Posted on 01/29/2015 5:39:36 PM PST by Red in Blue PA
Samsung’s Galaxy S5 was a monster flagship, except we’ve been able to put together everything you need to know about Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S6, and it’s shaping up to be the most amazing phone we’ve ever heard of.
From a CPU that’s 50% faster, to an incredible quad-HD display, Samsung hit every angle with this year’s flagship phone. It will also have a payment feature which works with magnetic and NFC terminals, incredible cameras, and a gorgeous glass and metal body.
This is shaping up to be the Android phone to beat this coming year.
We were sent photos from our trusted source, though we were not allowed to publish them, so you’ll have to make do with the detailed specifications below.
I want one immediately!
Here’s everything you need to know: •64-bit eight-core 14nm CPU which is 50% faster •5.1-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display with a 577ppi density, stunning outdoor visibility, super dim mode for late night. •A huge 20 megapixel OIS camera sensor and a 5 megapixel f/1.8 front-facing camera with real-time HDR •32 / 64 / 128GB of storage •2550mAh battery •Built-in wireless charging •Four hours of usage on a 10 minute charge •Quick connect charging •Samsung Pay: works with 90% of existing magnetic stripe payment terminals, and NFC payment terminals •Metal and glass body •Gorilla Glass 4 •Cat 6 LTE
I’ll take flack for this, but; I live in a family of iPhone users. I’ve tried to use their iPhones and iPads numerous times. It was frustrating after the straightforward intuitive operation of my S4, to get anywhere on an iPhone or iPad. Everything is ass-backwards from what a logical, sensible person would do.
The system of using removable SD Cards on Android cards are not secure because they are formatted using Microsoft's old FAT-32 file system. . . and they are not safe areas to store anything private. They are also far slower than anything memory built onto the logic board. It is one of the reasons that Android is not acceptable to Enterprise use. Too easy to compromise. That's why Google changed how it is implemented in the latest version of Android, making it far less easy to use. . . and in fact essentially dropped official support for SD cards in Android. . . recommending that handset manufacturers do not build in SD card slots.
Why should I worry about carrying around SD cards when I have access to TERABYTES of storage on my home computer or on the cloud when I need it on my iOS devices. . . and have everything on every device at my fingertips? You guys keep tossing out this expandability canard but just don't get it. I can access everything on my various Macs, iOS devices, and have the iCloud storage as well. Your memory expansion cards that you have to carry around and have to keep track of, are nothing compared to that. So, ho hum. . .
“So here is an interesting question how many cores is your compiler using, be careful, how many did you pay to have unlocked?”
I don’t understand the question :-) ... Xilinx does a good job using multiple cores during mapping and place and route. I can enable 2 cores during the mapper, up to 4 during place and route (I might have that reversed ...)
OK, I think I see your question :-). My machine at work is a 4 core Xeon, so I paid for 4 cores and have been using all of them from day one :-) . I usually have two running during builds, one open for simulations (I use Modelsim PE ... no parallelism or 64 bit support ... it’s torture), and one open for “other stuff”.
Prior to that, I had some kind of quad core Intel processor back before Xilinx supported multicore builds. Yes, in that case, I had two cores idle most of the time :-). So I paid for 4, but only used two most of the time. One core for work, the other for Free Republic, I mean, “other stuff” :-). The others mainly sat idle.
We’re actually exploiting the two ARM CPU cores in a Zynq right now FWIW (not just OS scheduling processes ... I mean real parallel processing stuff :-) )
I do most of the hardware acceleration for our fairly complex algorithms. I’m trying to get back into the software world somewhat just to get a better feel for other stuff that might benefit from hardware acceleration ... I’ve grown tired of beating back software people that seem to want their main program to be an initialization routine while the logic does everything else :-).
I’m going to be building a new Haswell-E system for home/contracting use ... I went the 6 core, 3.5GHz route for that.
Again, I certainly see your point, but I’m also seeing software people get a LOT better using multiple CPUs ... I don’t think it’s a lot of hype anymore (it certainly was not too long ago).
Swype is available for iPhones and iPads.
What is your opinion of Blackberry OS 10?
The only comments I have is that so far its hot air ware, and on BGR.com, where they are announcing this hot air ware the amount of excitement it is engendering is . . . well, amazing. TWO comments. Two. WOW! That on BGR means it is going over with a dull THUD!
I think you are mostly wrong on this. There are a percentage of people who use Apple products because “they are cool”. However, there are many of us who use Apple products who think the cool hipster angle is pretty stupid too.
There are a lot of people who like using Apple products like the iPhone and iPad over the competition, and it has to do with good engineering, reliability, predictability, and maintainability, not “the cool factor”.
A spec sheet cannot explain the success of an iPhone any more than an ingredient list can explain the success of a dinner in a restaurant. The success of Apple products isn’t due to the low cost of the components or the muscularity of the individual components that make up the device.
It is due to the way they are put together, the way it its software is distributed and maintained, and the way people have to interact with it to use it.
The mistake you make is thinking that eight cores is makes the entire device inherently better than a device with only two cores. I get the impression you think it makes the device four times better than the one with fewer processors. But if the translation into everyday use is to redraw the screen a split second or two faster than the other device, and you are still waiting for streaming information over a wireless data connection, does it really make that much difference?
I sense a fair amount of anger and personal angst in your analysis, and I don’t really understand why you feel that way. It is only a tool, a device.
What do you think of Blackberry OS 10?
By the way, when I opine that I think you are mostly wrong on this, I am not talking about the relative merits of any devices, but the way in which you think people should judge them.
That’s all.
“The system of using removable SD Cards on Android cards are not secure because they are formatted using Microsoft’s old FAT-32 file system. “
Very true, but they come in handy for :
1> Storing MP3s, video, and pictures locally. Helpful if you don’t want to pay for WiFi on a flight or if you’re driving through West Virginia on your way to pinball machine auctions in North Carolina :-) ... data is spotty in those (and many other) areas regardless of carrier. I typically keep several albums and a few movies on my phone just for trips and what not. I also keep a few Google Maps for offline use too.
2> Storing massive amounts of pinball machines for Pinball Arcade (games in general require a lot of storage ... more than your average app).
3> Storing loads of other “useless” data for emulators and the like.
There is plenty of use for unsecure SD card storage. I would hope that Google would support SD cards for general data storage only (not application or “critical” data). While data access to the cloud is certainly better these days, it’s nowhere near “perfect”.
I’ve never used it ... a colleague of mine lives and dies by Blackberry ... he loves it. I fear he might jump off a bridge the day they go under! :-).
I think the term “crackberry” was made just to describe him. He was one of the 15 people that bought one of their tablets the day it was released (the same number of people that actually liked the Van Halen III album)!
Only geeks count specs . . . it is not about specs. Do you seriously think that 577 PPI on a 5.1" phone screen makes any difference other than advertising hyperbole? Optical experts say that no one can see the differences on that small a screen. It's all hype after about 280 PPI at the viewing distances people use cell phones except in viewers' imaginations. 8 Cores? Apple has been beating 4 cores with just two at half the clock speed. . . because of far greater efficiencies and the fact that Android really doesn't know how to use more than one core effectively. Even in the multicore bench mark, the fastest Android for cores just barely beat out Apple's two cores. How effectively is it going to manage EIGHT?
AND THAT WAS ON PHONES PEOPLE CLAIMED THE SPECS WERE BETTER!
Except the mobile business is so big that a million units are only a 1% market share.
And a Samsung S5 had a Sp02 sensor built into it. . . but no medical professional I spoke to could figure out a sensible use for the bleeping thing. And how accurate can a hygrometer measure atmospheric humidity after being kept in your hip or shirt pocket next to a sweating human body? Not at all accurately I am reliably informed.
In other words, these sensors are added in because some Samsung engineer though "Hey, that sounds cool! Let's toss that in!"
They are added to the specs list for the benefits of the geeks who count the numbers of cool gadgets their phone has, not whether they are useful or not.
"You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try and sell it.....we have tried to come up with a strategy and a vision for Apple, it started with “What incredible benefits can we give to the customer? Where can we take the customer?” Not starting with “Let’s sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have and then how are we going to market that?” And I think that’s the right path to take." — Steve Jobs"Perfection comes from how many things you can take OUT." — Steve Jobs.
In 2013, Samsung's advertising expenditure were listed as the equivalent of approximately $14 Billion dollars for an approximate $25 Billion profit. However, their media purchases were listed at a little over $4 billion. $10 Billion was listed as miscellaneous promotion. . . which most people interpret as payment for astro-turfing, paying bloggers, spiffs to carrier sales people, product placement, paying reviewers, and others to comment on threads. Apple's advertising budget is around $1 billion, mostly on media buys.
Even as we witness Samsung's slap-our-name-everywhere in-your face marketing—these numbers make it hard to believe that they spent $14 billion on advertising, while Apple spent approximately $1 billion.— Source: CNBC.com December 5, 2013
That is not what Samsung's financial reports disclosed. Their financials disclosed they expended $14 BILLION on marketing, not of few hundred million. Advertising buys were only a small fraction of their marketing expenditures. Those figures may be accurate for US media buys only.
Eyup! That's what that article is about. From your link:
"As for the actual figures, Samsung splashed about $363 million on US phone ads, down 10 percent from 2012’s cost of $401 million. Samsung was also the only smartphone company to cut its advertising budget last year. Apple, on the other hand, spent around $351 million on phone advertising in 2013, up 5 percent from $333 million in the previous year. As a side note, Apple spent more on TV ads in 2013 than it spent on all advertising in 2012.
Well, yes actually... Reliably anyway.....
You have any other concerns?
Not that I can see. Sorry.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.