Android Gets the Best Hardware.
Example? Samsung’s Galaxy S II. Dual-core 1.2GHz, formidable GPU (either 8 core GeForce ULP or ARM Mali-400 MP GT-i9100), gig o’ ram, 4.27” Super AMOLED Plus, 2mp front, 8mp rear,1080p recording, MHL/HDMI at 1080, HSPA+/HSUPA, Gingerbread and packs 1650mAh in the tank.
Sounds like this monster is thick and heavy as a mother, right? Negative my man, it’s 8.49mm thick weighing 116g. In contrast the iPhone 4 is 18% heavier, 14% smaller battery, 18% smaller screen, and is 4.5% fatter. In contrast to the WP-packing Focus you might own, this one is across-the-board superior (however your smaller screen gives you the higher DPI). Better battery but not thicker or heavier, bigger screen but the same height and width. Plus everything in the first paragraph.
How the hell did they stuff a fatter battery into a thinner and lighter phone? And slap a larger screen on it too? However they did it, the point is no one else did (but probably will soon), and they did it for Android, not Windows Phone. I’m not trying to pick a fight with our Apple readers, take it as a compliment that I used your phone as the gold standard and yes I acknowledge that an iPhone 5 is imminent and that Apple proves over and over that they know how to waltz out every now and then with a kickass successor to a kickass predecessor, so perhaps the iPhone 5 will trounce this Samsung phone overall (again, talking hardware). But not today.
Because of the competitive market to make the best Android phone on the streets, which I think Samsung just did, because of no lockstep release scheduling, you don’t have to wait seven or so months for the new hot Android phone to surface. They’re popping up left and right and front and back and some of them a pretty damn good.
Murani breaks my balls because Microsoft proudly has tighter and stricter standards (which they actually just lowered for the next generation, if there is one). But Murani, I hope for your sake you’re not the type that really really likes to have the freshest and best hardware. Rather, I hope that you’re the type who can distract himself from hardware envy by writing and telling his coworkers about how unfragmented his platform is and how the other platform is an OEM moshpit of chaos and mediocrity because within that moshpit you will always find a slew of phones from multiple manufactures for pretty much every carrier that out-spec your Windows Phone.
True or false Murani? What, your platform is just so damn good that that specs like these don’t matter? Apples an oranges, right? Oh that’s right, you can watch Netflix and I can’t. Good point. Can we at least agree that that lady is extraordinarily pretty, or do you have trouble seeing such things (not that there’s anything wrong with that)?
Doug Simmons
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Doug Simmons
Biographical info.. hmm. I have a history of not being able to strike the balance between what is "safe" to put into these forms and what is, in my mind at least, funny. Can't do it.
It may have a bigger battery than the focus, but given the rest of the specs I would be extremely surprised if the galaxy s II will have comparable battery life. I’d also say that battery life for a phone is one of the most important metrics their is…. But I guess we’ll have to wait until this ships to see how it really compares.
Ok, sounds stellar. How long will that battery last running that hardware with an os that’s not optimized to use said kickass specs? These things are important to know.. 4-5 hours? 6-8 hours? 10 hours? ( I seriously doubt that) The iphone 4 has a 1400mAh battery, and lasts about 7 hours talking, 10 hours watching video, and almost 2 days playing music, but that’s only because the os and hardware are optimized for each other.
The samsung is a sick phone for sure, but I haven’t missed being tethered to a power source AT ALL.
Fair enough, though I failed to note that this phone’s screen is Samsung’s new thing, Super AMOLED Plus, which is purported to be 18% more efficient than regular Super AMOLED (which is already considered relatively efficient) and it has twice as many sub pixels making it crisper and more visible in bright light. So, if you buy that, bigger and better screen than the Focus and my Nexus S, larger though the new technology offsets, at least somewhat, the additional drain of the larger screen.
As for the two processors, the one in my phone ramps its speed down to 100MHz when it’s not needed, bounced up to 1GHz or 1.5 if I’m in the mood when the phone knows it’s time to think about something, then it gets its thinking done quick so it can chill out. Perhaps with the higher speed and the multiple cores of the two processors in this particular phone and others to come they’ve come up with something to keep the net drain gain under control.
And it’s got that big battery. The consensus on the iPhone 4 is that it’s 1420 which makes its long life impressive, and taking this thing from Samsung into consideration it looks like they’ve got room for improvement with the next iPhone and will probably deliver judging by the iPad 2. If the HTC Thunderbolt and EVO 4G are any indicators of how Android phones can power through the new technology, not good.
Seems Apple put some thought into hanging back a few paces from everyone else on the 4G front. Bet they’ll stay put for at least the iPhone 5.
Do you think forming such a close relationship with Nokia will have any effect on whatever OEMs like Samsung have planned for Windows Phone?
Android need as powerful as a pc hardware so that it moves a bit more fluid because another form sucks, even so wp7 starts more quickly and it is much more fluid than android
Wait for a month and there will be other Android device get released and you don’t remember such a device exist, that’s the power of Android.
If that’s what you’re after, some sort of device-specific identity, what’s the advantage of Microsoft phones versus Apple, which as Chris noted makes things that last several hours on surprisingly relatively small batteries? Less aggressive location tracking?
Off topic:
Simmons, how are you able to search the interwebz for hot chicks and not get so distract by Pr0n that you actually finish what you first intended?
In direct speed comparsions with all processors being the same, what OS is the fastest? Once that is determined, you can state OS “X” needs to run “X” % fasted or Slower to meet the fastest standard.
Well all know all OS’s are not equal. Old Winmo 6.5 is like driving a ford F250 with a 2 tons of dirt in bed. Faster is always better but the requirements to be fast in one OS might be significantly different in an other.
I do have to say this, I like the direction the hardware is going. Battery life is one of my concerns. I do like the specification thou.
We just need the rite OS on it. ; )
@Doug Simmons: I guess Murali (re-)introduces a good point. At what point does buyer’s remorse set in? If you look to buy a phone with the best possible specs, only to find out that within 4 months time the phone you bought is now near the middle of the high-end pack (or lower), how do you react?
I don’t/can’t argue hardware specs about Android. To date, that’s not what WP7 has been about. I CAN argue that not all phone’s get the same experience because of both hardware and software limitations and restrictions. 99% of all Android devices can’t run Netflix because of hardware restrictions. Lone exception, T-Mobile G2x. Interesting Snub, HTC Thunderbolt has the same chipset but mysteriously still can’t use Netflix. That’s horrendous. There should be no reason why a supped up phone like your Samsume Galaxy S II shouldn’t be able to have Netflix.
Hell with those specs, you should be able to go on their site straight from the browser and watch movies no app…well, wait a minute…you would need Silverlight, sorry. My fault. We all make mistakes. Don’t worry though, you can still overclock your phone to warp speed and crack a complex White House encrypted file or whatever the hell people do in their spare time with so much raw power at their finger tips. Wait, what am I saying, you guys still have that Blockbuster video app, that’s not going anywhere…wait a minute, I’m sorry…scratch that, I’m not thinking straight. My brain is still rattled from the Knicks getting swept, my bad…
Low blow.
My point was maybe WP’s greatest shortcoming is that its base is so small they’re still calling themselves early adopters and telling me to just wait for Microsoft to release sales figures. It’s a serious shortcoming in that no one takes it very seriously, including Microsoft as illustrated last week with this Bing software. Netflix is an exception, and good for Netflix for helping a brother out like that, but Android’s going to get HBO which I prefer over Netflix. Bet you green money WP will NOT get HBO just as they won’t get SiriusXM’s player. There’s just not much reason to get involved either developing, making or selling phones that are WP unless you think the market is so undersaturated to compensate enough to make it worth your while. Netflix and some other shovelware Microsoft paid for, exceptions.
Likewise, hardware. Because WP is nothing to take seriously my contention here, though I don’t know it for fact, is that the efforts from the likes of Samsung will be almost exclusively focused on Android. Not even Nokia is letting go of their other platforms. In addition to being a generation behind, there’s a chance, and I wouldn’t call it one in a million, that HTC and Samsung and LG will move on in life, all in on Android, none of this extracurricular experimentation, and let Nokia cover that. Given that Nokia just successfully leveraged Microsoft into lowering the minimum specs for the next generation of phones well over a year after the designs for the current generations of phones were stamped out, well …
With regard to things like GPU and multicore hardware support or whatever, (optimization which I’m now hearing even more than fragmentation), if that’s lacking in Android so badly that these specs about this single phone are drowned out of relevance, I’ve got a good feeling that Google will work their magic so that the platform and the company behind it, Google and Android in general, are not selling the hardware short.
New versions of Android are developed and adopted very rapidly (really it’s impressive — like NoDo, which I’m sure is either done or almost done, but arguably even better), people will begin adopting such fancy phones swiftly and developers will race to do their thing to take advantage of it. People buy lots of phones, it’s nuts, and they tend to be Androids. Meaning I have no doubt that this whole optimization thing will be mitigated swiftly whereas I have plenty of doubt about WP’s prospects. It’s just a few notches above probably doomed in my book.
So what I said is correct, right, but with an asterisk that WP’s code knows how to make do with what it has so well that its C# goodness actually makes the screen bigger, the battery greater, the phone thinner and lighter? Is that where we’re at now? To refresh your memory, Android gets the best hardware, period.
I totally agree that Android gets the BEST hardware, because it have to and there is no other way for the H/W manufacturer to differentiate from other OEM.
The issue with this is from Developer’s point of view he cannot take advantage of high end phones. Because a developer have to make sure his code works exactly the same way in all Android phones (? I couldn’t imagine how a developer could write one like this), so he should consider the minimum configuration available in the market. This ultimately leads to not utilizing the heavy juice processors available in any android phone.
My understanding is that the developer accommodations have been reasonable with the SDK and Google’s hardware requirements it insists on in exchange for letting someone get into the branded club. I’m not sure at this point why we’re obligated to look at it from the developer perspective. If Google gives them some challenges if they want their software to show up in the market for every phone, perhaps they make up for it by delivering a base of customers that is large enough not just to be taken seriously by people making “I’m an Android!” apps but, I don’t know, 3D turn by turn stuff for those who are not satisfied with what Google managed to include.
And the consumers do their share by buying these new devices. A lot of people are about to start buying this crazy Samsung phone. The handset distribution charts are heavily weighted toward the top shelf array and that will always be true, and that top shelf is about to be cleaned off and replaced with the likes of this phone and whatever’s in the racks of Verizon and Sprint that doesn’t say Windows Phone on it.
What is the point in having a high end phone without having a cool app to run on it…. will you someone buy an iPhone if he cannot access AppStore?
Hey, looks like WP got the Zagat’s guide with the same developer name on it that is in the Android market.
On Android, hundreds of ratings averaging four stars (half the price btw), on WP, two ratings, both of which are one star (though the Marketplace math rounds that up to two stars).
Why is it decent on Android and a POS for twice the price on WP? Because that’s how shovelware works.
1, 2.
Name some Android apps that I and / or anyone out of our Android audience cannot run because our hardware’s too new or too old. Give it a shot, Murali.
I don’t know why comments are not getting posted anymore in this blog
“Name some Android apps that I and / or anyone out of our Android audience cannot run because our hardware’s too new or too old”.
then what’s the point in having a high-end Hardware?
Regarding Zagat on windows Phone having low ranks is because many reviewers complaining it doesn’t even launch in windows phone. This is a developer issue and not a consumer issue.
BTW the link you mentioned for Windows phone is actually for Windows Mobile world. Check the “Reviews” section here http://www.windowsphoneapplist.com/zagat_to_go_for_wp7-a549.html
@Doug Simmons: You didn’t answer the question. He didn’t ask if the hardware could or couldn’t. He said what’s the point if you don’t have the apps to go with the hardware. You’re good for that not understanding questions BS.
Oh, I’ll take you on that HBO bet.
What, he said what’s the point in paying up for the hardware when software doesn’t keep up, right? Most of those specs, thickness, weight, battery, screen technology, new video out thing in addition to hdmi, decent front camera, 1080 this and that, HSPA+, faster processor, explain to me why that stuff is worthless because the Dog Whistle guy didn’t make a new version to take advantage of the GPU? If his app would be better by making it suit the newer phones, I imagine he will. As for all the other stuff over which this software has no bearing, I don’t have as easy a time shrugging them off as you do.
Grabbing onto any straw you can get at every opportunity. That’s a damn good phone and it’s still damn good even if developers just suddenly stop developing.
And you know it.
Awesome, so you got two cores that are not being properly being utilize by Android.
I am perfectly happy with my single core Samsung Focus. It doesn’t need the latest and greatest hardware to beat out the Motorola Atrix.
I am not the type that brag about the latest spec. Rather, I hand my Focus over to friends and the phone practically sell itself.
Doug still get his bragging rights though. I imagine Doug being the type that stubbornly believe that Obama is not born in the US.
I’d say sing it sister with that last thing you said but just how I’m surrounded by WPites, we’re surrounded by said birthers. They’re very sensitive about keeping politics separated from cell phones and especially hate it when you make even a dash of a hint of racism within their ranks or that Fox News and Glenn Beck are not infinitely better than the “lame stream” media.
I may be off the reservation right now, but Brianna, you and this multi core support stuff … c’mon, you’re a girl, what do you know about that. How ’bout a source on specifically how Gingerbread will leave the second core in idle but draining battery, how this phone is in fact not an improvement because of whatever it is you think you’re hysterically talking about?
What I’m more interested in, if you’d offer it, is your plan B for what to do (and when to implement the contingency plan) when it becomes woefully obvious that the WP ship is sinking so fast the hull is about to snap in half.
Or have you not even considered that?
1. That’s just it. I don’t know much about this dual-core stuff except that those phones specifically the Atrix is sluggish and it’s really the first impression that matters most.
2. I know that Windows Phone is not currently a hot product: I don’t need the biggest Android fanboy to tell me that. It’s a new product and doesn’t have many features of the established platform, but the basic is solid and of cause Mango will be a hefty upgrade.
3. You call Windows Phone “sinking”, yet you didn’t seem to recall that Android has no grip until Eclair. Mango will be a major upgrade, possible even bigger than Eclair.
What if you knew you wouldn’t get Mango until sometime in 2012 and it would involve having to buy a new phone? And how about with a moderate chance that that phone wouldn’t be much better, hardware wise, than what you’re currently using, and also that there’s more than a small chance that Windows Phone will become less and less of a priority of Microsoft, with Microsoft’s new strategy involving the phone team focusing on appeasing the carriers more than the customers, totally obliterating their pledge not to let this happen?
They’ve had to resort to bullshitting their customers. “Testing,” “working with carriers.” More like pleading with AT&T to please just let them save a little face and sign off on the update. Sure AT&T, add whatever you want to it, and instead of withholding this update withhold Mango instead. Total train wreck. They got off to a good start in terms of making something you all like — with just this little lingering issue of leaving you with little faith in the future.
Brianna you seem somewhat levelheaded and I admit I don’t seem that way at all. May I ask you when you think you’ll get Mango with the phone you have right now without having to do any tricks to get it and about how confident, percentage, are you that that will even happen?
As some of you have noted in response to my combative schpeels, it’s time for me to try a Windows Phone, even if only as a gesture, and also in that it may change the way I see things and how I write about them.
I don’t have a friend from whom to borrow one so the best I can do is hang out in an AT&T or T-Mobile joint the next time I pass one and spend a reasonable amount of time messing around with at least one of them.
1. I am locked into contract with my Samsung Focus until 2013 and am 100% sure I will get Mango. After all, Microsoft did demo Mango on HTC 7 Trophy and ASUS E600. In fact, Microsoft DID announced that the current devices will get mango.
2. Microsoft has announced NoDo in March and AT&T (which is one of the last carriers to roll out NoDo) do so in mid-April. This is unheard of in the Android world.
3. Of cause I know that the hardware wouldn’t get faster overnight. I want a little speed bump with Mango, but I am perfectly happy with the current performance since I’ve yet to experience a lag.
4. If you said that Microsoft is appeasing carriers, I don’t know what you would call Android. All the carriers’ and OEMs’ bloatware can be uninstalled and carriers and OEMs have their own section in the Marketplace.
simmmons, i have a surround… you could have a week long love afair with it that way noone can say you didnt give it long enough…