Tom's Guide: A11 Bionic is the real deal (iPhone 8 review)

[Zodiark1593]

28 minutes ago, Chaos_Sorcerer said:

By mobile CPUs, I meant SoCs. 

 

Yes, of course, these chips have come a long way. They are surprisingly powerful. Phone games still don't come near the graphical prowess of modern PC/console titles, however. The complexity/depth of the gameplay is also quite lacking, and the controls are still bound to the small touchscreen. Most of the popular games (games that are practical on a phone...i.e., just time burners) can run on just about anything. 

 

Saying that the CPUs weren't powerful probably wasn't right....my bad. I guess it's more tied to the way they're designed and how they're meant to be played on a 5" touch panel, rather than with a controller or KBM. 

 

My main point is that mobile games are still shit and nothing more than time-burners, and because of this there is little point in making a SoC that is 20% more powerful than the competition, for example. A super-fast chip will only be practical should docking phones and using them as PC-replacements become a thing in the future, or something...until then, better performance than the competition is not really a selling point, imo. Most modern phones are already incredibly fast in day-to-day use, anyway.

 

 

Would be nice to at least have a Crysis for mobile, though in my experience, many phones can't sustain full performance (outside of winter) for anything longer than a brief time burner. Run anything intensive on a high end device for a lengthy amount of time, and performance can drop off quite fast.

 

As an example, my own SD821 phone running Riptide GP2 at full detail settings maintains far smoother frame rates than my SD800 based G2 for the first couple races. Over a longer time however, the performance gap between the two appear to shrink perilously close, with the SD821 cpus later throttling back enough to actually suffer from worse stutters than the much older SD800 chip. (Though to be clear, the SD821 still had better averages, just way worse minimums)

 

Now that it's getting cooler though (Autumn season), the SD821 can stretch a bit without ramming headfirst into the thermal ceiling.

[Chaos_Sorcerer]

27 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Would be nice to at least have a Crysis for mobile, though in my experience, many phones can't sustain full performance (outside of winter) for anything longer than a brief time burner. Run anything intensive on a high end device for a lengthy amount of time, and performance can drop off quite fast.

 

As an example, my own SD821 phone running Riptide GP2 at full detail settings maintains far smoother frame rates than my SD800 based G2 for the first couple races. Over a longer time however, the performance gap between the two appear to shrink perilously close, with the SD821 cpus later throttling back enough to actually suffer from worse stutters than the much older SD800 chip. (Though to be clear, the SD821 still had better averages, just way worse minimums)

 

Now that it's getting cooler though (Autumn season), the SD821 can stretch a bit without ramming headfirst into the thermal ceiling.

It's physics, really. Will desktops ever become obsolete?

 

I got that game when it was free for like, a day. It's laggy as hell on my Turbo, though. 

 

Thinking of picking up Monument Valley and Leo's Fortune if they ever go on sale.

[Zodiark1593]

20 minutes ago, Chaos_Sorcerer said:

It's physics, really. Will desktops ever become obsolete?

 

I got that game when it was free for like, a day. It's laggy as hell on my Turbo, though. 

 

Thinking of picking up Monument Valley and Leo's Fortune if they ever go on sale.

Riptide GP2 seems to be pretty heavily cpu bound, as when things get laggy, the game doesn't seem to give a crap as to what resolution you're running. Kind of difficult to do much of anything complex when the CPUs are throttling below the 1 GHz mark.

 

There are some really good games out there though. The World Ends With You is actually a really good port and a great game in itself. Just expensive enough to make one think twice.

[Chaos_Sorcerer]

20 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Riptide GP2 seems to be pretty heavily cpu bound, as when things get laggy, the game doesn't seem to give a crap as to what resolution you're running. Kind of difficult to do much of anything complex when the CPUs are throttling below the 1 GHz mark.

 

There are some really good games out there though. The World Ends With You is actually a really good port and a great game in itself. Just expensive enough to make one think twice.

Wait...you can lower the resolution?????

 

Also...$18 USD...that's $22 Canadian...no way I'm spending that much on any game that isn't on PC.

[Zodiark1593]

6 minutes ago, Chaos_Sorcerer said:

Wait...you can lower the resolution?????

 

Also...$18 USD...that's $22 Canadian...no way I'm spending that much on any game that isn't on PC.

The game has a graphics config not unlike many pc games, resolution included.

 

As for the price, I'm not opposed to spending $20 on a game if it's good, and works well on the platform I'm buying for, mobile included. On the other hand, I've never paid more than $40 on a game. This long trend of $60 games is not something I desire to support, and I certainly haven't.

[Chaos_Sorcerer]

Just now, Zodiark1593 said:

The game has a graphics config not unlike many pc games, resolution included.

 

As for the price, I'm not opposed to spending $20 on a game if it's good, and works well on the platform I'm buying for, mobile included. On the other hand, I've never paid more than $40 on a game. This long trend of $60 games is not something I desire to support, and I certainly haven't.

I always wait for games to go on sale. The most I've paid is $60, for TW:WH, and I regret that to this day. 

 

Will check it out, then. 

[Zodiark1593]

33 minutes ago, Chaos_Sorcerer said:

I always wait for games to go on sale. The most I've paid is $60, for TW:WH, and I regret that to this day. 

 

Will check it out, then. 

I paid $40 for Pokemon Soul Silver when that came out. As that game actually went up in value, I'm not really sorry about that one bit. One of my anime blu ray sets cost me $200, though as it was a series I wanted very badly, and the original dvds before the reprint, used, amounted to $300, I jumped on that the first moment I could and never regretted it.

 

I'm pretty picky about what I pay for. If I want it badly enough, I've no qualms about spending the money, though I can be debating with myself forever on single digit purchases that I'm unsure of. Most, if not all of my Steam library was obtained from sales however. I think only CS:GO (that I never play) and L4D2 were bought at full price, though as they were inexpensive to begin with, take that with some salt.

[Verne Arase]

On 10/9/2017 at 8:15 AM, Morgan Everett said:

OLED screens have been around on smartphones for quite awhile. It’s a pretty reliable technology at this point. 

Just because all the cool kids use 'em now doesn't mean they don't have their own weaknesses.

 

Nothing is good a everything, and there are always trade-offs (some of which we are happy to ignore).

 

Take fast charging - sure is nice to have that battery charged up in such a small amount of time. But with todays sealed in batteries, how does fast charging affect their lifespans?

[Morgan Everett]

Just now, Verne Arase said:

Just because all the cool kids use 'em now doesn't mean they don't have their own weaknesses.

 

Nothing is good a everything, and there are always trade-offs (some of which we are happy to ignore).

 

Take fast charging - sure is nice to have that battery charged up in such a small amount of time. But with todays sealed in batteries, how does fast charging affect their lifespans?

Of course nothing's perfect. But that seems like a fairly trivial observation, to be honest. 

[Trixanity]

5 minutes ago, Verne Arase said:

Just because all the cool kids use 'em now doesn't mean they don't have their own weaknesses.

 

Nothing is good a everything, and there are always trade-offs (some of which we are happy to ignore).

 

Take fast charging - sure is nice to have that battery charged up in such a small amount of time. But with todays sealed in batteries, how does fast charging affect their lifespans?

I don't think Apple would adopt OLED if it wasn't ready for primetime. 

 

There are trade-offs though but not aware of issues like those you put forth. Yes, the blues do have a reduced lifespan but generally the lifespan of OLED panels has increased significantly. With normal use, I figure we're kinda in the same ballpark as the discussion regarding SSDs used to be in the past; that you'd have to work hard to kill it and the lifespan is greater than people think.

 

The issue regarding ghosting is one I have not heard about OLED. In fact OLED should be much better than IPS panels. IPS panels are considered slow even though it was worse just five years ago. OLED is the only display tech that can do VR where any ghosting would be very visible. OLED panels can have fast response times and high refresh rates - faster than TN panels (theoretically at least).

 

What's bad then? Potentially reduced lifespan, potential burn-in and image retention, pentile panels, potentially limited maximum brightness, cost/yields. Probably more that I can't think of now. 

 

However you get the best contrast with true blacks, low power consumption, fast response times, fantastic color accuracy with a wide color gamut. Again, probably more that I'm forgetting.

[mrchow19910319]

Am I the only one that is still not quite get the "significant" of the chip??

Cos every year apple said their shit is "redesigned from the ground up"...
Until this point.. I'm just get used to it... 

[Verne Arase]

On 10/10/2017 at 5:12 PM, Trixanity said:

There are trade-offs though but not aware of issues like those you put forth. Yes, the blues do have a reduced lifespan but generally the lifespan of OLED panels has increased significantly. With normal use, I figure we're kinda in the same ballpark as the discussion regarding SSDs used to be in the past; that you'd have to work hard to kill it and the lifespan is greater than people think.

Well, as someone who lost a 1TB SSD after leaving my laptop uncharged for a month, that's probably not a comforting analogy ... :-)

[Trixanity]

1 hour ago, Verne Arase said:

Well, as someone who lost a 1TB SSD after leaving my laptop uncharged for a month, that's probably not a comforting analogy ... :-)

Lost how? I've had a desktop with an SSD that had been unused for two years or so. It booted fine but behaved oddly. I'm suspecting the TLC NAND having caused some bit errors due to lack of use as it apparently needs some power occasionally to keep the cells in order - and I suspect the problem would have been either less severe or non-existant if it was MLC or SLC NAND. Formatting it fixed it completely. It wouldn't be an issue with normal use. Fact is that other than for cold storage, SSDs can do petabytes of writes without failing - HDDs are unlikely to achieve the same.

 

Point is OLED is fine. The blue one has something like what? 10000 or 20000 hours of life? And sure, it'll gradually decline but by the time it does, you'll have switched devices anyway. That's either 3.5 or 7 years of use if you have the display on for 8 hours a day. I doubt the iPhone has enough battery to achieve that without charging it throughout the day considering their tiny batteries.

 

And yes, I know you were just being facetious but OLED has many issues but it needs to be clear that the lifespan of the panel is unlikely to be one of them. Burn-in is a bigger issue. Also, I'm quite sure you can compensate in software (if they aren't doing it already) to avoid the dimming of the blue causing color distortion.

[BuckGup]

On 10/10/2017 at 9:02 PM, mrchow19910319 said:

Am I the only one that is still not quite get the "significant" of the chip??

Cos every year apple said their shit is "redesigned from the ground up"...
Until this point.. I'm just get used to it... 

It's faster and more efficient and has AI directly built into it

[michaelocarroll007]

On 10/9/2017 at 9:35 PM, Zodiark1593 said:

Would be nice to at least have a Crysis for mobile, though in my experience, many phones can't sustain full performance (outside of winter) for anything longer than a brief time burner. Run anything intensive on a high end device for a lengthy amount of time, and performance can drop off quite fast.

 

As an example, my own SD821 phone running Riptide GP2 at full detail settings maintains far smoother frame rates than my SD800 based G2 for the first couple races. Over a longer time however, the performance gap between the two appear to shrink perilously close, with the SD821 cpus later throttling back enough to actually suffer from worse stutters than the much older SD800 chip. (Though to be clear, the SD821 still had better averages, just way worse minimums)

 

Now that it's getting cooler though (Autumn season), the SD821 can stretch a bit without ramming headfirst into the thermal ceiling.

I remeber linus doing a video on this and the iphone didnt thermal throttle much if at all. but the SD did somewhat i dont remeber it being too bad though Besides the 810 was it?