ti give smoother experience to the end user which at least earlier phones and cheaper androids lack I believe.
With octa cores on s4 it means it will be super dooper smooth now right or still having N number of cores do not guarantee a lag free experience ?

But instead of increasing the cores every time why are manufacturers not concentrating on making the lag free UI smooth for a given hardware.
I mean the optimization.

Sorry I many be going offtopic from S4 discussion but these are things I dont understand

 

[raksrules]

+1

I keep seeing that you have some mild beef against Android for their multi-core processors and large displays. I know that you used to own a ZTE Blade (I still do) and compared to my S2, the difference is night and day. Both are running on 4.2.2. In terms of lag, Android has progressed a lot since its GB or even ICS days. Yes, micro lags still exist, but they're not a deal breaker.

no sir I am not against android but what I cannot understand is the race for higher specs which probably looks as not required. Why can't they just make the OS more efficient ? Symbian was a very good OS and even multitasking was possible and all and even with the old and obsolete hardware (as per today's terms) it ran excellent and did it's job and even have very good battery life.
8 cores ? Ridiculous needs just to run some games and can anyone list few games that will be utilizing these supposedly awesome hardware specs ?

And before anyone terms me as apple iSheep or fanboy I am sorry to bring apple in the conversation but would love to compare the same game on an iOS device and see if it runs the same way or inferior on a dual core device.

I just don't understand the need of high speced phones and yes now a days it is more about big numbers on hardware rather than getting the software right and more efficient to aid in better user experience.

And yes I have briefly used Jelly bean (or was it ICS ??) on S3 and it is smooth and I believe that.

 

[honest1]

Android probably supports more than 150 (or more?) types of hardwares. Its not easy for Google to optimize it for each manufacturer. This task has to be done by Manufacturers only and I believe Samsung is taking it in the right path by customizing Android for its devices. HTC is also doing a good job.
Regarding cores, you cant develop games/apps unless you have that kind of hardware available. This development may not happen immediately since it takes time.The same kind of questions were being asked when quad cores were developed and now we can see how Note II can smoothly handle simultaneous tasks easily.

 

[Xavier]

no sir I am not against android but what I cannot understand is the race for higher specs which probably looks as not required. Why can't they just make the OS more efficient ? Symbian was a very good OS and even multitasking was possible and all and even with the old and obsolete hardware (as per today's terms) it ran excellent and did it's job and even have very good battery life.
8 cores ? Ridiculous needs just to run some games and can anyone list few games that will be utilizing these supposedly awesome hardware specs ?

And before anyone terms me as apple iSheep or fanboy I am sorry to bring apple in the conversation but would love to compare the same game on an iOS device and see if it runs the same way or inferior on a dual core device.

I just don't understand the need of high speced phones and yes now a days it is more about big numbers on hardware rather than getting the software right and more efficient to aid in better user experience.

And yes I have briefly used Jelly bean (or was it ICS ??) on S3 and it is smooth and I believe that.

What is wrong with having higher specs when it does not affect the price? Most Samsung and HTC flagships start at ~ 35k and this has been happening since the days of the Galaxy S/Desire. If there is one thing manufacturers should receive flak for, it is for not focusing on battery technology as much as they do on processor tech. I remember the early naysayers who were against video in DSLRs. What happened now? There hasn't been any DSLR without video in quite a few years. That tech is here to stay, whether people like it or not. As long as it isn't increasing prices by a ridiculous margin or affecting functionality of the device, why do people have a problem with it?

Circa 2011, people (mostly Apple fans) kept cribbing about how Android phones were focusing on dual cores and stuff. And then what do we see? The iPhone 4S comes with a dual core processor. If iOS were so good with its resource handling, why not continue using single core chips and thereby increase battery life? As time progresses, so does gaming and graphics technology. Each generation of processors sees a significant increase in performance over its predecessors. People can continue cribbing about how they keep increasing cores and clock speed, but nothing will change it.

Symbian was good, yes. But their refusal to move along with technology and embrace the changes is what let to its demise. Early S60V5 was laughably bad as a touchscreen OS and it wasn't until the Anna and Belle updates of S^3 that it gained some respectability amongst the dev circles. But by then, it was too late and Symbian had to die as a result of it.

As for your comparison of games on iOS and Android, @honest1 has already answered it. It is much easier for developers to develop games for the iOS platform due to a small number of devices and screen resolutions to play with. Also, Apple users tend to buy more apps compared to Android users, on the whole. These are facts which cannot be denied, but I just don't understand why anybody would oppose progress in the first place.

 

[raksrules]

When it comes to pricing all flagships including iPhone are overpriced.
And yes put as many cores as manufacturers want but battery life goes for a toss. In fact I believe one important reason these people are hell bent on Having large screen devices is that they can cram bigger batteries.

 

[Xavier]

When it comes to pricing all flagships including iPhone are overpriced.
And yes put as many cores as manufacturers want but battery life goes for a toss. In fact I believe one important reason these people are hell bent on Having large screen devices is that they can cram bigger batteries.

It's actually the other way around. They have to provide larger batteries because of the larger screens. They give us larger screens because that is what most people seem to want these days. Most people thought that the Note 1 would be a flop when it was announced. And boy, were they wrong or what?

 

[honest1]

@raksrules, Its not that they are adding one core on another. The cores are being developed in a way that it minimize the battery usage with much more efficiency.

 

[raksrules]

Ok let's get back on track now. What innovation can we expect after S4 ? From any manufacturer, not just Samsung.
Probably more of software only is my guess ? May be 4K screen in couple
Of years ?
I would only like one thing to progress is battery development. Some new tech that gives you like 1 week of super heavy usage. Hope it comes one day. No worry about battery charging every now and then and be away from those pesky battery monitoring apps and those useless widgets that give battery info.

 

[Sub]

The hardware has caught up to a point of overkill. From now, in the short term it is definitely software that needs to improve dramatically. The iOS "appify" model is totally bogus and has dumbed down computing to a mind-numbing level. Tim Cook boasts that the average iPhone user needs 100 apps. That is just bizarre and shows that the OS is so useless you need an app for every small thing. You should never have to think what app you want to use, the software should do that work for you. Windows Phone 7 was a huge breakthrough - the concept of hubs which deeply interconnect various parts of the OS and which apps can leverage. Something as simple as sending a message to someone would previously require thinking which of the 12 apps (Mail? Facebook? Twitter? Whatsapp? etc.) you must open, then cycle through them. Windows Phone put it all in one place for each contact, so you don't look for apps, you look for people. Similarly, you go to the Music+Video hub or the Camera Lenses hub, etc. Google Now has a similar idea to be even more intelligent, to give you the information before you have to think which app you must open. Microsoft is similarly working aggressively on turning Bing into a complete platform that will power Windows. In short, the software has to get much smarter. It should do all the work for you. For everyone asking why you need quad-core CPUs, this is precisely why - to prepare the software to take the next step forward. In a sense, software is lagging behind hardware.

Hardware-wise, the next major step is definitely flexible/foldable displays and the concept that "size of meaningful compute approaches zero" (by 2020, according to Intel). Also, a breakthrough in battery tech. There's a very good reason as to why Windows and Windows Phone are slowly merging together, and Ubuntu has beat everyone to it. There's also no doubt also that OS X is fading away and as of last week the Chrome OS and Android are run by the same guy. In the future, your phone can "open up" into a tablet. Connect a keyboard dock to it and it becomes a laptop. Connect a monitor to it and it becomes a desktop. Then undock, fold, put it in your pocket and your desktop PC becomes your phone.

 

[vantheman5211]

Ok let's get back on track now. What innovation can we expect after S4 ? From any manufacturer, not just Samsung.
Probably more of software only is my guess ? May be 4K screen in couple
Of years ?
I would only like one thing to progress is battery development. Some new tech that gives you like 1 week of super heavy usage. Hope it comes one day. No worry about battery charging every now and then and be away from those pesky battery monitoring apps and those useless widgets that give battery info.

I am a bit surprised that there hasnt been much progress in terms of battery in both ios and android devices. Whatever innovation we have seen has mostly been from optimizing the power efficiency from the software side and not much invention/innovation from the hardware side of things.
It has been an evolution with regards to the mhz increase but that has been pegged back by the increase in screen resolution which requires a high amount of power.
Maybe in the future we will see a quantum leap and i hope that time comes soon. Would love to have a fully charged battery that stays charged for say a week. High hopes i know but it's entirely possible in the future.

 

[adaneam]

For those who think Samsung is only focusing on hardware...

 

[blufox]

+1

I keep seeing that you have some mild beef against Android for their multi-core processors and large displays. I know that you used to own a ZTE Blade (I still do) and compared to my S2, the difference is night and day. Both are running on 4.2.2. In terms of lag, Android has progressed a lot since its GB or even ICS days. Yes, micro lags still exist, but they're not a deal breaker.

Micro lag? What is that?

 

[comp@ddict]

I don't think I would shell out 45k for a reused design phone.

 

[Xavier]

Micro lag? What is that?

What phone do you own? Micro lag exists on every phone, doesn't matter if it's a Nexus 4 or a Note 2.

 

[raksrules]

Just like last year, our Samsung insider has told us that Samsung will launch the Samsung Galaxy S4 on May 10 for India available either the same day or soon after via the online Samsung Store. The company has decided to keep the price of their newest flagship at Rs. 44999/- for the 16GB variant.
Here is the best part of the news, the Samsung Galaxy S4 set for India is the Exynos based Octa-core variant and not the quad-core as most were expecting. Although Samsung might change over to a quad core variant if the sales are slow as they were for the S2 in India and the company then launched a cheaper
Single core
alternate chipset variant adding a G at the end of the model number.
Samsung has taken a similar strategy with the Samsung Galaxy S4 ( or plans to) with the company expecting good sales numbers based on the hype created by the launch. Post that they plan to shift to a quad core variant similar to the one in the US.

Apart from the chipset the Samsung Galaxy S4 also has a 5 inch 1920x1080p Super-Amoled display, 2 GB of RAM, 16 GB of storage for the Indian variant, along with a 13 MP camera at the rear capable of full hd 1080p video at 30fps.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 also has Android 4.2.2 along with the latest TouchWiz UI .

Source: http://igyaan.in/2013/03/39862/excl...launch-in-india-set-at-may-10-price-rs-44999/


45 K INR ??? I know it is MRP and street price might be lesser. But still.

 

[adaneam]

Even S3 was priced around MRP 43k INR. But it was selling for 37-38k withing a few weeks.[DOUBLEPOST=1363669978][/DOUBLEPOST]

I don't think I would shell out 45k for a reused design phone.

If you already have S3, you do not need to upgrade. People upgrade their iPhones every year religiously even when they all look exactly the same. As far as HTC one is concerned, I would never buy a phone that looks like an iPhone.

 

[raksrules]

@adaneam

Does that mean that everyone owning a S3 was never a S2 customer right ? People upgrade because they "want" to and not because they are users of certain ecosystem. There will be people (not specifically on this forum) who will "upgrade" their devices even if they own the last iteration of the same.

Btw i have an iPad which is 2 generations behind but i don't see any need to upgrade so i am not doing it. So the religiously upgrading of iPhones is generalizing at its best.

 

[adaneam]

Generalizing or not. These people form a larger user base relatively. And S2 and S3 are a lot different as far as looks, specs, features are concerned.

 

[ashrr]

Generalizing or not. These people form a larger user base relatively. And S2 and S3 are a lot different as far as looks, specs, features are concerned.

But what does the iPhone have to do with anything here? And even if it did, I think Apple gets a bad rap for "re-releasing the same phone every year with a different name" when every iteration actually has improvements to both hardware and software. They may sound insignificant to the most hardcore users, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. Even if we're only talking looks, the iPhone 3GS to 4 was just as different as the S2 to S3.