iPhone Xs/Max bags the top ratings from DisplayMate, DxOMark, Anandtech for Display, Camera and Silicon

[Curufinwe_wins]

5 minutes ago, TheRandomness said:

Except they're trying to make iOS apps work on OS X, so in theory, they could do it the other way around. Who's to say Apple can't redesign quite a lot of things and finally unify their tablets and laptops? Who's to say that iOS won't be a thing in the future, replaced by a version of OS X with multi-arch capabilities?

Instruction emulation is extremely expensive computationally... And defeats the purpose of RISC in the first place (except as an absolute last resort). But it is long-term 'possible'.

[Drak3]

TL:DR Here's a list of publishers you can now blacklist.

[vanished]

5 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Instruction emulation is extremely expensive computationally... And defeats the purpose of RISC in the first place (except as an absolute last resort). But it is long-term 'possible'.

If the PowerPC to Intel transition is anything to go by, they won't have to rely on emulation, they can just make new versions of their apps, and get the main third party ones to do the same.  If there's one thing Apple is leading at, it's market pressure, and that's exactly what they'd need to pull off a transition like that.

[TheRandomness]

8 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Instruction emulation is extremely expensive computationally... And defeats the purpose of RISC in the first place (except as an absolute last resort). But it is long-term 'possible'.

I mean, it is possible, just not practical However, just imagine the battery life an A12 powered Macbook Air could achieve with all that extra space for batteries.

[Dabombinable]

15 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

I’m waiting for that rumored 2019 Apple laptop with ARM inside. 

Considering that Apple used to use PowerPC (actually got games that have installers for both x86 Windows and Mac PowerPC), its probably pretty solid for a rumour.

[Curufinwe_wins]

4 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

If the PowerPC to Intel transition is anything to go by, they won't have to rely on emulation, they can just make new versions of their apps, and get the main third party ones to do the same.  If there's one thing Apple is leading at, it's market pressure, and that's exactly what they'd need to pull off a transition like that.

See but that reasoning is backwards. PowerPC by that point was the odd-ball, not the other way around. Anything that actually mattered already had x86 variants, and adding support for massive numbers of other programs was more of a benefit than anything lost.

 

[DocSwag]

47 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

BTW in case anyone wants to somehow dive into the horrible market BS that is Displaymate (like wtf guys... you do great work, but then package it in an absolute disaster of marketing BS and hype)

 

Here is the most relevant comparison:

 

Basically.... They are spewing bullshit all the way around on their "new best". They don't have a higher rating system than Excellent A+, and both (among others) are given the same rating which is the "best ever".

 

It's the best for an Apple product, and directly on par with the best Samsung has to offer. Not surprising.

 

EDIT: Ugh I can't emphasize how frustrating it is that Displaymate does so good robust testing then delivers it in this horribly misleading and awful package. Their raw data is as always impeccable.

 

I would rate it above Samsung's displays, actually, mainly due to black crush. If you look at Erica Griffin's review of the note 9 she mentions how the Note 9 still has quite a bit of black crush, whereas the previous gen iphone x does better.

[Curufinwe_wins]

4 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

I would rate it above Samsung's displays, actually, mainly due to black crush. If you look at Erica Griffin's review of the note 9 she mentions how the Note 9 still has quite a bit of black crush, whereas the previous gen iphone x does better.

Funny, because Displaymate indirectly measures that in ambient conditions, and the Note 9 scored better on that test by a good margin.

 

It's possible that iOS has some better color grading options, but the data doesn't lie. I also don't know if Erica was using adaptive or not.

 

But it isn't really important. It was just the point that the "best ever rating" doesn't mean what it sounds like it means. It merely means they also got the highest rating.

[ZacoAttaco]

So I guess this accounts for the generous price hike on the latest model? 'It is the best of the best components'

 

I still think they're too expensive.

[Arika]

2 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

Anandtech: Apple’s CPU have gotten so performant now, that we’re just margins off the best desktop CPUs

Bahhahahahahahaha have they lost their fucking minds? 

[ZacoAttaco]

2 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

DisplayMate: iPhone XS Max Has Best Smartphone Display Ever

This sounds like copy and paste from Jony Ive at the latest keynote.

 

Tim Cook at latest keynote:

Quote

This is by FAR the most advanced iPhone we have ever created.

It's hard to tell what's an actual review and what is just marketing buzz words.

[Commodus]

1 hour ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

"chargegate" rendered a significant proportion (not like 1%... not like 10%... ) of devices non-functional without hardware workarounds (non-standard charging). Which is disappointing, but what really really pisses me off is that it sat un-recognized, un-fixed for two weeks. How the hell does that even get out? And it takes you more than 2 weeks to fix it? Apple's own staff didn't know how to handle it and replaced faulty devices with other faulty devices.

 

Beautygate is an issue for the sole reason that you can't turn the damn thing off.

 

But I'm actually most concerned by the attenna discussions. Particularly because we already have objective data that looks really poor, and if it isn't just Apple doing Apple things, but is an actual side effect of a 4x4 array, then I expect to see a lot more phones in the future showing these issues.

 

Anyways, back on topic... The anandtech comment in context honestly felt completely unsubstantiated. It's certainly possible, considering that it was such a big famous deal how weighed down x86 was by forced back-compat. In the same article, Anandtech thought the camera was better... but certainly not as good as the current Android tops (with the P20 Pro? and the S9+/Note 9). 

 

The display is great ofc. Buying the best Samsung can make, and putting it on the tightest OS on the market, well yes full integration certainly has benefits.

See, this is exactly the kind of "omg Apple is doomed" rhetoric I'm talking about.  It didn't render them "non-functional," and we have no evidence of the ratio of units affected.  Clearly enough to be notable, but if most units were affected, you'd damn well know about it.  As it is... clearly you're new to how many tech companies work.  Apple rarely talks publicly about issues until it has a solution in place, because it can both explain what happened and offer a fix.

 

I'm not sure I mind what Apple's doing.  You'll still get plenty of detail in good lighting, and I'd say the tradeoff is ultimately worthwhile.  Less noise and proper exposure?  Yes please... it beats seeing more skin texture but also getting a blotchy, blown-out mess.

 

I'm not sure if Anandtech's statement was completely unsubstantiated, but I'll agree that the A12 isn't going to compete with the best desktop chips any time soon.  It's just evidence that the performance gap is closing.

[DocSwag]

18 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Funny, because Displaymate indirectly measures that in ambient conditions, and the Note 9 scored better on that test by a good margin. 

 

It's possible that iOS has some better color grading options, but the data doesn't lie. I also don't know if Erica was using adaptive or not. 

  

But it isn't really important. It was just the point that the "best ever rating" doesn't mean what it sounds like it means. It merely means they also got the highest rating.

Erica had one of those chart things that has the black levels. She set the screens to 100% and checked how far down the scale each display displayed: The note 9 went down to 4 before you couldn't see anything, though there was banding throughout (21 and 20 looked the same, 19 and 18 looked the same, etc.). I'd also say colors looked a bit off past around 10: greys looked a bit... not grey. I can't explain exactly the color but it definitely was a bit off.

 

Meanwhile, the iPhone X handled it almost perfectly: no color banding, colors didn't change at all as brightness approached zero, and you could pretty much see that there was some light even at 1.

 

 

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, Commodus said:

See, this is exactly the kind of "omg Apple is doomed" rhetoric I'm talking about.  It didn't render them "non-functional," and we have no evidence of the ratio of units affected.  Clearly enough to be notable, but if most units were affected, you'd damn well know about it.  As it is... clearly you're new to how many tech companies work.  Apple rarely talks publicly about issues until it has a solution in place, because it can both explain what happened and offer a fix.

 

I'm not sure I mind what Apple's doing.  You'll still get plenty of detail in good lighting, and I'd say the tradeoff is ultimately worthwhile.  Less noise and proper exposure?  Yes please... it beats seeing more skin texture but also getting a blotchy, blown-out mess.

 

I'm not sure if Anandtech's statement was completely unsubstantiated, but I'll agree that the A12 isn't going to compete with the best desktop chips any time soon.  It's just evidence that the performance gap is closing.

We have Lew showing off his entire collection of them and 6/8 being affected by the issue. Not saying that that is statistically significant, but nothing we have seen suggests that it was a small proportion. 

 

 

We did know about it. It made headlines around the world. literally thousands of individual posts on Apple's forums about this issue.

 

Microsoft pulled Windows update the same day. Intel got into hot water for taking 72 hours to respond to Spectre/Meltdown to the public. 

 

Let me go over the timeline of the Note 7 situation. Reports of issues come up August 31. The next day Samsung released announcement about it preparing a possible recall. Sept 2 it suspended sales. Over the entire Note 7 debacle, Samsung received 35 total reports worldwide. And think of how big of a deal everyone treated that.

 

Apple is facing a far wider issue than any of these previous ones (even if less damaging in each event) and by far the slowest response.

 

 

 

I'm not saying it's doom and gloom. A month from now, no one will care. But it is a serious issue, with an abysmal response for any company, let alone a top-tier manufacturer.

 

 

[Curufinwe_wins]

34 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

snip

I'll say straight out, I haven't had the same experience, but I can't complain with her methods of looking at it. I think I would suggest that those color issues are more likely an android thing than a Samsung one though (might even be application to application) because other reviewers (displaymate for example) haven't shown the same issues. Which might literally just be issues with application color management, since obviously the panels aren't any better or worse (they are both Samsung panels...)

 

Thanks for the info!

[Commodus]

1 minute ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

We have Lew showing off his entire collection of them and 6/8 being affected by the issue. Not saying that that is statistically significant, but nothing we have seen suggests that it was a small proportion. 

 

 

We did know about it. It made headlines around the world. literally thousands of individual posts on Apple's forums about this issue.

 

Microsoft pulled Windows update the same day. Intel got into hot water for taking 72 hours to respond to Spectre/Meltdown to the public. 

 

Let me go over the timeline of the Note 7 situation. Reports of issues come up August 31. The next day Samsung released announcement about it preparing a possible recall. Sept 2 it suspended sales. Over the entire Note 7 debacle, Samsung received 35 total reports worldwide. And think of how big of a deal everyone treated that.

 

Apple is facing a far wider issue than any of these previous ones (even if less damaging in each event) and by far the slowest response.

 

 

 

I'm not saying it's doom and gloom. A month from now, no one will care. But it is a serious issue, with an abysmal response for any company, let alone a top-tier manufacturer.

 

 

Oh, I remember Lew's statement.  The problem is that he was almost certainly unlucky rather than representative of the extent of the problem.  Even one out of that bunch would be too much, but you genuinely can't say how many based on a YouTube video.

 

And I don't think you understood what I said.  When I said "you'd damn well know about it," I mean the extent of the problem, not that it exists.  If it was most phones, there would be widespread public uproar.  Every news show would be talking about it.  But here's the thing: whenever Apple has a problem, no matter how relatively minor, everything you said happens.  It shows up in tech-focused sites; it shows up in forum posts.  If it was truly large, it'd be nigh-on inescapable.

 

As for the Windows, Spectre and Note 7 flaws... I'd say you're glossing over why they could and had to respond quickly.  Microsoft introduced the bug through a patch it could easily withdraw; Apple couldn't exactly make XS owners revert to iOS 11, could it?  And both Intel and Samsung had to respond quickly because those were respectively a grave, industry-wide security flaw and an inherent battery flaw that could kill people.

 

Apple fixed this issue (and a couple of others) 17 days after the phone launched, and it likely wasn't generally aware of the issue until the end of September.  Was it a serious issue that shouldn't have happened?  Yes.  Was there an "abysmal" response?  Absolutely not.  For that, you have to look at how Microsoft handled some glitches with the Surface line.

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

uhh excuse me what?

Really?  I wasn't aware an iphone was close to the 2990WX.

Seriously wtf are they smoking...

It kind of makes sense when reading the details and not just the summary.

What they did was compile SPEC2006 for Android and iOS, and then ran those tests.

Things to keep in mind:

• The tests were single threaded.
• The phones were actively cooled with fans for the duration of the tests to prevent overheating (yes, the iPhone too).
• The tests where the A12 keeps up with the Skylake Xeon is mostly in the CINT2006 tests. Not sure about the other tests.
• The Xeon it was compared against was running at 3.8GHz. The reason why it was running at such a low frequency was because it's a 28-core chip, but like I said earlier only 1 core was active during the test.
• CPU2006 is EXTREMELY compiler dependent.
• I am not sure which instructions were used for the Xeon tests, but it is worth noting that CINT2006 can be compiled to support AVX512, which will make a massive difference. However, in some of their x86 benchmarks they have said that they don't use "specific flags" and other settings because they want to keep things relatively real world and not just tweak the compiler until the benchmark spits out massive results. That leads me to believe that with some other settings, possibly enabling wider AVX instructions, the x86 part could get a massive boost in benchmark score.
• At least one test would not run on the iPhone because of iOS limitations. iPhones has historically have very low amounts of RAM and because of that iOS is very aggressive with not allowing programs to reserve larger amounts of memory, or even keep things in memory for very long. They changed that benchmark to use smaller data sets to make it work on iOS. Not really related to the CPU architecture, but it's something I think is worth pointing out.

 

So basically, it is comparable to a top of the like desktop CPU... If you the desktop CPU is a few generations old, runs at a fairly low clock speed, is only allowed to use 1 out of 28 cores and deliberately running un-optimized code.

From an IPC standpoint Apple's A12 chip is fantastic, and it's even more of a feat when you look at the power consumption, but calling it as good as powerful as a desktop chip is quite the misleading statement if you ask me.

 

 

As for the display rating, it's basically the same as this generation of Galaxy devices (both just gets a bunch of "this is virtually perfect" and as far as the camera goes the Galaxy Note 9 gets a score of 103, and the iPhone XS Max gets a score of 105 (which isn't even the highest score, which is 109 for the Huawei P20 Pro).

 

I'm trying not to be rude, but it kind of comes off as pathetic and desperate when people think it's worth shouting about how awesome something is, when the test results shows it is less than 2% ahead of the competition. I mean, is 105 vs 103 really such a big difference that it warrants a thread and celebration?

[Billy Pilgrim]

1 hour ago, arnavvr said:

Except that Apple's A-series processors are incapable of running OSX, it's an architecture that needs an AMD or Intel processor.

IIRC Apple is planning on making their own chips for their laptops by 2020 so either they will license x86 from Intel or use ARM, but either way it will be interesting to see how that and their chip design plays out.

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 minutes ago, Commodus said:

snip

By September 26th, they had hundreds of posts on their forums about it (even before Lew's video). So either they don't pay attention (which tbf is quite likely) or they simply didn't care until people brought it to the forefront (which I would argue is also rather likely given the litany of hardware issues without responses in the past until they settled class actions), or both.

 

It's an abysmal response by my standard and expectation. Apparently, I have a dramatically higher expectation in that fashion than you do. 

 

 

 

[DrMacintosh]

1 hour ago, captain_to_fire said:

I’m waiting for that rumored 2019 Apple laptop with ARM inside. 

I imagine that would be for the 12” MacBook considering how low power that device is. 

[LAwLz]

21 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Oh, I remember Lew's statement.  The problem is that he was almost certainly unlucky rather than representative of the extent of the problem.  Even one out of that bunch would be too much, but you genuinely can't say how many based on a YouTube video. 

 

And I don't think you understood what I said.  When I said "you'd damn well know about it," I mean the extent of the problem, not that it exists.  If it was most phones, there would be widespread public uproar.  Every news show would be talking about it.  But here's the thing: whenever Apple has a problem, no matter how relatively minor, everything you said happens.  It shows up in tech-focused sites; it shows up in forum posts.  If it was truly large, it'd be nigh-on inescapable. 

 

As for the Windows, Spectre and Note 7 flaws... I'd say you're glossing over why they could and had to respond quickly.  Microsoft introduced the bug through a patch it could easily withdraw; Apple couldn't exactly make XS owners revert to iOS 11, could it?  And both Intel and Samsung had to respond quickly because those were respectively a grave, industry-wide security flaw and an inherent battery flaw that could kill people.

 

Apple fixed this issue (and a couple of others) 17 days after the phone launched, and it likely wasn't generally aware of the issue until the end of September.  Was it a serious issue that shouldn't have happened?  Yes.  Was there an "abysmal" response?  Absolutely not.  For that, you have to look at how Microsoft handled some glitches with the Surface line.

1) I think Apple gets a bit more hate than other companies because Apple has quite a lot of rabid and fairly ignorant fanboys who praise their every move, as well as defend even the most horrible things Apple does. Just go back and look at the thread where the iPhone without headphone jack was revealed. There were quite a few clueless people who were unconditionally praising Apple. Hell, some of them were even saying how it was a good move because the 3.5mm headphone jack was analog, proudly putting their massive ignorance on display for everyone else to see.

 

2) I think a lot of Apple fans feel like when Apple get hate it's "undeserved", but when other companies gets hate thrown their way it is "justified", and therefore they believe Apple gets more shit than others. Just look at the Note 7 exploding batteries for an example of this. That outrage was justified, right? How many devices do you think were actually affected by the exploding battery issue? It is estimated that about 2.5 million Note 7s were sold, and there were about 100 reports of exploding batteries.

That means that about 0.004% of devices actually exploded.

After just 35 reports Samsung issued a worldwide recall.

 

3) You can't use ignorance as an argument for why something shouldn't be taken seriously. Someone got 8 iPhones and 6 of them has an issue? "Well maybe he is just unlucky!?". Come on dude... It is clearly a widespread issue and Apple were pretty slow with a response, which they always are. People were up in arms and demanding Intel's CEO resign after just 2 days without an official statement regarding Spectre and Meltdown. A few more days later and they were demanding he be put in jail.

 

4) It takes two to dance tango. Threads were everyone agrees something bad has happened usually ends very quickly, because there isn't really anything to argue about. It's only when someone jumps in and tries to defend shitty behavior that shitstorms and flamewars occur. For some reason people often feel like they need to "balance" a conversation by acting like the exact opposite of the people they might not agree with, and all it does is just create two extreme camps that throw shit on each other. Instead of religiously trying to defend whichever company you feel like defending, maybe analyze what people are saying and then maybe acknowledge that there might be some legitimacy to their complaints? Maybe if you don't jump to the other extreme to "balance" the conversation, it doesn't spiral out of control?
Perhaps dismissing people by saying they are ignorant haters isn't exactly a productive way to stop flamewars and further Apple hate as you might expect?

 

 

My point is that I think you have a warped perception of reality. Apple gets quite a lot of shit, but so does a lot of other companies too, and I think there is a risk that you, or other people, might have a hard time accepting criticism towards Apple.

Ask some Microsoft fanboy on this forum if they think the hate Microsoft gets is justified and they will probably tell you about how Apple gets away so easy but as soon as Microsoft does even the slightest mistake they get a ton of shit they don't deserve.

[ZacoAttaco]

24 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I think Apple gets a bit more hate than other companies because Apple has quite a lot of rabid and fairly ignorant fanboys who praise their every move, as well as defend even the most horrible things Apple does...

Apple deserves a lot of that hate they receive, you're right they have a lot of fanboys who defend their actions, that makes everyone else give Apple more hate because usually the ones defending Apple give 'reasons' instead of solid logic.

 

Every company gets hate, some fan bases are more vocal in their defence than others.

[DocSwag]

2 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

I'll say straight out, I haven't had the same experience, but I can't complain with her methods of looking at it. I think I would suggest that those color issues are more likely an android thing than a Samsung one though (might even be application to application) because other reviewers (displaymate for example) haven't shown the same issues. Which might literally just be issues with application color management, since obviously the panels aren't any better or worse (they are both Samsung panels...)

 

Thanks for the info!

I think it's more likely to be a panel thing. Otherwise I'd imagine we should see issues on LCDs too...

 

I do know that some Samsung panels apparently have done worse than others. IIRC when the S9 came out some publications complained about black crush on the S9+ but said the S9 was fine. Maybe it's a size thing? IDK

[schwellmo92]

Doesn’t sound like anyone actually read the Anandtech article, the tl;dr of the CPU is that’s it absolutely creams Snapdragon/Exynos, offering significant more performance for less power draw and is close to a moderately clocked Skylake CPU in single threaded (tested using SPEC2006).

[D13H4RD]

Yeah, no. The CPU isn't as good as a desktop chip in most scenarios. That's just not possible as of right now. 

 

Credit where credit is due. Apple's A-Series SoCs are monstrosities in the ARM world to the point where Samsung is taking notice. But ARM and x86 are an apples vs oranges comparison, so I don't get why we'd need to compare them. 

 

DisplayMate's findings is also not surprising. Last year's iPhone X was already crowned the best display of any smartphone. We'd have a problem if the successor somehow failed to reclaim that title from the Galaxy Note. 

 

Lastly, DxOMark. Ugh, I've really not liked it when they started judging zoom and especially portraits. The fact is this. Most portrait modes suck donkey ass balls, especially once you're used to real bokeh from a large sensor camera with a prime lens.