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Dual Core = Overkill

I know i'm gonna get burned at the stake for this one, since this is a tech forum, but dual core is just overkill AT THE PRESENT MOMENT. It's like computers. They are all now dualcore, most come with almost 4 gigs of ram. What in the hell would 95% of the population need AT THE MOMENT with something more powerful than that? LIke a quadcore with 8 gigs? NOTHING. It's just a ploy to get more money. Our 1ghz phones can run everything just fine. This isn't like the early days of android where it always felt like more ram and raw power was needed. We have hit a plateau where the current cellphone landscape fits MOST peoples needs. Can i really be the only one who thinks that it's just unnecessary?
Remember, xda only represents .0000000001% of actual real world use. I am talking about the layman who is actually gonna fall for the "OMFG ITS GONNA DO EVERYTHING SO MUCH BETTER AND FASTER", um no it's not. Most people dont even max out there current hardware.
Edit: Seriously people get a grip on reality. I'm not pushing my views on anyone. It's a ****ing forum, you know, one of those places where people discuss things??? The debate that has come out of this has been fantastic, and i have learned alot of things i didnt know. I'm not gonna change my original post to not confuse people reading the whole topic, but i can now understand why dual core does make some sense. Quit attacking me and making stuff so personal, it's uncalled for and frankly i'm about to ask a mod to close this topic cause it's getting so ridiculous. Learn how to have a debate without letting all the emotion get in the way or GTFO. YOUR the one with the problem, not me.

Xda doesn't care. We like specs, maxing out our devices, and most of all, benchmarking

redbullcat said:
Xda doesn't care. We like specs, maxing out our devices, and most of all, benchmarking
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Well as do i! I'm talking about the uneducated masses.

more cores mean;
more threads
meaning better apps
meaning better FPS
meaning HD everything
meaning more capabilities
meaning more fun with less devices.
Do you remember the days you had a cell phone, a PDA, an MP3 player, a digital camera AND a laptop? All that was missing is your bat symbol and cape. I like not having to have a utility belt of gadgets on my person.

I would rather see them work on battery saving and density technologies to eventually allow for one week [heavy usage] times.

iamnottypingthis said:
I would rather see them work on battery saving and density technologies to eventually allow for one week [heavy usage] times.
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Hard for you to believe, i know, but that's what having a multi-core does, it helps improve battery life (both in standby and in usage). Sure it's not a definitive answer to our battery problems, but it's a first.

Hey Lude219, I thought I'd post this as I thought you gave a good explanation on battery life and usage (fifth one down).
It really all comes down to the person's requirements. If someone requires to run several apps at once, or requires to watch movies at a higher frame rate, or requires to have the 'best phone on the market', then they'll buy a dual-core phone, no-one else will care (much). Most people I talk to agree and think that Dual-Core in a phone is unnecessary ('dual-core phone' it even sounds ridiculous lol), but, I must admit that I was surprised at how laggy my DHD was out the packet, and don't get me wrong, I know once it's rooted it will be much better just because the SW is cleaner, but most people will not even contemplate rooting their phone, so if it's not an option for them, dual-core will surely help.
Dual-core procs don't have a higher power consumption than single-core procs (or at least they won't if they design/implement them properly), so it shouldn't (fingers crossed) make power consumption any worse.
Personally, I'd also rather they put they're time and effort into making better batteries and improving general power consumption.
It'll be the next marketing point after the dual-core hype has ebbed (Now with Three Days Standby!! YEY!!)

Well i think most people who do buy these "powerful" devices have one important reason to buy, and that is to future proof themselves. But ey, i'm looking at the perspective of a tech savy guy, I suppose the masses simply want the next best thing.
But you are right however, it is a ploy to make money, but everything in business is, so there's no difference between dual core, one core, 8 mp camera, 5 mp, 720p. 1080p, it's all business. If there was no business then.. well, where'd we get our smartphones?

lude219 said:
Hard for you to believe, i know, but that's what having a multi-core does, it helps improve battery life (both in standby and in usage). Sure it's not a definitive answer to our battery problems, but it's a first.
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I can easily go into why you're wrong, but I won't waste the calories. Other things besides just adding a core are done to get those gains. If more cores equaled more power savings, ULV cpus would be octo-core.

Just a matter time when they get battery life ironed out in smartphones and to the OP i would agree in some aspect, but they are smartphones why not just keep improving them. Else if someone never thought outside box we would still stuck with dumb phones =no fun.
here a link for next gen snap dragons sounds promising.

I won't lie, right now dual core is overkill. But in time like everything else has computer wise, it will be the normal and will be the way all devices go, that's not just considering dual core. I'm talking pure multicore threading. It's not just the number of cores you're buying as well, it's the difference core to core when you compare say arm cortex a8 to the Tegra II's Arm Cortex a9, single core the a9 will be faster and more efficient and also produce less heat thanks to the die shrink, which then also means less power draw per core. Right now for phones, dual core is futureproofing a bit for when we do have android that is fully multithreaded, and apps that are as well.
There's also something you need to remember, XDA isn't really a big fraction of people using android devices and what not, but not every android user is on XDA. I also disagree with everyone maxing out their hardware, just running my Evo with a few of the aosp live wallpapers my evo runs terrible, and web browsing isn't the greatest either depending on the website.

Oh dude you should so post this one overclock.net, the beat down you would get would be hilarious. But anyway back one topic, as for phones, well for some people dual core is nice, for example me and my friends, when we head off to lecture, all we can do is browse the web on our phones, all of us, for some odd reason like to have at least 6-8 tabs open at the same time and for the phones we have (I have an iphone 3gs, theres a couple captivates, Droid Inc 2, and some others), they sometimes tend to slow down with all of the tabs open. Also when you open up numerous applications, you have to sometimes close out of some of them because the one that is open starts to slow down. Thats a couple reasons that dual core is nice, with massive multitasking. But with the computer part, where you say that no one needs a quad core processor, well think about it, there are a lot of people who want performance (not just XDA, theres overclock.net, techpowerup, EVGA, HardOCP, etc) and just random people who want fast computers for reasons such as video processing, gaming (this is probably a big reason), ridiculous multitasking (I fall into this category cause I have over 125 tabs open in chrome right now and I actually needed to upgrade to 8 gb's of ram because it was saying I was running out of ram with only 4), and some people that want just plain snappiness from their computer. So I would not say that a quad core processor is overkill for most people as the demographic I mentioned above does include a decent amount of people.
Oh and I forgot to mention watching Hi def videos, your average intel integrated graphics card cannot play a 1080p video without issues so thats why you might need a faster processor and a faster GPU to play those videos in an HTPC.
But yes for your average everyday joe, a simple nehalem based dual core would suffice for everyday tasks such as web browsing and such but it cannot do much else.

xsteven77x said:
I know i'm gonna get burned at the stake for this one, since this is a tech forum, but dual core is just overkill AT THE PRESENT MOMENT. It's like computers. They are all now dualcore, most come with almost 4 gigs of ram. What in the hell would 95% of the population need AT THE MOMENT with something more powerful than that? LIke a quadcore with 8 gigs? NOTHING. It's just a ploy to get more money.
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Which is why netbooks took off for a while there (until people realized those were a bit too slow)
Our 1ghz phones can run everything just fine. This isn't like the early days of android where it always felt like more ram and raw power was needed. We have hit a plateau where the current cellphone landscape fits MOST peoples needs. Can i really be the only one who thinks that it's just unnecessary?
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Click to collapse
I completely disagree. The difference between dual and single core for mobile devices is *huge*. There is a *huge* difference between everything running "fine" and everything running "great". The biggest difference is for games and web browser, which most people absolutely care about. There is also the wide range of more powerful apps it enables, which for now is more important on the tablet, but that will come to phones as well.

Dual core is not overkill, for one, its future proofing your phone, most ppl buy the phones on contract and in a couple of months dual cores will be the standard for high end smartphones, second, it allows for better GPU performance which leads to better games and overall experience, there are many benefits to it, too many for me to list...

iamnottypingthis said:
I can easily go into why you're wrong, but I won't waste the calories. Other things besides just adding a core are done to get those gains. If more cores equaled more power savings, ULV cpus would be octo-core.
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Yea, it's better if you don't, because I dont think you have any substantial knowledge on the matter to go against the research and knowledge of all the computer engineers out there. The reason why it's not octo-cores yet is because it's called a BUSINESS. But I wont waste the calories in telling you why that is until you go and read up on "economy of scales."

It'll be interesting at least to see what develops. See if they'll start doing proper separate GPU Die's or if they'll dedicate GPU cores on the proc (i.e quad core chip with 2 CPU cores and 2 GPU cores).
Hope people don't start to get burnt when they begin maxing out/overclocking their cores.

Funny, if you stop developing you get nothing because you are satisfied with nothing.
Us at XDA are techies and you give us more core more ram more battery we will figure what to create with the new abilities. That is how progress is done.
As far as the masses, let marketing depts do their thing to them........we do not care, never did. As for me, I have a 12 core motherboard with 32 gigs of ram.etc and I jack it to 85% demand almost every day, and I am sure that there are very very few computers that have this capabilities.
The funny thing more innovation make more efficiencies my computer under a full load uses less than most of the gaming rigs out there and has 50% more muscle.
On the phone dual core allow one to create algorithms that will make the battery use way more efficient.
More cores more ram === win win win for everyone, but us in XDA and other forums like this it is just great great great for us.......... don't worry we will use what ever is created 110% and make it better.

If dual core in your Nokia 3210, yes it's overkilling, but if dual core in your cad workstation, it's been overkilled. All depends on the user, usage, and design of the device.

Actually it's an arueable question whether dual-core cpus are an overkill today, they have several advantages but most of those can be applied to netbooks and tablets rather than phones.
1. When there are several CPUs, multi-threaded applications can be really run concurrently (and basically, even if one application is performing, the scheduling overhead for multi-core system is lower and background tasks like gui/hardware drivers can be executed on a separate core).
2. Another use case (although this is a misuse and abuse of CPU anyway) is the use of multi-core systems for encoding/decoding media. It brings absolutely no advantages to the end user, but when the CPU is powerful enough to handle the media stream, one may use it instead of a proper DSP processor which Google will likely be doing for VP8/WebM
3. SMPs can be useful in tablets and netbooks - for example, tegra2 will outperform intel atom in most cases (first of all, it is dual-core. and secondly, it has a very powerful GPU). I am personally using debian on my tablet (in chroot though) and many people are using ubuntu on toshiba ac100 - arm SoCs are a fun to hack and give an incredible battery life. But this is IMHO only acceptable for geeks like us and I think dual-core (or x-whatever-core) ARM CPUs will be useful for consumers (hate this word but whatever) if some vendor releases a device which will run a full-fledged linux distro with LibreOffice, math packages like octave/maxima, development environments like kdevelop so that it can be used as an equal replacement of an x86 netbook.
As for the popular arguement about power consumption - surprisingly, but there is little correlation between the number of cores and power drain. Newer SoCs are more energy efficient because they have improvements in technical process (literally the length of wires inside the chip), more devices are integrated into one chip, more processing blocks can be put to sleep states. Even if you compare a qualcomm qsd8250 running at 1GHz with a GPU enabled, it will use less power than an old 520 MHz intel pxa270. Besides, as I have already mentioned, a multiprocessor system can execute tasks concurrently which means that the computation will take less time and the processor will spend more time in a power-saving state.
Basically multi-cores are a popular trend and is a good way to make consumers pay for new toys. For me personally the reasons to change a device have always been either the age of the device (when it literally began to fall apart) or the real improvements in hardware (I updated from Asus P525 to Xperia X1 because ever since I had my first pda I was frustrated by the tiny 32 or 64 mb ram and awful screens with large pixels that were really causing pain in eyes if one used them for long) but unfortunately the situation now is the same as it is in the desktop world - software quality is getting worse even faster than hardware improves. Hence we see crap like java and other managed code on PDAs and applications that require like 10 Mb ram to perform simple functions (which were like 100 Kb back in winmo days). I do admit that using more ram can allow to use more efficient algorithms (to reduce their computational complexity) and managed code allows for higher portability - but hey, we know that commercial software is not developed with the ideas of efficiency in mind - the only things corporations care about are writing the application as quick as possible and hide the source code.

lude219 said:
Yea, it's better if you don't, because I dont think you have any substantial knowledge on the matter to go against the research and knowledge of all the computer engineers out there. The reason why it's not octo-cores yet is because it's called a BUSINESS. But I wont waste the calories in telling you why that is until you go and read up on "economy of scales."
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That and yields for Nehalem 8 cores aren't so high. Bulldozer yields are working out okay so far, but then again it's not a real 8 core cpu...

[Q] Time to Upgrade: Need Information on Various Phones, and respective problems

As it comes time to upgrade once again, I find myself confronted my many options. The phones I am looking at are the Infuse 4g, Inspire 4g, Atrix 4g, Focus and iPhone 4. I am very partial to the Android devices and was hoping to end up with one. I currently have an iPhone 3g but want to trade up due to performance and battery life issues.
I would greatly appreciate some discussion and information on these various devices and the problems and plus's of each. I like the Atrix due to its power, battery and potential if the bootloader is ever unlocked. The Inspire is interesting due to the wide amount of development but I have sever concerns about the power in comeing years, battery life, despite ROM's and the speaker. I like the Infuse's screen, power, and, due to unlocked bootloader, development potential.
I have had Samsung "dumb" phones in the past, the SMS flawed Impression and the sub-par Solstice, so i have some concerns about Samsung phones. I like HTC but dislike them putting tiny batteries in their high end phones. Motorola is generally OK but I understand support is a bit lacking. iPhone is super reliable but I believe the OS is stale and boring. Also, i worry about the 4's future with the advent of the iPhone 5 in the coming months and, like I said, I like Androids.
Lets get some discussion going!
This is posted in the General's of all 3 phones. Excluding the Focus.

AudioMaster13 said:
As it comes time to upgrade once again, I find myself confronted my many options. The phones I am looking at are the Infuse 4g, Inspire 4g, Atrix 4g, Focus and iPhone 4. I am very partial to the Android devices and was hoping to end up with one. I currently have an iPhone 3g but want to trade up due to performance and battery life issues.
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I currently have an iPhone 4 and have an upgrade available but if I had to choose another phone to upgrade to the only option I would really choose is the Infuse 4g, or (if I wait) the iPhone 5 or GalaxySII in September.
I love the IPS high resolution display of the iPhone 4 and the only way someone could get me to switch is with a phone that has greater outdoor readability such as SuperAmoled+. Atrix and Inspire screens just dont cut it for me.

AudioMaster13 said:
As it comes time to upgrade once again, I find myself confronted my many options. The phones I am looking at are the Infuse 4g, Inspire 4g, Atrix 4g, Focus and iPhone 4. I am very partial to the Android devices and was hoping to end up with one. I currently have an iPhone 3g but want to trade up due to performance and battery life issues.
I would greatly appreciate some discussion and information on these various devices and the problems and plus's of each. I like the Atrix due to its power, battery and potential if the bootloader is ever unlocked. The Inspire is interesting due to the wide amount of development but I have sever concerns about the power in comeing years, battery life, despite ROM's and the speaker. I like the Infuse's screen, power, and, due to unlocked bootloader, development potential.
I have had Samsung "dumb" phones in the past, the SMS flawed Impression and the sub-par Solstice, so i have some concerns about Samsung phones. I like HTC but dislike them putting tiny batteries in their high end phones. Motorola is generally OK but I understand support is a bit lacking. iPhone is super reliable but I believe the OS is stale and boring. Also, i worry about the 4's future with the advent of the iPhone 5 in the coming months and, like I said, I like Androids.
Lets get some discussion going!
This is posted in the General's of all 3 phones. Excluding the Focus.
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Just upgraded from captivate to infuse and loving it...even though this thing is basically a giant captivate with a major upgraded battery, front facing camera and amazing 8 megapixal camera...this phone feels so smooth and zips... dunno if its the 1.2 gigahertz processor or just the software, though one thing i miss about my captivate is the ROM support we are starting slow in that regard but are recruiting some of the best developers from other phones so expect big things from developers on the infuse
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA Premium App

Get the infuse 4g single core better battery life, sgs2 dual core lol why you need dualcore when are you going to install photoshop for windows on a phone lol, and having dual core for for me the great disadvantage for for it is is always having to look for an outlet to charge the phone, that's what you called not being mobile, + the high price tag. Just debt use task killer on an android phone. Just use Juice Defender it saves you battery turn of wifi when not in use, and it turn of 4g too while activate edge so you still receive messages
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA App

Atrix has a locked bootloader and is therefore not worth buying.

rjan22 said:
Get the infuse 4g single core better battery life, sgs2 dual core lol why you need dualcore when are you going to install photoshop for windows on a phone lol, and having dual core for for me the great disadvantage for for it is is always having to look for an outlet to charge the phone, that's what you called not being mobile, + the high price tag. Just debt use task killer on an android phone. Just use Juice Defender it saves you battery turn of wifi when not in use, and it turn of 4g too while activate edge so you still receive messages
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA App
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Hate to burst your bubble, but having additional cores equals better battery life.
1 core @ 100% = 1P (the amount of power it uses)
1 core @ 50% = .4P (due to greater efficiency at less than 100% operating capacity)
2 cores @ 50% each = .8P, while accomplishing the same amount of work.
I'm personally waiting to find out when the Thrill 4G will be coming out. The dual channel RAM seems to give it some strong performance. Supposed release is supposed to be Q2, att shows it as coming soon.
Other than that, the Inspire has great dev support with lots of ROMs to choose from, although I think the Infuse has better hardware and will probably have better support soon.

johnnydeathmatch said:
Hate to burst your bubble, but having additional cores equals better battery life.
1 core @ 100% = 1P (the amount of power it uses)
1 core @ 50% = .4P (due to greater efficiency at less than 100% operating capacity)
2 cores @ 50% each = .8P, while accomplishing the same amount of work.
I'm personally waiting to find out when the Thrill 4G will be coming out. The dual channel RAM seems to give it some strong performance. Supposed release is supposed to be Q2, att shows it as coming soon.
Other than that, the Inspire has great dev support with lots of ROMs to choose from, although I think the Infuse has better hardware and will probably have better support soon.
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What bubble you silly butt. Your a kid right?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA App

rjan22 said:
What bubble you silly butt. Your a kid right?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA App
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No, I'm not, which should be evident from my ability to use proper spelling and grammar.

johnnydeathmatch said:
Hate to burst your bubble, but having additional cores equals better battery life.
1 core @ 100% = 1P (the amount of power it uses)
1 core @ 50% = .4P (due to greater efficiency at less than 100% operating capacity)
2 cores @ 50% each = .8P, while accomplishing the same amount of work.
I'm personally waiting to find out when the Thrill 4G will be coming out. The dual channel RAM seems to give it some strong performance. Supposed release is supposed to be Q2, att shows it as coming soon.
Other than that, the Inspire has great dev support with lots of ROMs to choose from, although I think the Infuse has better hardware and will probably have better support soon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This would only be true if the software (OS and apps) were optimized for the dual core. At this point they are not and dual core phones seem to be eating batteries like candy.

johnnydeathmatch said:
Hate to burst your bubble, but having additional cores equals better battery life.
1 core @ 100% = 1P (the amount of power it uses)
1 core @ 50% = .4P (due to greater efficiency at less than 100% operating capacity)
2 cores @ 50% each = .8P, while accomplishing the same amount of work.
I'm personally waiting to find out when the Thrill 4G will be coming out. The dual channel RAM seems to give it some strong performance. Supposed release is supposed to be Q2, att shows it as coming soon.
Other than that, the Inspire has great dev support with lots of ROMs to choose from, although I think the Infuse has better hardware and will probably have better support soon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
gross over simplification. now when the phone sleeps (most of the time if it is your pocket) you need to support 2 cores, not one.
also your example up there wont happen in the real world. the cpu governor wont just go to 50% and give up as to compare it to another processor. also the 2 cores will never be at similar levels and im sure they are not independantly scalable just yet. data is processed in threads. the end of the thread cant be processed before the begining it need to be done from start to finnish. although, with a pc that has hyper threading it may be able to interupt the thread to start another one and finish the first thread later you cant parellelize everything, multi core and hyper threading are much more effective if many applications are running or applications have processes that can be parallelized and are written to run then that way in multiple threads. what will happen with the simpler arm chips is more likely that there will always be one core working hard (not always the same core) and the driver will force the other core to run at the same frequency(not even the gpu is scalable independant of cpu on any platform i know of, i doubt each core is scalable independantly on the dual core stuff) but it will only be working maybe 30% of the time on shorter threads. for your assumption to be correct you would need applications written in for multi threading and more sophistication in the way the cpus are handled and a governor tuned explicitly for battery life.
dual core may reduce lag when you have a background service running though. that may feel like a significant performance increase even if the cores aren't being fully utilized, this may help with using the phone as a wifi hotspot, or downloading files while playing games. i dont think we should go beyond 2 cores for a while on phones because it is difficult to run multiple applications at the same time with little screen real estate, and any multi tasking will leave most applications idle most of the time. the whole os has been tuned for less lag even on slower hardware. that usually means fewer threads that may be longer. my home pc is a 3 core, i could have had a 4 core or waited for 6+ core but the real world difference is dependant on so many things, i just didnt see the point.

johnnydeathmatch said:
No, I'm not, which should be evident from my ability to use proper spelling and grammar.
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Click to collapse
Okay my bad I actually remember my 3 gay school mate always use that word on my college years, nothing wrong being gay just saying I just remember.
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[Q] [about to buy] Questions about ram

Im about to buy an unlocked phone @ amazon, im between the super hardware of the atrix with better front camera and led notifications, and the freedom of the nexus s.
The only thing that really keeps me thinking, its the amount of ram of each phone. Right now i have a Moto Milestone, just 256mb of ram, very annoying and limiting,i dont want that in the near future, so what do you think about this? Are the 512mb of ram plenty enough? Im used to keep just a few apps opened with the milestone, but im paying to improve, so i dont want to do a mistake and i want to hear opinions from actual users of the phone.
How good is the battery? Will it last 18hs?
Thanks a lot.

Hi,
my battery is at the end of the day at 30 - 70 %, depending on the usage of the day.
But I find the RAM really limiting. I use it some times for geocaching and displaying maps using Locus. This is a rather RAM consuming use pattern so I think that the 512 MB RAM (which aren't used completely by the way, because a part of it is used for the GPU) isn't enough.
I really like the freedom of chose for ROMs for the Nexus S but I personally would buy it at this time but go for a more advanced phone with more RAM and Dual-Core CPU.

development for the nexus s is crazy! so I dont think you can go wrong. battery depends on you but with the right setup I think you can easily get 18 hours from your phone. I have never had an issue with running out of ram but thats just my opinion.

..

I get 335mb useable ram with CNA 1.4 with T11 Trinity kernal. Amount may differ depending on kernal/rom combinations.
Sent from my Nexus S using xda premium

Yes 512mb ram will be enough
Battery life is also not bad
I'm personally an ex milestone owner as well
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

Great phone all rounder.

The thing is, for the same price, i have the Atrix with 1gb of ram and a dual core tegra, but i dont know if the development is active, or good. And by good i mean that its possible to do things with the phone, no blocked things and so.
I would want a fully functional (i could skip fingerprint reader, webtop and hdmi) Rom, with no known issues, like camera not working or so.
And at the same time, i want a future proof hardware, i dont want to be where i am with my milestone right now with poor ram or processor.

Did you check the section here in XDA what ROMs are available?
I really like the development and the freedom of choice with the Nexus S, that was the reason to buy this phone for me last year. The new galaxy nexus is a little to big I think.
EDIT: I forgot to put the phone in the charger yesterday evening and got 32% this morning after about 23 hours.

I don't know the Atrix's capabilities first hand, but the specs say it is much better than the Nexus S hardware-wise. But nothing comes close to the freedom of choice and development that goes on for the Nexus line.
The 384MB available is a good number, but not a great one. This phone would be far better with 768MB overall, with 512 solely for the system. Is it a problem with regular use? Definitely not, and with custom kernels and roms performance doesn't really suffer at all except in performance heavy games.
It is still a single core though, albeit probably the best single core phone out there. Battery is not great, but it is what should be expected from a 4" touch phone. You'll likely get around 4 hours of screen time in a day with some battery to spare, though this also depends on how tightly knit you keep the system. It's generally no worse than any other android out there without some huge battery.
Have a look at the Atrix ROMs and features. In the end it's your choice, but i'd be looking at it with a freedom or power perspective. Which one means more to you?

Why do people always compare phones with the chipset and RAM?? The nexus S has a vastly superior display which is really important thing for smartphone experience.
And nexus S has much better still picture camera as well. Every chipset will ultimately be outdated but a beautiful screen and camera will always be good features.

Frustrated with screen sizes on premium phones, back to Apple...

Hi xda,
I have small hands. I have largish hands for a female, but still too small to reach the upper left corner of my Nexus 4's screen when using it with one hand. Very annoying, since many important controls reside there; I often end up dropping the phone if I try to reach them.
It annoys me greatly that there are no Android devices with high-end specs that have a screen smaller than 4.3" All I want is a phone with Nexus 4 specs, in the body of, say, the Galaxy minis. But all I see is smaller screens with crippled hardware. The HTC One mini comes close, with 2GB of RAM (in my opinion, the needed amount for snappy performance in 4.2), but it's months dow the road with too many ifs, and I tire of waiting. I see many phones outside the US that fit my needs, but I don't see importing as a viable option, since rom support would be questionable.
As much as I dislike Apple's ecosystem, I'm about to switch back, since the iPhone is the only option that meets my needs. I recognize that the iPhone 5 has hardware commensurate to a much weaker phone on the Android side, but iOS, in my experience, is a bit less demanding. I would rather stick with Android, but handset makers do not cater to me

I'm female too, and my hands are relatively small (glove size 6/S). Yet I'm actually intending to buy a bigger phone: the 5.99" Note 3, because I find my SGS3 not big enough.
I don't know what you're doing wrong, but I can easily reach the top left corner of my screen with one hand. No, not if I keep my pinky around the phone, but if I slide it a bit, I can reach past the screen. And it's never in danger of falling out of my hand during the process.
The reason smaller phones have lesser hardware is because they don't require high-end specs: there's no point in having a 1080p screen in 4". And if your resolution is low, your hardware doesn't need to work as hard. So they put in lower-end hardware. What's the point of having and paying for high end hardware if it's never going to be used by the phone itself?

Bigger phones bigger ****
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Lol a girl in my school used to have a galaxy note 2 she had it around a few months and got rid of it... I guess she didn't like it. P.S if you're gonna drop your phone don't do it while you are lay down because it really hurts getting hit in the face with a big chunk of metal/plastic
Sent from my RAZR I XT890 using XDA premium

ShadowLea said:
The reason smaller phones have lesser hardware is because they don't require high-end specs: there's no point in having a 1080p screen in 4". And if your resolution is low, your hardware doesn't need to work as hard. So they put in lower-end hardware. What's the point of having and paying for high end hardware if it's never going to be used by the phone itself?
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I do not entirely agree. While true, a smaller screen is less demanding, the difference between a browser on 1GB of memory vs. 2GB is huge. My Galaxy Nexus before my Nexus 4 was much slower at rendering pages. I had a TF700t as well, and 1GB of memory did not sustain a comfortable experience and there was considerable lag launching and using applications.

Pfhortune said:
I do not entirely agree. While true, a smaller screen is less demanding, the difference between a browser on 1GB of memory vs. 2GB is huge. My Galaxy Nexus before my Nexus 4 was much slower at rendering pages.
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My guess is that the amount of RAM has nothing to do with page rendering, it helps with multitasking, the difference in page rendering you see is due to the raw CPU power the Nexus 4 has over the G.Nexus, not the amount of RAM, may i remind you the Nexus 4 has a S4 Pro with 4 cores @ 1.5 GHz while the G.Nexus is a TI OMAP dual core @ 1.2 GHz, not to mention the Krait cores on the S4 Pro have better performance than the A9 cores on the TI OMAP.

vcrp94 said:
My guess is that the amount of RAM has nothing to do with page rendering, it helps with multitasking, the difference in page rendering you see is due to the raw CPU power the Nexus 4 has over the G.Nexus, not the amount of RAM, may i remind you the Nexus 4 has a S4 Pro with 4 cores @ 1.5 GHz while the G.Nexus is a TI OMAP dual core @ 1.2 GHz, not to mention the Krait cores on the S4 Pro have better performance than the A9 cores on the TI OMAP.
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Ah, yeah, I realized my bad choice of words after posting, but couldn't edit for five minutes so went to do other things.
I completely get that the Nexus 4 has a better CPU. Bad example on my part.
Perhaps better though, is when I got my TF700t. That and the Nexus 4 have *somewhat* comparable CPUs, at least in terms of Ghz/Cores, correct me if I'm wrong. However, the Transformer was painful to use due to having half the RAM. Opening Chrome became a frustrating waiting game. The Galaxy Note 8 that I had for a short time, however, was much snappier. There was much less waiting for pages to become responsive.

What are the important things which reside in the upper left corner?? hmm.. never gave it a thought- pls tell!!

Pfhortune said:
Ah, yeah, I realized my bad choice of words after posting, but couldn't edit for five minutes so went to do other things.
I completely get that the Nexus 4 has a better CPU. Bad example on my part.
Perhaps better though, is when I got my TF700t. That and the Nexus 4 have *somewhat* comparable CPUs, at least in terms of Ghz/Cores, correct me if I'm wrong. However, the Transformer was painful to use due to having half the RAM. Opening Chrome became a frustrating waiting game. The Galaxy Note 8 that I had for a short time, however, was much snappier. There was much less waiting for pages to become responsive.
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Have you bothered to read even one page in the TF700 forum? Because we've made it abundantly clear that the amount of RAM is not the issue: The I/O issue is what's responsible for the lag. Flash a different ROM (Cromi-x) and the Tab is the fastest on the market.
Also, and I am getting quite tired of saying this time and time again: The Nexus 4 is 1280x768, the TF700 is 1920x1200. That's almost twice as many pixels it has to push, on a screen almost three times as big. Do the math. The N4 is pretty much a Vehron in an urban 30kph zone. Way too much power it's never going to need.

And also a small point regarding the comparison between the tf700t and the nexus 4. The nexus 4 has the s4 pro, which far and away destroys the tegra 3 because of the superior architecture. Just because both are quad core does not mean you can expect similar performance.
Sent from my HTC Sensation using Tapatalk 4 Beta

Poor Performance on Snapdragon 1.5Ghz Krait?

I have been using my Atrix HD for a WHILE, and it has been a pain most of the time. At first I assumed it was the Processor, I quickly ruled that out with the Pantech Flex(Uses the same processor.) My second idea was the ram, which is about 808 MB, or at least that is what CPU-Z is detecting. Even when the phone is idle it only has about 45% ram free to use. I am even running Cyanogenmod 11 rom. Most apps are unresponsive as well, even the System UI.
Basically, Why is the Atrix HD slow, and unresponsive? The Pantech Flex is the same phone, and it plays games like Asphalt 8, ShadowguneadZone,Dead Trigger 1 & 2 and I experience little to no lag at all.
I am getting a new Samsung Galaxy SIII:victory:, hopefully the 2GBs of ram will improve my experience.

PCiE said:
I have been using my Atrix HD for a WHILE, and it has been a pain most of the time. At first I assumed it was the Processor, I quickly ruled that out with the Pantech Flex(Uses the same processor.) My second idea was the ram, which is about 808 MB, or at least that is what CPU-Z is detecting. Even when the phone is idle it only has about 45% ram free to use. I am even running Cyanogenmod 11 rom. Most apps are unresponsive as well, even the System UI.
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Don't use task killers. Keeping apps running in memory means they're quick to bring up again, since they're still running. Closing them and/or freeing up RAM with a task killer means they have to reload from storage each time.
Basically, Why is the Atrix HD slow, and unresponsive? The Pantech Flex is the same phone, and it plays games like Asphalt 8, ShadowguneadZone,Dead Trigger 1 & 2 and I experience little to no lag at all.
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The Atrix HD has nearly double the pixels to push.1280x720 vs 960x540 = 921600 pixels vs 518400. With equal CPU/GPU/RAM, the one with the few pixels to push will have the smoother performance and faster framerate.
I am getting a new Samsung Galaxy SIII:victory:, hopefully the 2GBs of ram will improve my experience.
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Why an S3? Yes, the extra RAM will help, but it's still the same CPU/GPU. If you're on a serious budget a Nexus 4 will give you much better performance than an S3 (although you're stuck with 8/16GB). If you can afford a bit more, there's a seller on eBay that has brand new AT&T LG G2s for $250, and that's a performance vs price ratio that can hardly be beat. There's also some Optimius G's brand new for $170-180, which is basically a Nexus 4 with LG software and a microSD card slot, and that's a pretty good deal too.