[ttsoldier]

Specs only matter to android users. Because the OS is so buggy, they think faster processor etc will make it run better.

But 8 cores and 16gb of memory, the phone will run just as sluggish because that's how the OS is. It's not optimized. Its so fragmented .

I remember a friend once told me his bb10 is better than my Lumia because it has more memory. Its just how people think these days that more is better.

[ryan.kruger]

Specs only matter to android users. Because the OS is so buggy, they think faster processor etc will make it run better.

But 8 cores and 16gb of memory, the phone will run just as sluggish because that's how the OS is. It's not optimized. Its so fragmented .

I remember a friend once told me his bb10 is better than my Lumia because it has more memory. Its just how people think these days that more is better.

a windows phone with a quad core processor and 2GB would strike my fancy.

[hacer619]

a windows phone with a quad core processor and 2GB would strike my fancy.

My friend is a computer science student, he once told me never look at quantity these days, look for quality.

I bet anyone of you that my lumia 920 can outperform SGS4 when both are fully loaded with apps/games, you guys haven't seen the amount of ram android apps reserve.

[anon(5370748)]

Because people buy a phone that lasts 18 to 24 months. A Q1-2012 CPU is great for now, but how will it perform in 12 months or in 18 months?

It'll be great then, too - these are phone apps it's running, not Crysis or Maya. It's only the very specialized apps that are written to take advantage of a fast CPU. If a dev really wants to sell an app, they make it run just fine on a two-year old processor, because that's the lifespan of an average carrier contract and the goal is to get it on as many handsets as possible. If you're doing something that's taxing the processor on your phone that much, you should probably consider a laptop for that task.

2 Years ago a lot of people, including myself, said "Who needs more than 8GB storage" and back then I was only using 2.4GB and 8GB seemed a lot. The more pictures I take, the more video I shoot, the more offline navigation I use, the more space is needed. I am now using 7.4GB.

Storage is something else entirely, and that's heavily user-controlled, whereas CPU usage is entirely dev-controlled. Storage is a spec that's worth advertising for a phone, like screen size, and it's something that should influence a decision to get one phone over another. CPU is not.

Plus, from a marketing perspective it would be better to have a newer CPU+GPU.

That's probably the only reason. It's distracting and annoying like the megapixel spec, but you're right, it probably helps sell more phones.

[Ron Penton]

Because people buy a phone that lasts 18 to 24 months. A Q1-2012 CPU is great for now, but how will it perform in 12 months or in 18 months?

When paying a premium price, you want the best for your money. When there are phones out there with Q4-2012 CPU and GPU and even Q1-2013 CPU and GPU that are 2x as fast (even if you don't need it now) for the same price. It is a bummer.

2 Years ago a lot of people, including myself, said "Who needs more than 8GB storage" and back then I was only using 2.4GB and 8GB seemed a lot. The more pictures I take, the more video I shoot, the more offline navigation I use, the more space is needed. I am now using 7.4GB.

Plus, from a marketing perspective it would be better to have a newer CPU+GPU.

Three years ago I owned a Zune 64gb, and wondered why none of these newfangled "smart"phones couldn't store anywhere near as much. I still don't own one because my Zune now has 56 gigs filled with music, and there's no way any current phone can match that.

On the other hand, my cell phone is now 8 years old and still to this day runs everything I need it to, and still lasts 7 days per charge (20 days per charge when I first bought it).

CPU+GPU upgrades don't provide anything useful to me, and increasing them decreases the battery life dramatically. On the other hand, I *would* buy a phone that lasted a week per charge like my Zune does and has 64gb of storage just so I wouldn't have to carry 2 devices around. Because that's what I need, and it boggles my mind that anyone actually cares about CPU speed on phones when they run just fine as it is, and have for a long time.

[anon(5370748)]

a windows phone with a quad core processor and 2GB would strike my fancy.

For which apps?

[tk-093]

For which apps?

My guess would be hardware taxing games that hopefully come out over the next 2 years.

[link68759]

Will the 928 have a removable battery? Permanent batteries are a deal breaker for me.
Sent from my RM-824_nam_att_101 using Board Express

[anon(5370748)]

My guess would be hardware taxing games that hopefully come out over the next 2 years.

By the time that's an issue, gaming phones will cost $200 off-contract and displace devices like the Vita. Maybe then, they can compete on HW specs. Right now, phones are too expensive and general-purpose for that.

[a5cent]

a windows phone with a quad core processor and 2GB would strike my fancy.

WP8 and its app model are designed and spec'ed to run efficiently and deterministically with limited resources, the most important of those resources being RAM. As a result, even if a WP8 device had 128GB of RAM, WP8 would never use more than 1GB of that amount. Likewise, having 2GB of RAM would achieve/improve absolutely nothing. RAM utilization won't change until WP9. For all these reasons, wanting 2GB on WP8 is rather ridiculous.

Not quite as ridiculous, at least in theory, is the desire for a quad core CPU. The misunderstanding here is, as always, that more cores=faster. We've already seen dual core CPUs blow quads out of the water (last years snapdragons) but apparently, people prefer the simple spec sheet numbers over actual benchmarks. Fancy faster CPUs, not more cores, otherwise your just following the carrot that marketing departments dangle infront of those that don't actually understand CPU tech.

[a5cent]

Because people buy a phone that lasts 18 to 24 months. A Q1-2012 CPU is great for now, but how will it perform in 12 months or in 18 months?

It will perform just as well as it does now! The largest WP8 market will be 620's and 520's, even a year from now. That is what ALL professional devs will target. One year from now, you won't find a single app that performs poorly on today's WP8 devices. That is one of the benefits of standardizing the WP8 hardware/software platform.

[anon(5370748)]

WP8 and its app model are designed and spec'ed to run efficiently and deterministically with limited resources, the most important of those resources being RAM. As a result, even if a WP8 device had 128GB of RAM, WP8 would never use more than 1GB of that amount. Likewise, having 2GB of RAM would achieve/improve absolutely nothing. RAM utilization won't change until WP9. For all these reasons, wanting 2GB on WP8 is rather ridiculous.

Not quite as ridiculous, at least in theory, is the desire for a quad core CPU. The misunderstanding here is, as always, that more cores=faster. We've already seen dual core CPUs blow quads out of the water (last years snapdragons) but apparently, people prefer the simple spec sheet numbers over actual benchmarks. Fancy faster CPUs, not more cores, otherwise your just following the carrot that marketing departments dangle infront of those that don't actually understand CPU tech.

More CPU cores = faster video processing in Premiere Pro and After Effects because it can render multiple frames simultaneously. You have to have enough RAM per core to make this run as efficiently as possible, though, so 2GB isn't going to cut it - you really want at least 8 dedicated (2GB/core), though 16 (4/core) would probably be ideal. Of course this is meaningless unless you have a fast enough disk array to keep up with it, so we should really make sure to put a 900MB/s+ RAID in there as well, and make sure the bus is fast enough to support it. A 5lb phone that's 8.5"X11"x1" may _seem_ unreasonable, but Samsung will probably release one soon if they keep up on their current path.

[Leonard Alfred]

The lack of a MicroSD for the Lumia 920 is due to the unibody construction. They (Nokia) wanted specific asthetics. Adding a microSD would have degraded the look they wanted.

[ryan.kruger]

Okay, so by saying I would be drawn to a WP8 device with higher specs, I'm a dum dum who doesn't understand memory allocation or clock speed vs. Number of cores?

I'll be honest. I like the spec sheet. I'm not saying my WP underperforms, by any means. In fact, quite the opposite. But I always like the option of more.

So, before you get your panties in a twist and write inflammatory comments based on my dreams of 2013 hardware wishes for WP, do yourself a favor and scream all your nerdy fanboi defense into your pillow.

[a5cent]

More CPU cores = faster video processing in Premiere Pro and After Effects because it can render multiple frames simultaneously..

Ehmmm, yes, absolutely, however, I mentioned WP8 specifically multiple times, and was referring only to that OS! Memory management on Windows and WP are entirely different beasts. Everything I've said comes straight from MS' own WP dev docs, so it isn't really disputable. Your statements about premier and after affects are correct of course, but irrelevant for WP.

In regard to cores, I know what you are saying, but it too doesn't apply to smartphones, for various reasons, not the least of which being that you can't name a smartphone app that scales across cores in the same way premiere pro does on the PC.

[anon(5370748)]

Okay, so by saying I would be drawn to a WP8 device with higher specs, I'm a dum dum who doesn't understand memory allocation or clock speed vs. Number of cores?

In all seriousness, I still honestly want to know which apps - currently or in development - are available for WP8 that take advantage of faster hardware. For that matter, I'm not that familiar with current Android handsets - are there any apps that run noticeably better on better hardware there (assuming the two phones are on the same version of the OS)?

[anon(5370748)]

Ehmmm, yes, absolutely, however, I mentioned WP8 specifically multiple times, and was referring only to that OS! Memory management on Windows and WP are entirely different beasts. Everything I've said comes straight from MS' own WP dev docs, so it isn't really disputable. Your statements about premier and after affects are correct of course, but irrelevant for WP.

my sarcasm apparently didn't come through on that post - sorry :)

[a5cent]

my sarcasm apparently didn't come through on that post - sorry :)

lol, sarcasm detector died here a while ago, since many people are serious about the craziest statements. Sorry too.

[a5cent]

Okay, so by saying I would be drawn to a WP8 device with higher specs, I'm a dum dum who doesn't understand memory allocation or clock speed vs. Number of cores?

Neither clock rate nor cores are reliable measures of CPU performance. Both are easily scalable and simplistic, which makes them perfect for marketing, just like megapixels.

I don't know if you're a dumb dumb. At least you are honest in saying that you buy into the spec sheet marketing BS.

[Daniel Ratcliffe]

Please, let's keep the conversation clean. Don't throw insults about.

[a5cent]

In all seriousness, I still honestly want to know which apps - currently or in development - are available for WP8 that take advantage of faster hardware. For that matter, I'm not that familiar with current Android handsets - are there any apps that run noticeably better on better hardware there (assuming the two phones are on the same version of the OS)?

I think that is a trick question ;-)

Almost all WP8 apps could make use of faster hardware, but not if extra performance comes ONLY in the form of more cores, in which case the answer would likely be none at all.

On Android things are a bit different, because a lot more work is left to the general purpose computing cores instead of specialized co-processors. Current WP8 devices actually have seven cores, all of which are used extensively, two of which are general purpose computing cores. For this reason, and because Android supports unrestricted multitasking, having more cores will be more easily noticed on Android, but I still know of not a single Android app that makes good use of more than two cores.

[willied]

Because people buy a phone that lasts 18 to 24 months. A Q1-2012 CPU is great for now, but how will it perform in 12 months or in 18 months?

When paying a premium price, you want the best for your money. When there are phones out there with Q4-2012 CPU and GPU and even Q1-2013 CPU and GPU that are 2x as fast (even if you don't need it now) for the same price. It is a bummer.

2 Years ago a lot of people, including myself, said "Who needs more than 8GB storage" and back then I was only using 2.4GB and 8GB seemed a lot. The more pictures I take, the more video I shoot, the more offline navigation I use, the more space is needed. I am now using 7.4GB.

Plus, from a marketing perspective it would be better to have a newer CPU+GPU.

Yeah, I don't understand some people's logic, either. "It works fine now, so let's never make any more advancements." That's just a silly thing to say/think. Or the other one, "I don't use more than 8GB so why should anyone else?"

[anon(5370748)]

Almost all WP8 apps could make use of faster hardware, but not if extra performance comes ONLY in the form of more cores, in which case the answer would likely be none at all.

I guess what I meant is which apps would run perfectly fine (full speed) on a phone released today with, say a 1.8GHz dual or quad-core Snapdragon that would not run full-speed on the 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon in my 920? I suspect none, aside from possibly a few ms faster initial load time off a cold boot. I'm also guessing that any given chipset will no longer be able to run a new OS (and new apps with new minimum requirements) long before processor performance becomes an issue. If everyone's timing everything appropriately, that would be a ~2-year cycle to coincide with contract lengths, plus probably a year buffer for laggards who don't want to trade up immediately.

[anon(5370748)]

Yeah, I don't understand some people's logic, either. "It works fine now, so let's never make any more advancements."

That's not what we're saying. It's not that tech shouldn't move forward, it's a matter of which specs to care about. I'm proposing that there's no good reason for the consumer to care about the CPU speed/cores in a phone, or consider it when choosing a device. Or, most annoyingly, use it to try to convince other people (especially on other platforms) that their phone is better because of it.

[a5cent]

Yeah, I don't understand some people's logic, either. "It works fine now, so let's never make any more advancements." That's just a silly thing to say/think. Or the other one, "I don't use more than 8GB so why should anyone else?"

I too want to state that you've completely misunderstood the argument. I too want advancements, but I want advancements that matter.

I couldn't care less about a simple bump up from an 8MP to a 13MP camera, or a crippled and throttled pseudo octa-core CPU that will be no better at running our apps than the CPUs we already have available today. However, as long as consumers buy into this nonsense, and the industry doesn't have to do more to sell the masses on new gadgets, why bother?

How many of you realize that megapixels, core count and CPU clock rates are all things that are easily scaled solely through improved manufacturing processes? That means they require comparatively little real engineering effort, read, low risk and predictable time to market. It's no coincidence that it is precisely these metrics that are put front and center by the hardware industry and thus figure so prominently on their marketing/spec sheets. Unfortunately, after a certain point, further scaling of those metrics offer little real world returns. We have crossed that point in all those metrics, which is why they are now largely irrelevant for everything but marketing, which unfortunately continues to work just fine.