If this is true then......

[Misanthrope]

3cm thick phone!?

I can understand wanting a slightly thicker phone with a bigger battery but 3cm? Even 2cm is pretty outrageous.

 

Fine 2cm. I think you could still fit a massive 4500-5000mah battery on it, you get the point.

 

Why is 64bit processor nonsense? It is better to change to 64bit now instead of dragging it out even longer (because we WILL need it in the near future). Just look at the mess that is 64bit Windows.

Why are 8 cores nonsense? Most octa core CPUs have four low power cores and four high performance cores. This can dramatically reduce power consumption while still giving you very high performance when you need it. If you really want long battery life then you should be really excited for big.LITTLE. Don't talk about things you have next to no knowledge about.

 

1) I already offered a better way to get more power: bigger batteries. Is not like people won't adopt larger phones, they already carry arround 5, 5.5, 6 inch phones.

 

2) As usual you completely ignore my point and go on into your "all praise the future" rants: there's no fucking software worth a damn. Once there is, I'll demand 64bit 16 core phones. Until then, thanks but no thanks, give me a massive, unwieldy battery instead.

[LAwLz]

1) I already offered a better way to get more power: bigger batteries. Is not like people won't adopt larger phones, they already carry arround 5, 5.5, 6 inch phones.

Why not both? Also, people are willing to get bigger screens (although it seems like 5" is pretty close to the maximum), not necessarily bigger phones. A 2cm thick 5"+ phone would be gigantic and weight as much as a vending machine.

 

 

 

2) As usual you completely ignore my point and go on into your "all praise the future" rants: there's no fucking software worth a damn. Once there is, I'll demand 64bit 16 core phones. Until then, thanks but no thanks, give me a massive, unwieldy battery instead.

And as usual you completely ignore all the other things I bought up and only focuses on the "in the future" part. I gave 6 examples and you only respond to one of them.

You can already get massive unwieldy batteries if you want. Just be warned though, they make your phone suck slightly more than a collapsed star (because of the size and weight they add).

[Nineshadow]

$800? no thanks

The S5(normal one) sells for $1000 here...

[the ginger gamer]

Not to excited since i don't exactly like Samsung as a phone company, if it was a new phone by lg, htc, ect. Then i would be stoked. However i am happy that they are moving in the right direction as far as build quality.

[Misanthrope]

And as usual you completely ignore all the other things I bought up and only focuses on the "in the future" part. I gave 6 examples and you only respond to one of them.

You can already get massive unwieldy batteries if you want. Just be warned though, they make your phone suck slightly more than a collapsed star (because of the size and weight they add).

 

No sir, I directly answered your initial question: You wanted to know why I don't like (what I consider to be an excessive) hardware race on mobiles and I gave you a short, concise answer: for me personally it's not worth it without software to go along with it. I even told you that while I do appreciate battery life improvements, larger batteries are both ugly and bulky but more a cost effective solution i personally would prefer. (i.e. I was a big fan of the Razr Maxx and the Galaxy Note back then because of the added battery life even with the increased bulk)

That's it really, you don't need to agree with my reasoning, there will always be a market for enthusiasts, however I just told you the key difference for me (and lot's of other folk in fact) for getting exited about the pc hardware upgrades vs the mobile hardware updates: Killer software that goes along with it. 

So now that I have now acknowledged your points and state if you value looks and portability then yes you should be exited about mobile hardware, can you please stop ignoring my argument about lack of software and admit that there's nothing to fucking do on a mobile device other than increasingly more demanding bloatware? Because even the fucking cameras are now getting worst instead of better (see HTC) and the required memory for a true photo and video enthusiast is simply not there (even 64gb it's pitiful for high resolution pictures and video)

[klotza1]

It can have the best hardware in the world, but you are all missing a critical issue. It's still going to have TOUCHWIZ!!! The worst software can wreck the best hardware. No thanks!

[LAwLz]

No sir, I directly answered your initial question: You wanted to know why I don't like (what I consider to be an excessive) hardware race on mobiles and I gave you a short, concise answer: for me personally it's not worth it without software to go along with it. I even told you that while I do appreciate battery life improvements, larger batteries are both ugly and bulky but more a cost effective solution i personally would prefer. (i.e. I was a big fan of the Razr Maxx and the Galaxy Note back then because of the added battery life even with the increased bulk)

That's it really, you don't need to agree with my reasoning, there will always be a market for enthusiasts, however I just told you the key difference for me (and lot's of other folk in fact) for getting exited about the pc hardware upgrades vs the mobile hardware updates: Killer software that goes along with it. 

So now that I have now acknowledged your points and state if you value looks and portability then yes you should be exited about mobile hardware, can you please stop ignoring my argument about lack of software and admit that there's nothing to fucking do on a mobile device other than increasingly more demanding bloatware? Because even the fucking cameras are now getting worst instead of better (see HTC) and the required memory for a true photo and video enthusiast is simply not there (even 64gb it's pitiful for high resolution pictures and video)

But why does it matter to you if you get longer battery life from a better processor or a bigger battery?

What drawback does having a faster processor have? You are literally whining about something getting better. It's like complaining about a car getting more energy efficient and instead say "they should just make the tank bigger, engines are already fuel efficient enough". It makes absolutely no sense at all.

That is what I don't get with your reasoning.

 

64GB is a lot for photos and videos, and even if you think that is too small we have 128GB microSD cards now. Still not enough? You can get a higher capacity phone, or hell, you can plug in an external hard drive or USB memory stick if you want (with USB OTG). Storage is not an issue (although I do want 32GB to become the standard capacity in phones, with a 64GB version only being like 50 dollars more expensive).

 

As for your whole "there is no software that needs it!" argument, there is. First of all, Android uses JIT compilation so a faster CPU can help A LOT with startup time (and RAM will also help as well if it's an app you launch often). A lot of more complex web pages are really slow on phones (including the drop down menus here on LTT which takes a second or more to load). My video player becomes a slide show when I try to play 1080p Hi10p content (so good luck playing any HEVC content on your phones, it won't work because they are not powerful enough). The lens blur effect in the Google Camera takes like 30-40 seconds to render the image (and yes, it actually uses all 4 cores for some of the computation), and the same goes for a lot of photo effects. These are situations I encounter almost daily, and all of them would improve with a better processor. That's before we talk about games as well... Emulators, PC games getting ported (DOOM and GTA for example), Real Racing 3, Dead Trigger, the list goes on.

 

The camera is just HTC being moronic. It's an exception rather than the rule.

[Misanthrope]

But why does it matter to you if you get longer battery life from a better processor or a bigger battery?

 

Because I actually had experienced situations in which I ran out of battery while expecting calls or trying to call someone to meet up, to catch a ride back home, etc. A lot of times. Every single time I would have much rather waited a few extra seconds for my apps to load than be basically communicationally stranded.

 

What drawback does having a faster processor have? You are literally whining about something getting better. It's like complaining about a car getting more energy efficient and instead say "they should just make the tank bigger, engines are already fuel efficient enough". It makes absolutely no sense at all.

 

You seriously have to ask? $700 dollar price tags are a big, huge, nay colossal drawback. It's like asking "what's the drawback of a 295x?" Which bring me to the upside which is a lot more justifiable for a 295x (potentially playing Crysis 3 at 4k nearly maxed out, on a tiny system) vs a top of the line phone (equally tiny and equally fancy resolutions true, but for what? Angry Birds? Asphalt 8 at best?)

 

64GB is a lot for photos and videos, and even if you think that is too small we have 128GB microSD cards now. Still not enough? You can get a higher capacity phone, or hell, you can plug in an external hard drive or USB memory stick if you want (with USB OTG). Storage is not an issue (although I do want 32GB to become the standard capacity in phones, with a 64GB version only being like 50 dollars more expensive).

 

For phones advertising 1080p and even 4k video recording? Decent games are easily 1gb or more, even modest applications can run up. Also only the oneplus one will be like only 50 extra bucks to jump from 16 to 64 Apple still charges a ridiculous price different for still inadequate storage (specially since microusb slots are actually becoming rare). So it's not adequate at all for flagship prices. 

 

As for your whole "there is no software that needs it!" argument, there is. First of all, Android uses JIT compilation so a faster CPU can help A LOT with startup time (and RAM will also help as well if it's an app you launch often)*1. A lot of more complex web pages are really slow on phones (including the drop down menus here on LTT which takes a second or more to load). *2 My video player becomes a slide show when I try to play 1080p Hi10p content (so good luck playing any HEVC content on your phones, it won't work because they are not powerful enough).*3 The lens blur effect in the Google Camera takes like 30-40 seconds to render the image (and yes, it actually uses all 4 cores for some of the computation), and the same goes for a lot of photo effects.*4 These are situations I encounter almost daily, and all of them would improve with a better processor.*5 That's before we talk about games as well... Emulators, PC games getting ported (DOOM and GTA for example), Real Racing 3, Dead Trigger, the list goes on.*6

The camera is just HTC being moronic. It's an exception rather than the rule. *7

 

*1 This is hardly as much of a big deal as you make it out to be. Get used to me saying this: it matters, but it doesn't justifies $700. Plus you're not taking into account if I even want to wait for the stupid things to load (most of the time I dont) so forgive me if I quickly go through most of your points that go like this

 

*2 This is not really an issue at all for me even for complex websites since I have a phone with a resolution that makes sense: 720p. By gaining really marginal improvements in visual fidelity you create a performance problem? Seriously switch to the Moto X for a week it's damn smooth even on intensive websites.

 

*3 Just launched 720p video on my player, smooth sailing. Again 312ppi and 720p it's certainly good enough for a phone and it lessens the load on the processors. Also nearly stock kitkat android helps too, I continue to maintain than bloat contributes to worst performance for a lot of people, this is not necessary

 

*4 30-40 seconds seems like a reasonable time to wait for editing a photo on a phone. It could be done in 5 seconds on another phone sure, but again is it worth $700? Not really, we're not talking waiting 4 or 5 minutes.

 

*5 So you take photos and edit them on your phone daily? you watch 1080p content on your phone daily? You mean to tell me you don't have a computer or a tablet? Because if you don't then it would make sense for you to spend more on a phone, but it wouldn't make sense for most people, and this flagship phones are looking to be sold to a mass market, to lots of common folk not power users like you.

 

*6 I play all of those just fine on my Moto X, which was free with contract but I would otherwise consider it a sort of expensive phone but still reasonable. So far you haven't mentioned a single game that really would need much better hardware. 

 

So again you utterly failed to mention applications worth using (photos and videos are really about the content AND are already reasonably smooth on reasonable phones) and even some of the games that are not crappy (mainly just GTA and Doom, all of which are just ports of games I played on the PC years ago) work well on much more modest phones already.

[WindyDays]

Great, just in case Samsung phones were bloated enough let's increase the resolution to even more absurd levels, because fuck it we can totally charge another 200 bucks for it too!

 

Edit: Oh this will be a metal phone! That TOTALLY changes things of course I want a more "premium" phone with a worst material that adds more weight and a lot more interference to the device.

 

I have nothing to say about your opinion on the phone, but I think the point of the metal construction is that consumers have a choice: whether they want the lighter but more flimsy plastic chassis offered by standard S5 models or the S5 Prime as a slightly more appealing competitor to the HTC One. I personally would prefer the aluminum construction but still there does not appear to be any significant advantages of the S5 Prime over the HTC One for me.

[matin94]

The S5(normal one) sells for $1000 here...

good luck

[LAwLz]

Because I actually had experienced situations in which I ran out of battery while expecting calls or trying to call someone to meet up, to catch a ride back home, etc. A lot of times. Every single time I would have much rather waited a few extra seconds for my apps to load than be basically communicationally stranded.

You would have had a point if it wasn't for the fact that a lot of the faster processors are also a lot more energy efficient. You get LONGER battery life as well as higher performance with these new processors, not shorter.

Your phone would have died earlier with a slower processor.

 

 

You seriously have to ask? $700 dollar price tags are a big, huge, nay colossal drawback. It's like asking "what's the drawback of a 295x?" Which bring me to the upside which is a lot more justifiable for a 295x (potentially playing Crysis 3 at 4k nearly maxed out, on a tiny system) vs a top of the line phone (equally tiny and equally fancy resolutions true, but for what? Angry Birds? Asphalt 8 at best?)

The price of the SoCs hasn't gone up that much (and the time we have seen significant increases it's been because they now include another component such as the baseband, which keeps the overall cost of the phone the same).

Sure the BOM of phones has slowly gone up over the years, but they are still not responsible for the horrible 700 dollar price tags. The reason why the price tags are 700 dollars is because that's what people are willing to pay for them. Guess how much the iPhone has increased in price over the last 6 years. 50 dollars (if you compare the original 8GB iPhone vs the 16GB iPhone 5S off contract). Wanna know how much the Nexus One was? 530 dollars. 180 dollars more than the Nexus 5.

I can't find prices for the Galaxy S in the US off contract but here in Sweden it cost about as much as the Galaxy S 4 did when it was launched (and they both followed the same price trend). Galaxy S and Galaxy S 4. You want to look under "Statistik" and then on the graph that says "Prisutveckling". Y is the price in SEK and X is the time. If you look at the price of phones on contract then they haven't really changed at all.

So no, the better hardware does not increase the price of phones.

 

 

For phones advertising 1080p and even 4k video recording? Decent games are easily 1gb or more, even modest applications can run up. Also only the oneplus one will be like only 50 extra bucks to jump from 16 to 64 Apple still charges a ridiculous price different for still inadequate storage (specially since microusb slots are actually becoming rare). So it's not adequate at all for flagship prices. 

I agree that storage is far too expensive. The margins the manufacturers get on storage is insane, but my point was that you can get a ton of storage if you want. 128GB microSD card costs 100 dollars. USB OTG cable costs like 2 dollars and a 64GB USB memory stick costs 25 dollars. If you're going to record hours of video and take thousands of photos then there are inexpensive and practical solutions. Don't want to use a bunch of USB memory sticks? No problem, you can get the microSD card for 100 dollars. If you are OK with having the tiny dongle hanging from your phone then I just showed you how you can add 256GB of storage to your phone for about 100 dollars. Far more than enough for video and images.

The size on photos varies a lot but let's say a 13MP photo is about 3.5MB on average. That means you could take about 37,500 photos on that 128GB card.

The bit rate (audio and video combined) of the video my Galaxy S 4 takes is about 17Mbps. That means that I could record 17 hours of video on the 128GB card. Do you really need more than 37,500 photos or 17 hours of video without dumping the photos/video onto your computer? That's without including the internal storage by the way, because you might want to use that for programs and other stuff.

 

I completely agree that the price manufacturers demand for extra onboard storage are insane, but trying to argue that what we can get is not enough for taking video and photos on our phones is just silly.

 

 

*1 This is hardly as much of a big deal as you make it out to be. Get used to me saying this: it matters, but it doesn't justifies $700. Plus you're not taking into account if I even want to wait for the stupid things to load (most of the time I dont) so forgive me if I quickly go through most of your points that go like this

You already know I agree with you that flagship phones shouldn't cost 700 dollars. That is not the fault of the hardware inside them though. The Nexus 5 is a high end phone, and so is the OnePlus One. Sure, having programs launch faster isn't that important, but it is still a benefit. You can't say "we don't need it! It's completely useless" in one sentence and then go "yes it matters but I don't think it matters that much". Why would you want to wait for like 2-3 seconds for a program to launch if you could launch it in 1 second, and it used less battery, and it ran smoother?

 

 

*2 This is not really an issue at all for me even for complex websites since I have a phone with a resolution that makes sense: 720p. By gaining really marginal improvements in visual fidelity you create a performance problem? Seriously switch to the Moto X for a week it's damn smooth even on intensive websites.

Yes, having a 1 second delay on GUI elements is a big deal. You are trying to argue that we don't need better hardware but we clearly do if something as simple as LinusTechTips has a 1 second delay on some buttons. A 1 second delay on important GUI elements is absolutely atrocious. The notification list is just as slow by the way, and LinusTechTips is just one of the many many sites I have encountered which has unbearably slow GUI elements on my phone.

If you are not a heavy phone/tablet user then you can probably put up with having delays on the GUI like that, but imagine if there was a 1 second delay on all the buttons in Windows on your desktop/laptop. It would drive you insane if you were used to having responsive GUIs.

 

 

*3 Just launched 720p video on my player, smooth sailing. Again 312ppi and 720p it's certainly good enough for a phone and it lessens the load on the processors. Also nearly stock kitkat android helps too, I continue to maintain than bloat contributes to worst performance for a lot of people, this is not necessary

I can play 720p and 1080p on my phone as well. What I can't play is 1080p 10bit H.264 files. We might start seeing HEVC videos being released in the near future, and that is even more demanding than 10bit H.264, which means that phones that can't play 1080p 10bit H.264 (read: no phone as far as I know) will be able to play HEVC. I could transcode the file, but that would make the video much bigger (like twice as big), have worse quality and it would take a very long time. I'd rather just have a faster phone instead of doing all that. This is why I am so excited for Snapdragon 805 and other SoCs which supports hardware accelerated HEVC decoding.

 

 

*4 30-40 seconds seems like a reasonable time to wait for editing a photo on a phone. It could be done in 5 seconds on another phone sure, but again is it worth $700? Not really, we're not talking waiting 4 or 5 minutes.

30-40 seconds per photo is reasonable? That's on a fairly high end phone by the way (quad core Snapdragon 600 at 1.9GHz). If we had stopped improving phones (which you seem to suggest we should) just a few years ago then we would have been talking about 4-5 minute waiting time for each photo. This is an example of how better hardware enables new features on phones. If we hadn't gotten these newer and faster processors then I doubt Google would have even bothered adding the lens blur feature, because who the hell want to wait 5 minutes to take a photo (and it would drain quite a lot of battery as well).

You bring up price again but like I said before, there isn't really any reason why a lot of the flagship phones cost 700 dollars. The price on SoCs has been fairly even for several years.

You are trying to change the conversation to "is a 700 dollar flagship phone worth the higher price" but what we are arguing about is "do we need higher end phones?". These two are completely different subjects.

 

 

*5 So you take photos and edit them on your phone daily? you watch 1080p content on your phone daily? You mean to tell me you don't have a computer or a tablet? Because if you don't then it would make sense for you to spend more on a phone, but it wouldn't make sense for most people, and this flagship phones are looking to be sold to a mass market, to lots of common folk not power users like you.

No I don't use the lens blur effect on my phone daily because it is so slow. I don't play 1080p Hi10p video on my phone daily either because it can't play it. I do play 720p content on my tablet almost daily though. I have to spend about an hour and a half on the bus every time I go to school (2-3 times a week) so that's when I use my phone and tablet the most, and when I am in bed. At home I use my desktop most of the time obviously. My tablet can't play 10bit H.264 either by the way (dual core A15 at 1.7GHz).

Sure, I have a lot higher demands than most people, I'll give you that. You should not cater to the lowest common denominator though. You are literally using the same argument as a lot of ISPs use to justify the very slow connections and data caps. "Most people don't use more than XGB a month, and most people don't need more than YMbps in Internet connection speed. Google Fiber is useless!". Do you realize how asinine your argument is now?

 

 

*6 I play all of those just fine on my Moto X, which was free with contract but I would otherwise consider it a sort of expensive phone but still reasonable. So far you haven't mentioned a single game that really would need much better hardware.

Well those were mostly mentioned to show how fast gaming on mobile are evolving. As we get better hardware, we will see more games getting ported, and more advanced emulators getting released as well.

If we stop pushing higher end hardware each generation then we will be stuck with whatever we got right now. If we continue to develop better hardware we might get for example Dolphin (the GameCube and Wii emulator) on Android. In an even more distant future we might get GTA 4 (we already have San Andreas).

[ItsComrade]

samsung used to be a way to free yourself from apple's captivity, 

now it created it own little cage, and its full of crap. 

 

BREAK FREE LITTLE SAMSUNG. BREAK FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[jezza39]

More useless specs to hammer the battery and increase the e-peen of users. Samsung seriously don't understand why Apple and iOS have been so successful, people don't care about specs, people want a top notch user experience and imo, touchwiz doesn't deliver the same way sense and iOS does

[WelshDdraig]

Great, just in case Samsung phones were bloated enough let's increase the resolution to even more absurd levels, because fuck it we can totally charge another 200 bucks for it too!

 

Edit: Oh this will be a metal phone! That TOTALLY changes things of course I want a more "premium" phone with a worst material that adds more weight and a lot more interference to the device.

Dat blue coloured text on Dark Theme. 

Eyes, Why you bleed so much?

 

On topic, I would actually like one of these. I have an s3 and the plastic I'm not a fan of, (coming from Nokia build Quality) But Since it's metal, It would fix my complaint.