Samsung's latest Galaxy A53 is 33% slower than the previous Galaxy A52s | Hacker News Reader

Samsung's latest Galaxy A53 is 33% slower than the previous Galaxy A52s

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195 pointsadrianvincent148 comments

The exynos vs snapdragon issue is a long standing issue with Samsung. There's also very significant differences between the flagship phones like the S22 ultra sold in EU (exynos) and the ones sold in the US or Asia (snapdragon)

Getting an Exynos galaxy means more thermal throttling, lower performances and is just not competitive with other brands for the budget.

For now, at least. I imagine they'll have caught up before too many generations. Samsung clearly has the resources to keep up.

Based on what I've read it seems to me that the gap has become worth over the years... The last time I remember reading that the exynos was competitive was around the Galaxy S6 so 2015

The S6 was clearly much better Exynos than Snapdragon. They were competitive for a few years more after.

That was because the s6 exynos was to first mobile cpu with 14nm and the equivalent snapdragon (810) was a particularly bad SoC. To the point where it was outperformed by previous gen snapdragons. So yes Exynos was competitive then, but mostly because the competition had an exceptionally bad year.

Samsung has been promising that for almost 8 years now. For some reason they absolutely cannot figure out how to design a proper high end SoC. I'm not familiar with the design of exynos chips but I don't understand how they barely do better than Mediatek. They have control over the entire design of their devices and should have performances that is closer to Apple than it is to low/mid-end off the shelf designs.

Exynos has had at least one implementation which was significantly better than the contemporary Qualcomm SoC. (The Galaxy S6’s 7420).

I thought both samsung and qualcomm dropped their custom cores for exynos and snapdragon at this point. So is there still such a huge difference between the two? Aren't both of them using the best arm licensed core? I get that for some reason apple sillicon like performance won't happen but this is just sad from samsung.

Also samsung seems to be doing something fishy with benchmark results. It seems like exynos has been very close or even outperforming snapdragon for years now in benchmarks but the performance gap in real life is still massive. My friend imported a samsung s21 and it is a nightmare compared to my snapdragon s21.

there are still many potential points of differentiation on each SoC. For flagships, the cores are pretty much identical, but the cache sizes, fabric, process, GPUs, etc. can change.

For the SoCs being compared here, the new Exynos model has half the big cores of the Qualcomm model.

It might be benchmark cherrypicking. Companies like AMD, Intel, even Apple pick the best looking data to make their silicon look much better than the competitor. The latest example was apple claiming its integrated gpu in its new apple silicon chip used in the Mac Studio was more powerful than nvidias 3090… that didnt turn out to be the case needless to say

Yes, and moreso in some applications than others. For example, Exynos graphics drivers are utter garbage and on unconventional graphics tasks like console emulation Exynos chips perform like a Snapdragon that's five or more years out of date.

Snapdragon 888 vs Exynos 2100 is great comparison because they use same process and almost same Cortex core. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16463/snapdragon-888-vs-exyno...

I wish I could read this review in 8 Gen1 vs 2200, but the writer took apart from Anandtech.

I remember with my S9, even though the Exynos was slower, that's the device everyone wanted because the bootloader could be unlocked.

The snapdragon devices in Asia can be unlocked, only the US snapdragons cannot. I have mine unlocked and rooted (even if losing managed work profiles is a huge pain)

Why would Samsung own flagship chip perform worse than qualcoms? Wouldn't it be in Samsung's interest to either use an inferior version of the snapdragon or throttle it?

They still need a competitive offering against other Android manufacturers at the high end.

Xiaomi and others are happy to buy Qualcomm chips if it gives them the high end advantage

I don't understand, in the US Samsung uses Qualcomm but it is the US where a lot of these Chinese phones are not available yet in Europe where I can buy a Huawei phone Samsung uses Exynos.

To be honest, I also do not get Samsung's strategy. None of my tech literate friends in europe would buy Samsung because of this. I really wonder how much it impacts their sales.

This is because of old contracts and agreements, including patent agreements for LTE modem etc

In case anyone else is wondering what causes the different models for different markets

>First, Qualcomm can't produce enough processor to fit in all of the Samsung's phones. Second, snapdragon is too expensive, especially if you buy it in other countries. So, Samsung only uses snapdragon in countries where Qualcomm sells them cheaper.

As well as wanting to be exposed into more markets

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Samsung-use-Exynos

It also alternates between versions. Sometimes Exynos is better, and sometimes Snapdragon is. Somehow, this also has a massive impact on picture quality.

This nonsense made me go out of my way to buy a Pixel 5 (in 2022) instead of an S22. Those are the only two reasonably-sized phones I could find.

is it legal to sell products with different quality under same brand ? I mean if I consider myself mislead, do I have a case ?

In the same market, maybe, but Samsung has U.S. versions of their products as do many other brands.

Happens all the time with monitors and dual sourcing of parts like panels where it is lottery on who has supplied. With the s22 the 'intl' and 'us' models have different model numbers. I'm more concerned when buying a car and trying to figure out in which country it has been assembled (quality and parts used can differ)

Day to day, anything past an iPhone 6s or 7 and phones pretty much feel the same speed.

If you game or edit pics or anything else that needs a faster proc, sure, you'll notice not having the fastest phone. But if you email, reddit, HN, twitter, etc, you're really not going to notice much.

Rumors are the iPhone 14 will have the same A15 and only the Pro will get the A16. I think you'll see a bunch of people freak out about this, but honestly, phones really don't need to be faster at this point.

>reddit, [...] twitter

Probably not the best examples because they have bloated webapps that are pretty slow/laggy.

Fair. But they're laggy on everything.

Yes.

Yeah, Reddit is just (deliberately!) bad on mobile.

Agreed.

Reddit on a desktop does this kinda weird jiggle thing.

I thought my eyes were going bad, and then you notice the page is still loading after 10 seconds.

For reddit you can use Infinity or other reddit clients, I use Infinity and I don't even need an account to subscribe to subredits that I want to follow and for me it seems to be a lot faster then the official reddit app.

RedReader

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.quantumbadger.redreader/

If you're using reddit on mobile, use any app besides the official one. Personally, I use Bacon Reader.

If you're on desktop, use the old reddit layout, and install RES if you can.

Nearly every complaint I see about reddit's UX is because of people using the official app (Seriously, how is the official app the worst one?) or the new reddit UX.

As for Twitter, I've never felt its website or app to be slow on mobile.

I think most people use the reddit website.

If you have to download an app to use what is fundamentally a website, that website has failed miserably.

If you access the website from a mobile browser it will nag you at every opportunity to switch to the app. It's quite annoying, so I wouldn't be surprised if most people give up.

There's a button to turn off the nags the menu. I don't think you even need to be signed-in.

Apps force you into a single-threaded experience, which I dislike. Browsers have tabs, which I like.

You can use nitter instances instead of Twitter. UI on there is super lightweight and usable, something you hope the original one would be. Also you are not distracted by constant popups for logging in.

The only feature fight I want to see from phone makers and networks anymore is latency.

Voice latency is a big part of why people type on a telephone, instead of talking on it. We're entering a second generation of people who have no idea what it was like talking on an analog POTS network. They'll even argue with you, claiming their VOIP connection across the ocean has the same quality and latency as someone talking on a hard line to a neighbor down the road. Ummm... no. Not even close. Sadly, the older generations didn't realize how good they had it.

Remember when phone companies used to compete on quality? AT&T's "You get what you pay for" campaign. Sprint's "So clear you can hear a pin drop" campaign. MCI's "Static-free coast-to-coast."

Today, it's "We'll bundle six other services you don't want with your phone service and charge you a $1,200 for a new phone. Aren't we great!"

IIRC, Sprint was just increasing the bass somewhere in their connection. But you can't really think that a POTS call sounds better than a modern VOIP call? Maybe the super-compressed crap you get when you dial a number, but apps use way better sounding codecs.

IIRC, Sprint was just increasing the bass somewhere in their connection

That was AT&T's method. AT&T even had a demo line that you could call that would play various sounds and music and you could press a button to switch between the modes to hear the difference.

But you can't really think that a POTS call sounds better than a modern VOIP call?

Yes, I can. Because just before the pandemic, I was able to use a real POTS network in a remote part of the country. Called from one ranch to another over a rural switch. And it was awesome.

The quality of a call is about more than its audio bandwidth. If that was true, then people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between an iPod and a vacuum tube amp. And, again, latency is a massive factor, as is true asynchronous communication. Arguing over POTS is a whole different thing than arguing over VOIP.

People who defend VOIP claiming it's just as good have never done a side-by-side comparison. The only advantage VOIP has over anything is the usual "make it cheaper" race to the bottom.

POTS, is largely of varying service too. The switched network of old was mostly replaced by G.711 on TDM connections, which is probably an improvement for long distance. So at that point it was no longer strictly analog, but then the phone companies started shaving pennies and doing things like pair gain to cram more phone lines down the same wires, which was a fairly large reduction in line quality for local calls.

These days so much of it is routed over IP, which is where all the latency got added.

So, its hard to know what your "ranch" actually was.

OTOH, its hard for any hardwired system to be half as bad as your average cell phone which are dealing with constant channel quality issues, which results in the robot voice (for lack of a better description), and all the broken up audio, or simply silence that one frequently gets from a cell phone. Basically cell phones suck for actually talking to people. <shrug> But once again, convenience trumps quality.

VOIP needs added latency when done over a mobile connection. Digital mobile connections aren't the most stable or reliable. I can ping Google from my phone and get results anywhere between 30 and 300 ms. With latency being all over the place, you have to add a significant buffer to avoid audio cutouts.

And personally, I'd rather have a little latency added than have to talk over a shitty POTS line. I always had a hard time understanding people over it.

A great deal of the processor on phones and for people to upgrade aren’t necessarily the processor speed but a better ISP and also an accelerator to process pictures faster. The secondary reasons to buy a phone is getting a better camera and battery life / battery is nearing end of life.

Then again I upgrade phones if they come out in green also. My last upgrade was for a 120hz screen refresh rate.

Okay, but the article was about the multicore speed difference.

Add to the list being constantly out of disk space because of all the pictures and videos on whatsapp. It used to happen to people with 16 GB phones, the latest safe size is 64 GB now.

It's also not as much the hardware, but the software running on the chip. Any programmer can make a fast chip feel slow if they're not careful. Especially year after year as changes stack up. Apple tends to not abandon old hardware as readily as their competitors do. They actively work to ensure software updates do not cause performance regressions in older models. People in our industry have a tendency to abandon 'released to production technology' so quickly it really hurts the end user. I think Tesla is another example of a company that doesn't abandon their software after it leaves the door like most other car companies.

Higher Refreshrate is quite useful.

I don't keep up on phone rumors. Do you think the 14 will stick with the A15 to get the regular iPhone lower in price compared to the Pro?

Another aspect of Apple processor updates is increased battery performance per unit of work.

Battery in SE 2 compared to 3 is 11% larger (1821 mAh to 2018 mAh) but advertised "video playback" duration is 15% larger (13 h to 15h). This is unlike the comparison of SE 1 to 2 in which an 18% larger battery (1624 mAh to 1821 mAh) was entirely eaten by screen, etc. for no improved playback duration.

13 h 15 h

I use an ancient SIM-free phone and the place I notice the speed issue is never within the applications I use it for (Stellarium, Maps, All Trails, IRS etc). It's switching between applications. Once you're "fully inside" one of the apps, yeah, the speed of this 10 year old device is completely adequate and almost indistinguishable (with these apps at least) from a similar phone today.

That sounds like slow flash, not a slow processor.

Having had an iPhone 6s, X, and 12, I disagree. I'm a heavy user but of relatively basic functionality – I'm not gaming on my phone.

Switching apps, latency for apps to restore state once you switch to them, latency for the camera to save a photo, latency on pretty much all interactions is noticeably better.

I'm not talking about dropped frames, Apple have always been good at ensuring a fluid user experience, but there are lots of points where apps can take a few seconds to do something on older hardware, or do it nearly instantly on newer hardware.

Does a few seconds make a difference? To my life, no. To my enjoyment of using the device, yeah. Whether it's worth frequent upgrades or not is a value judgement we can only make for ourselves, but there are many perceptible differences devices more than a few years apart.

How is the battery on your 6S? I don't doubt that the older processor is slower in places, but one with a degraded battery will be much slower.

When I upgraded it I think it was at 87% health and my X when it was at about 83%. Apple claim there is no throttling for these amounts.

Having just upgraded from a 6s to a Xs, yeah, there's a speed difference with basic web browsing, even on lightweight sites like HN. It's the difference between fast enough and snappy.

>Rumors are the iPhone 14 will have the same A15 and only the Pro will get the A16. I think you'll see a bunch of people freak out about this, but honestly, phones really don't need to be faster at this point.

I think if this rumor were true then Apple would not have launched the iPhone SE with the A15. There was really no reason for the SE to have the A15 but they shoved it in there, anyway.

The SE is an odd ball device. It is a device that is explicitly for the crowd that will not upgrade their phone every year. Apple wanted to make sure they had a 5G phone for that crowd because they want all their devices on 5G now. They could have put an A14 in it, but they needed the efficiencies of the A15 to make up for the 5G battery suck because they could only increase battery capacity so much and still fit the iPhone 8 frame.

Possibly. However, Apple does continue to sell the 12 and 12 Mini. However, the 12 Mini is substantially more expensive... because reasons.

TBH the Apple lineup has never been more confusing.

Had an SE 1st gen. I had to upgrade last year as Duolingo wouldn't load anymore even after killing all other apps. The 13 Mini is too big for one-handed use and gives me migraines from PWM.

If the Note 9 is any indication, it's not the hardware, it's the bloody software - Samsung is seemingly terrible at it!

The North American Note 9 used a Snapdragon 845 SoC while the European version used Samsung's own Exynos 9810. The Exynos consistently benched lower, had worse battery life and ran hotter. The upside was that the Exynos version has an unlocked bootloader, which is huge imo.

With a custom kernel made by hobbyists in their spare time, you can have the 9810 on par with the SD845 or even better. It has great undervolting and overclocking potential on both the CPU and GPU. The difference between the stock Samsung kernel and Zeus for example, is mind boggling.

Sadly, flashing a custom ROM on it involves tripping an eFuse and losing some Samsung functionality, but if you don't care about Samsung Pay and whatever other "secure" garbage they offer, it's worth it.

Definitely not the software. Samsung consistently ships very well tuned flagships. Compare their performance and efficiency to other devices using the same SoC, and that much is clear.

Of course, we can only say this about their Qualcomm devices, since there aren’t other Exynos devices to compare against Samsung’s.

Qualcomm makes all their own firmware, drivers, etc. and my impression is that it's considered to have much better software quality than Samsung's stuff. Take this with a grain of salt though since I'm hearing this second-hand.

Devices using the exact same Qualcomm SoC can have significantly different performance and efficiency [0]. Samsung devices tend to do very well, even though they are typically among the first to ship the chips.

In the article I've linked, you'll see the Samsung S10 gets the longest battery life of any device using the Snapdragon 855, while still placing at or near the top in the performance charts.

[0]: https://www.anandtech.com/show/14794/snapdragon-855-phone-ro...

> Sadly, flashing a custom ROM on it involves tripping an eFuse and losing some Samsung functionality, but if you don't care about Samsung Pay and whatever other "secure" garbage they offer, it's worth it.

It's not just Samsung Pay you'll lose. Blow the eFuse and you'll play constant cat-and-mouse with Google Pay, Netflix and a shitload of banking apps.

It's really sad that we have to choose between rooting our devices (and giving us the same amount of control that we have on desktop PCs and laptops) or participating in digital life.

Yep. I can install software and manage my laptop and desktop computers. I can grant superuser/admin permission when needed. And yet somehow I'm able to pay my mortgage, transfer funds between checking and savings accounts, buy and sell stocks, and stream movies without the whole thing crashing and burning.

The idea that it's just unthinkable to have the ability to grant superuser rights on my stupid pocket computer is ridiculous. I can't help but think it's because it's another chance for said services to avoid the "mistake" that was (relatively) open computing and the choice it offers.

Oh, the other stuff is just because of root access. Tbh, the only inconvenience for me is banking apps, but fortunately no one canceled the browser + websites yet.

As for Netflix and others, I don't understand why they accept Widevine (the daft DRM on phones, unlocking Samsungs leads to 720p max resolution or something instead of 4K). It's not like it curbs piracy lol

I can't believe how bad Samsung has become.

You pay them extra to avoid "Chinese brands" and you get ads everywhere, bloated devices with very bad performance.

I'm still using a Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition and even if it's slow, it still works pretty well. It has some stuff in it that I can't get rid off but overall is a great tablet. I've used countless Samsung devices ever since and I only see the quality going down.

Does anyone know why their software is just so so bad? I have Samsung phones for testing and development work, and I don't understand why anyone would ever use these things. They're loaded down with so much half-assed knockoff shovelware of common services, some of which have ads, and nearly all of which keep issuing out useless notifications.

It's like Samsung forgot that phones serve people, not the other way around. Samsung software is just so damn needy and won't get out of the way.

And it's not like these things are cheap either! The user is very much a paying customer, not a freeloader who's a product to be sold to other businesses.

I recommend running Universal Android Debloater [1] on all Samsung devices (I have 2 of them) plus other manufacturers are even worse (e.g. Xiaomi) and the same accept works wonders on them too.

[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/universal-android-debloater-u...

I still use my old Pixel2 as my work phone from my employer. The reason?

I can only select Samsung devices as mobile phones from my employer.

I just won't.

I find their phones OK when new but I have a feeling at the 2 year mark they turn off software optimizations in an android update. I have no proof but the speed of the device degrades significantly. It goes from nice and fast to _adequate_ speed but not snappy smooth and always with irritating lag on some basic functions like keyboard. (my experience with flagship Galaxy S / Note series)

Sure enough, the current year model is blazingly fast with same apps installed, even when the specs are not very different... speed lasts until that 2 year mark comes.

Agreed. The problem is, the competition is worse... basically only with Samsung and Google you have the assurance that you'll get firmware updates for a reasonable amount of time, and Google's palette of devices is limited.

The problem as I see it, Samsung wanted to carve out a piece of Android to create their own experience. They wanted to be like Apple and Google and have their own first party apps.

The problem is that Android already comes with all these first party apps so you just end up with duplication. This problem is only further compounded by the carrier having their hand in the cookie jar and having their own first party apps.

From this all you end up with is massive app duplication on your phone and every app fighting to be your choice. I remember buying an S7 from Verizon years back, it had 3 dialers, 3 messaging apps, and 4 web browsers.

Dialers: Verizon Dialer, Samsung Dialer, Android Dialer.

Messaging: Verizon Message, Samsung Messages, Android Messages

Web Browser: Verizon Web, Samsung Web, Chrome, <3rd party browser added by Samsung>, <3rd party browser added by Verizon>

I think you're giving them too much credit by saying they're attempting to create their own experience. I don't believe that's the motivation at all. I don't see any reason to believe Verizon wants to improve the dialer or the messaging app in any way. They're building these things as data exfiltration applications. In the case of some of the apps you can't even remove them. It's absolutely disgusting to be honest.

This is what no competition gives you. The Huaweis are much better, and were starting to eat into Samsung's business, but without the Google services its hard no for most people including me.

For what it's worth, even outside Android their software is horrible. Check out Samsung Magician, their SSD tool [0]. That UI just doesn't make any sense. Samsung is a hardware company (and they're great at that), can't remember any good software from them, ever.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/lbqdn8i.png

That looks like the old interface.

Here it is on my machine, latest version

https://i.imgur.com/dg9JOr2.png

Not saying this is better :D

It's a screenshot from three years ago or so, it was just so bad that I had to keep it. And yeah, can't say that the new interface is an improvement. ;)

The tool works well enough, though.

They seem to be really bad at user experience stuff specifically.

In their defense, this is exactly how most engineers would run a company I think, haha. The only problem is that they are in literally every segment, including ones where usability is really important.

Seeing as how their Washing Machines self destruct, I don't think they may be that good at hardware either. Yeah its been a few years since we heard them in the news but I am hearing through the grapevine that they products still are poor quality(at least the appliances).

[1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4ddIfgarPg

>Does anyone know why their software is just so so bad?

Is Samsung "good at software" at all?

I'm wondering if maybe Samsung's skill set as a company just doesn't include software / they don't have the people who know how to manage software development / products / teams and etc?

I remember ages ago I had a Samsung phone and their software started to trickle out and I thought "woah they're just getting started it seems, but they've got the money to get better". A few years later they hadn't improved at all, and were clearly going to push their own software and at that point I decided I was out...

Their hard drives are pretty reliable as far as I've seen, which would seem to indicate that they don't regularly mess up the drivers I guess.

I assume you mean the on-disk firmware. The "drivers" would normally be software provided by the OS, and is protocol- not vendor-specific.

Indeed I do. Good point!

One UI is pretty good. Probably the best version of android especially w.r.t consistency. But yes the camera software is... okay at best. The sensors are great but the software processing makes it impossible to have iPhone-tier pictures. The only other problem with One UI is that it often has one google app and one samsung app for doing the same thing, but I guess that's just necessary due to google policy.

The galaxy store is useless too, but the new optional samsung apps that you can get from there can be awesome. The Sound Assistant app has been a game changer and it's only available on the galaxy store

Suspicion: Samsung sees itself as a hardware and component company first, and doesn't prioritize the quality of these user-facing apps.

About why somebody would buy it:

for me it was a combination of having a normal audiojack, smaller form factor(s9) and pricing.

I did buy the phone after it was already out for a year or two and was cheaper...

Software is ok for me, but I don't use anything from samsung except for the mail app and clock, so it is not like I would notice.

Is it bad though ? I honestly have no clue where people are seeing ads. Their base apps are all 1:1 better than Google's and replacing their launcher with Nova is so trivial that I wouldn't even consider that modification. Bixby is shitty, but I insta disable it and keep Google assistant on instead.

Thr UI itself feels mature and fast. I never run into problems with lagging and I practically run my phone (zfold3) on battery saver all the time. (I don't need to, it just doesn't seem to have any cons for me, so might as well)

Their camera app is great and split screen is executed much better than Google. Dex and pen support are pretty much exclusive to Samsung.

Maybe the nonflagship experience is terrible. But their flagship experience for me has been stellar.

I've been happy with my A51. I haven't even bothered to change the stock launcher. It lets me organize the app drawer alphabetically which is basically all I care about. The email client is decent and there's no ads I see. The Galaxy store has ads but that's insanely easy to ignore. The phone is admittedly not the fastest but I only notice that in the occasional game. The features I do care about like the screen, NFC, SD card slot all work great. Often the faster cheaper phones skimp on the screen and always leave out NFC.

And yeah split screen is better than stock.

> Does anyone know why their software is just so so bad?

I have never heard of any software developer in the US aspiring to work at Samsung. I assume their pay to quality of life at work ratio is pretty bad.

Samsung tend to install bloats, but also there's a history that stock Android lacks features and Samsung implement it and ported to AOSP. I still miss some big features on AOSP that available on OneUI/MIUI/whatever.

Also the US gets fast Snapdragon while the rest of the world gets inferior Exynos CPUs for the same price.

Had now a cheap realme GT Master Edition, no Ads, no bloated device (every preinstalled external App could be removed), and it is fast, Snapdragon 778G Chip.

I don't like chinese brands, but Samsung & Co. did not deliver competetive devices in lower price-area.

I bought a Chinese phone once, it worked fine for a few months, then I had a long call on Teams and it suddenly turned off - it was very hot. I never managed to turn it back on.

I quit Samsung as soon as I started getting ads for Spotify on the music player on my Galaxy S5, and just started buying shenzhen chinese phones. I haven't seen an ad or piece of bloatware since. The quality is quite good, and the features often surpass most mid-range devices for about half the price. They're either stock android or very close to it.

I wouldn't be surprised to find malware preinstalled on those devices, tbh. I'd wipe it and install AOSP or LineageOS on it instead.

I will continue buying refurbished LG V35s until they either become impossible to find, or carriers stop supporting 4G LTE.

Not that I've needed to buy a refurbished LG V35 yet- it's going on 3.5 years without missing a beat. The only bloatware was LG's personal fitness app, and a handful of carrier stuff that was easily uninstalled or disabled.

My old V20 was similarly durable, besides OLED burn-in after about 3 years. I still keep it by my desk in case I need to use Find My Device.

>I will continue buying refurbished LG V35s

What's so good about them?

Battery life is very good, minimal bloatware, good display, adequate camera, wireless charging, headphone jack, noticeably superior audio chipset (which is great for my big headphones), fits in my hand, snappy UI responses, fast charging support, new enough OS to support all the apps I use.

It is still more than enough phone for me, 4 years after it was released. It's showing no signs of slowing down, either.

I have been hearing the exact same complaints about Samsung literally since it entered the smartphone market.

- Bloat? Yup, touchwiz.

- Ads? They had an unremovable galaxy store app early on.

- Bad performance? Definitely compared to the iPhones they got compared to.

At this point I see the main pulls of Samsung being the fact they offer better software support than Chinese brands with up to 5 years security updates / 4 years OS updates, and they have an entire ecosystem of tablets and keyfinders and audio products and so on. The problem I have with Samsung nowadays is that Apple offers all of those things but better so if you can do without the Google/Microsoft integration you should just go Apple. They have also lost several of their historical advantages:

- SD card? Gone.

- Headphone jack? Gone.

- Best screens in the business? Everybody is using their panels now.

Maybe I'm cynical but I think most of their success can be attributed to advertising/marketing. They've done a good job of that. In quality though, I don't consider them better than Huawei or Xiaomi.

I just got an S22+. Haven't noticed any ads and it's pretty minimal in terms of bloatware, though maybe it's due to my carrier.

This is similar to my experience when S22 was launched and I've got down voted for that [1]. In my case, my two years old (two gen older) S20 entry level smartphone has actually more RAM and better display screen resolution compared to the newly launched S22.

[1] Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30286186

It is not at all surprising to me that the A52s’ 768G benches higher since it has 4 A78s vs the 1280’s 2. It is surprising that it seems to do better in power as well, since the 1280 is manufactured on a superior process.

What is surprising to me is that they compare A53 to A52s and not A52.

I would pay more for Samsung with stock Android. Well I would have in the past now I can just buy a Pixel.

Calling what the Pixels run "Stock Android" is a misnomer. Even being lenient, I'd argue Google's phones haven't really run anything close to stock Android since the Nexus 4. The Nexus 5 was when they dropped the AOSP launcher for one that integrated with Google Now to the left of your homescreens, replaced the default messaging app with Hangouts, and that was when the Google apps replacing stock apps really took off. Modern Pixels are certainly not running stock Android.

GrapheneOS works wonderfully on the Pixels.

It only works on Pixels as well.

But will you ever notice, other than if you obsess over benchmarks or play video games all day long?

Yes, the performance is low enough to cause jitter/stutter/frame drops just navigating around the UI and hopping between apps. Android can really use as much power as you can throw at it.

Yes because in 2022 Android is still a sluggy slow hellscape

My wife has one of their lower end old models (A32) and it sometimes lags out playing Netflix. Everything is going fine, and then the video just stutters to the point that it's unwatchable. For comparison, that has a Geekbench score of 500 single threaded and 1650 multithreaded[1].

This is on top of other issues like the wifi just not connecting after a bit, or the bloatware and constant struggle fighting against their incessant notifications. After this, I'm never getting her a Samsung phone again. Please Google, don't kill the Pixel line... you're our only hope.

[1] https://unite4buy.com/Samsung-Galaxy-A32-5G-geekbench/

PSA: Don't buy phones with Mediatek chips, they overheat (thus slow down).

So the rest of the world will finally feel the same pain as europeans with the slower exynos chips…

Aren’t those just for the Asian market?

Asian market mostly get Snapdragon except for South east asia where both are sold. In Europe, it's exclusively exynos and that means that there's pretty much no point in buying Samsung compared to other brands in Europe.

There are Snapdragons in Europe too. Got myself S20 FE last December with Qualcomm chip in it off Amazon. Same SKU was available among many other retailers in Germany

I actually prefer Exynos, most models with Qualcomm do not have unlockable bootloader.

I was just thinking that Samsung's recent chip manufacturing capabilities appear to look somewhat disappointing on paper. Didn't expect a confirmation right away.

I used to buy their products, because back in the early 2010s they we're successful as an alternative to Apple - in terms for bang/buck ratio at least.

I won't be switching anytime soon because my Galaxy S8 is holding up decently, but news such as these here will make me think twice about choosing them again.

I recall Samsung struggling with high end fabrication since the iPhone 6 "chipgate" issue where the CPU (designed by Apple) manufactured by TSMC ran cooler than those by Samsung. It seems this happened again last year with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 too: https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2021/05/tsmc-ba...

A couple of days ago this guy was holding this phone up as an alternative to the iPhone SE. But this phone is also not good?

I am an Android fan, but I have to admit, no budget or even a mid-range Android phone compares to the iPhone SE. Maybe I am generalizing, but it seems like a safe bet.

I would say the Pixel 4a is a good alternative, though it was recently discontinued.

I own the Pixel 4a 5G, it's a solid phone but it's 2 generations old. In comparison, the new iPhone SE is in a league of its own, at least for now.

Um, no I mean the non 5g version. It isnt two generations old; I bought it just when it was released, that was under two years ago. That makes it current generation.

Depends on what you value out of a phone. I'd probably never buy an iPhone SE over this due to the screen size of the SE.

I actually got one of these a few weeks back to replace the shitshow that was Oneplus Nord.

It's working prefectly fine so far and I don't really need to run prime95 on it but this sucks from Samsung.

as usual European getting scammed, when the leaders will understand that?

the US doesn't want koreans to develop their own chip anymore, so they sell their stock of scuffed exynos to EU market

They should call it the A51 because that thing looks like an alien with its 5 camera’s.

Does anyone else find this sort of flex ridiculous?

I think it's 4 cameras and a flash but yeah I agree still. I've casually tried to read about the cameras and can't really find a good technical source. To me it looks like a lot of one upmanship. Main camera does 64MP but by default shoots in 16MP. Macro/depth cameras are only 5MP. Is a macro lens something people are really clamoring for? I think physical "0.5x" and "2x" make a lot of sense but something about their strategy seems more like marketing check boxes for tech geeks and less about quality.

So happy I ditched Samsung just under two years ago because their Exynos was just kak. Much happier with my OnePlus 8 Pro. I won't have to upgrade my phone for another 3 years hopefully.

Just like my Galaxy S10 Plus with 512gb (2019) feels identical to my new and expensive Sony Xperia 1 III (2021)

Galaxy S10e was the last Android smartphone, if it only wouldn't crack within first weeks I possessed it. Now only Android phablets exist.

I love my S10e but it's probably the last Android I own cause--to your point--everything else is just too big

I am going to make it last as long as I can get the battery replaced and lineage OS keeps pushing updates, after that I’m not sure. Maybe a fairphone that I would carry much less often.

I love my S10e too. And there is the new S22, which is just tad bigger, I think it could be a reasonable replacement.

I like "small" phones, Galaxy S10e is the second best android I ever had. First was Sony xperia X Compact, sadly a fall destroyed the screen and the repair was really too expensive and risky. So I bought a xz2 compact, a used one to save something, not the first second hand phone I bought, never had a problem. A bit bigger, but faster, and a total failure: screen suffered of ghost touches until it became unusable, after the purchase I discovered it was a known issue, of course seller blamed me. Last time I bought a used phone. BTW, S10e was the only smartphone not too big and it will be my last android, no more "small" android phones are made. Considering I'm also sick of Google (I'm already gradually switching to other services), when my S10e will stop to work I will switch to an iPhone SE.

Sony Xperia is one of the most intriguing phones to me.

Im currently on an iphone 8 still kicking.

If it had a removable battery I would buy it in a heartbeat, I dont think Ill ever need to replace my phone as long as it has good battery health. Problem is, there are almost no phones on the market that do have one. Last one I had was a LG G3.

Nah, they really dropped the ball with updates. 2 years of security updates for a 1200€ phone?? Note the clock starts ticking as soon as they announce the phone, and it takes ages before it is actually available, resulting in about 1.5 years of security updates. This is laughable for a flagship and should result in a boycott.

My new phone was a Nokia.

Fight me: Single-core performance is still much more important than multi-core performance for most things you do on a phone, including web browsing.

I think you underestimate how many games people play on their phones.

I think you overestimate how many CPU cores those games effectively use in comparison to the daily e.g. webview usage.

Very happy to be proven wrong though - I have no direct experience in the modern mobile gaming area.

I get down voted every time I say that. Single core performance will always be the best indicator of how fast the phone is IRL. Any application that is basically a wrapper around a javascript heavy web app is going to run like ass on a phone that has a low single core performance even if the phone has great multicore performance.

I still don't get why this question seems to be almost political.

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