
Just Released Galaxy S9 Slower Than iPhone X/8 - nkjoep
https://thenextweb.com/mobile/2018/03/01/samsungs-new-galaxy-s9-scorched-by-old-iphones-in-speed-tests/
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cryptonitez
Even better, it loses to iPhone 7. Apple silicon is really far ahead right
now.

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lern_too_spel
And Apple software is really, really far behind. You can find videos going
back many years on YouTube of previous generation midtier Android phones
besting latest generation top of the line iPhones in day-to-day tasks like
launching communication, browsing, and social apps. Somehow, Apple forgot to
optimize for what people actually use their devices for.

Years ago: [https://youtu.be/hPhkPXVxISY](https://youtu.be/hPhkPXVxISY)

Months ago: [https://youtu.be/YH3uVWFoHe0](https://youtu.be/YH3uVWFoHe0)

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mindcrash
However, this Galaxy S9+ vs iPhone X video review apparently tells a
completely different story:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY4a0IPXotA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY4a0IPXotA)

While the S9+ seemingly handles everything and anything you throw at it the X
has some obvious difficulties every now and then.

PS: I (still) have a (ancient) iPhone 4 right now. No fanboyism here.

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brokenmachine
This is for the Exynos version which is slower than the USA/China version
which uses Snapdragon 845.

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throwaway84742
As a rule, performance of flagship Android phones lags iPhone by 2 years or
so. Been that way as long as I can remember. Worse, floating point perf lags
by about a factor of 3. I don’t know why Qualcomm and Samsung keep doing this
to themselves. It’s not like they can’t design decent chips. They just choose
not to. The situation is further exacerbated by Android being a disorganized,
sloppily put together pile of excrement.

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brokenmachine
That's your opinion.

I personally wouldn't touch an iphone with a ten-foot pole. I don't like
Apple's business practices, and I don't like their hardware (no headphone
socket/no SD card/smaller screen than I'd like).

Android isn't perfect, but I find it to be much more usable and logical in the
way it works. I have done some Android programming so maybe I just understand
it better than most, but my partner and my mother also seem to be able to use
it fine. I certainly wouldn't describe it as a "sloppily put together pile of
excrement". I am able to work around Android's deficiencies, something I can't
do when locked in the Apple jail.

FWIW, when I think of a "sloppily put together pile of excrement", I think of
itunes.

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throwaway84742
Try to use their camera2 api to see what I mean about sloppily put together.
I’m with you on iTunes. Thankfully I haven’t had to use it in years.

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bitmapbrother
You mean the same camera2 API that's used by the Google Pixel 2 - the world's
best smartphone camera?

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throwaway84742
Let me assure you, this was possible in spite of, not thanks to this API.
Words fail to describe how horrible and unusable it is.

~~~
londons_explore
When looking at the API, you have to take into account limitations the
designers had. Specifically, the API is part of the android layer that Google
writes and OEM's can customize. It must, however, support any underlying
camera HAL and associated hardware. The software for that is typically written
by SoC vendors, and therefore the camera2 API needs to work with existing HAL
layers without modification.

Camera API's also need to be performant. Specifically, converting the data
from one form to another, compressing or decompressing it, adjusting
colorspaces, rotating it, or copying it from one memory to another typically
isn't possible to do as part of the abstraction.

Simple things like rotating a 240fps video to be the right way up in real-time
really aren't doable, which means those details have to be passed on to the
application if the camera hardware is mounted the other way up.

That means the API itself needs to get the application to handle those details
if it wants to offer performance.

All those possible hardware details which the API can't hide for performance
reasons lead to a huge and complex API. If you want a simple API, you're free
to build one on top (and some exist), but beware - performance will be
atrocious on some hardware.

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throwaway84742
Excuses, excuses. Meanwhile iOS API for the same thing requires 1/10th the
amount of code, is easy to use, and has great documentation.

~~~
londons_explore
Except they can modify the hardware and HAL layers... Google cannot.

