Hacker News Reader

Comment by vsskanth | Hacker News Reader

Why is it taking so long to launch competitive ARM Windows laptops ?

Apple is already in it's third iteration of the M series and there's still no proper competition to the Macbooks.

Because the best chip designs in the world are made by Apple, Intel, and AMD. ARM's chip designs are years behind those three. Apple has shown ARM can have excellent performance, but they are the only ones to do it so far. Android users have shown that they don't care about buying new phones with CPUs that are slower than 3-year-old iPhones.

Because faster CPU on phones mostly doesn't matter.

I have a midrange Android phone that I use to watch videos, listen to music and podcasts, internet browsing, chat, banking. The only thing I don't do on my phone is play games. I never once caught myself thinking "boy, this phone is slow, a faster CPU would do wonders here". It doesn't ever even feel hot to the touch.

I bet it can run just fine most mobile games available. What the hell are people running on their phones that need a better CPU?

The fact that my 6yo iPhone 8 is still as fast as a 3yo Pixel phone definitely is part of why I can keep my iPhones far longer than another other phone I've ever had. You rarely see 6yo Android phones still in use, because it'd be as slow as a 9yo iPhone.

I have a OnePlus 6T acquired in 2019 that is absolutely fine to this day. I only replaced it because they dropped support for new OS updates.

I installed DivestOS on it and use it as a backup phone (i.e.: I take it with me to the gym, and keep my main phone at home). If they had kept support, I wouldn't even have replaced it.

Single threaded (best indicator of device responsiveness) Geekbench score:

2018 OnePlus 6T: 521

2017 iPhone 8: 1020

My older phone is literally twice as fast. From a performance perspective it will be usable far longer than the OnePlus.

And yet, despite benchmark numbers, my point still stands. For all the usage I listed above, my old Android is perfectly serviceable. Not once I was using it and thought a better CPU might speed something up, because nothing was slow. The phone never feels hot while using it.

When I try a new phone, I don't see any noticeable difference in speed. Everything loads more or less the same.

A better CPU (even one twice as fast) on a smartphone brings virtually no benefit at this point. Half of "this is pretty fast" is still "pretty fast".

I have a Redmi note 7 with a 351 single core score and I am perfectly happy with it. Just replaced the original firmware with lineageos.

Benchmarks aren't perfect but this shows the reality of Apple vs non-Apple ARM cores. An iPhone 12, from 3 years ago, has a 13% single thread performance advantage over the top Pixel 8 Pro.

Geekbench:

* Pixel 8 Pro: Single: 1760 Multi: 4442

* iPhone 15 Pro: Single: 2894 Multi: 7192

* iPhone 12: Single: 1995 Multi: 4401

Everyone but apple uses ARM-designed cores. Why are ARM-designed cores behind? Go check what the comp is for a CPU designer at apple, and then go check what it is at ARM. Suddenly, you'll be overcome with a feeling of clarity.

It takes four years or more to design a CPU. The M1 came out three years ago.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com