You’re arguing the aluminum could be more polished, because people can still use a magnifying glass to see imperfections in the metal. So yes, ludicrous.
Android vendors have a history of blast-processing specs nonsense to appeal to *cough* unsophisticated audiences, that can only comprehend “this has a bigger number therefore it must be better”. You know, 8 cores vs. 4 cores, 2960x1440 display vs 1920x1080 display, etc.
What they should be asking, is about the quality of those individual display pixels and those CPU cores. And that’s where Qualcomm (for CPU) and Android vendors (for display) will screw you hard. As amply documented in dozens of posts above ↑, balls slow single threaded perf, which is 95% of overall performance on a device, and… lots of crappy pixels:
The display on the iPhone 7 is … by far the best performing mobile LCD display that we have ever tested, and it breaks many display performance records.
The iPhone 7 matches or breaks new Smartphone display performance records for:
• The Highest Absolute Color Accuracy for any display (1.1 JNCD) – Visually Indistinguishable from Perfect
• The Highest Absolute Luminance Accuracy for any display (±2%) – Visually Indistinguishable from Perfect
• Very Accurate Image Contrast and Intensity Scale (with Gamma 2.21) – Visually Indistinguishable from Perfect
• The Highest Peak Brightness Smartphone for any Average Picture Level APL (602 to 705 nits)
• The Highest (True) Contrast Ratio for any IPS LCD display (1,762) – Higher Dynamic Contrast Ratios are phony
• The Lowest Screen Reflectance for any Smartphone display (4.4 percent)
• The Highest Contrast Rating in High Ambient Light for a Smartphone for any APL (137 to 160)
• The Smallest Color variation with Viewing Angle (2.1 JNCD or less)
However.
VR demands way more PPI, 4k and beyond, because the display is literally an inch in front of your eye at that point. It’s the only practical use I can think of for that PPI.
The OLED complaint is absolutely 100% legit, and will be rectified in iPhone 8. I think Apple was waiting for OLED to catch up in some key areas, and it definitely has.
“Boy, the CPUs on this device are really terrible.”
“Yeah, I know; and only 8 of them.”
The Galaxy S8 is the first in a new generation of OLED Smartphones that have a Full Screen Display design. It has many major and important state-of-the-art display performance enhancements, features and functions, with mobile OLED display technology now advancing faster than ever. The Galaxy S8 is the most innovative and high performance Smartphone display that we have ever lab tested. So the Galaxy S8 becomes the Best Performing Smartphone Display, earning DisplayMate’s highest ever A+ grade.
I gotta say, over time I have earned a lot of respect for Apple’s “build quality first” principle. Also, the pivot of the world towards these closed phone ecosystems, when closed ecosystems have always been Apple’s strong suit anyway … it fits them to a T. I also fucking hated the floppy drive, and flash, and Apple led the charges there, which I felt (and still feel) is the right choice. Ditto for the headphone jack, ya haters!
But the main thing I am arguing for here is a world where, when you walk into a store to get an Android device from dozens of possible vendors, all of them are not based on Qualcomm hardware.
Seriously. I would consider myself an enthusiast when it comes to phones and technology in general but I don’t even know how many cores my phone has. I also have no idea what the resolution is. But I do know that it has 2GB of RAM and that I can install an SD card.
Plus man I am gonna be fuckin pissed if/when headphone jacks go the way of the dodo. Bluetooth on my car stereo has the faintest but absolutely perceptible distortion/static on every sound it makes and it drives me crazy. Across three phones now, so I’m thinking it’s the stereo itself -.-
My AirPods have been about 99% reliable. I have had a single drop, which is why I can’t say perfect. And the convenience of the “no wires at all” outweighs the 1% chance for a drop.
We have approximately 5600+ folks in North America that have moved to wifi or bluetooth headsets as part of one small business unit in our company going to no more desk phones.
I can tell you that over the long numbers game, call drops, sound issues, can indeed be a huge issue. And I’m saying this as someone like you who uses a Bluetooth headset for listening to tunes at the gym.
Probably what we should both hope for is stronger advances for bluetooth as well as headsets for it. For that, Apple deserves kudos if things swing that way.
Bluetooth 5 seems like it’s going to be a good step forward, and is already implemented in the Samsung Galaxy S8. Which, bringing it right back to the thread title, is as a result of their Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC. So, um, I guess they’re not all bad? I do expect Apple to implement Bluetooth 5 in their Fall release phones.
