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by Stephen Schenck | May 2, 2013 4:26 PMRead OnWith the launch of the (international) Galaxy S 4, Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa SoC and its two banks of four cores is now a reality. There's a whole lot of potential in that advanced silicon, and we've heard promises of next-gen performance alongside some appreciable power savings. Why is it, then, that the Exysos 5 Octa in this phone isn't managing its cores in the most optimized fashion? There's more than one way to choose which cores are running what in a big.LITTLE configuration, like what we see on the Exynos 5 Octa. The problem seems to be that Samsung chose only the simplest ...
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by Michael Fisher | May 1, 2013 1:16 PMRead OnNot all of us have read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so not all of us were exactly qualified to make the lame joke that kicks off this week's podcast. But we made it, and we stand behind it. Because as hundreds of fifth-rate "manufacturers" well know, sometimes you just have to fake it. But we're not talking about secondhand knockoff products in this episode of the Weekly. Rather, we get serious about octa-core comparisons, the till-recently-mythical HTC M4, the insanely cheap new Lumia out of Finland, and just how tired we are or aren't of the Samsung Galaxy S 4. In between, we ...
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by Michael Fisher | April 30, 2013 7:02 AM
Read OnThe Galaxy S 4. It's a name that commands respect: one that strikes fear into the hearts of other smartphones, and incites envy in the eyes of would-be buyers. As our full review reinforces, it's a name that represents one of the best Android smartphones you can buy today. But the Galaxy S 4 isn't just one phone: it's a device family comprised of many globally-specific variants. The SPH-L720 we reviewed last week was built especially for the American carrier Sprint, and while it's functionally identical to the other American operator variants, it has significantly less in common with its ...
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by Michael Fisher | April 26, 2013 8:08 PMRead OnYes, yes: we know the official English-language prefix for "eight" is "octo," but you have to agree that octa just sounds -and looks- a whole lot better. And based on Samsung's choice of spelling on the box that just rolled into our office, the company agrees with us. Besides, admit it: after a week spent watching us dissect the quad-core American variant of the Galaxy S 4, you're hankering for a peek at its Exynos-powered eight-core sibling, no matter how we spell it. Behold: the phone we Yankees call the "international version" of Samsung's latest Android flagship, known to its friends ...
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by Stephen Schenck | March 28, 2013 4:24 PMRead OnSometimes there are good technical reasons for why one version of a smartphone runs one chipset, and another version of the very same phone is powered by different silicon. A lot of times, that has to do with wireless connectivity, and especially with the rise of LTE over the past few years, that could mean that LTE-supporting hardware had to be put together with alternate chipsets. You might think that was the same case with the Galaxy S 4 and the Exynos 5 Octa, since the LTE version of the phone, model GT-I9505, runs a Snapdragon 600 SoC. As Samsung has now confirmed, the Exynos 5 Octa ...
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by Stephen Schenck | February 27, 2013 4:57 PMRead OnWouldn't it figure; we just get done giving you a summary of what to expect from Samsung's Galaxy S IV when a new rumors comes our way, causing us to (once again) question what Samsung's preparing. Like so many of the phone's rumors lately, this one is looking at the choice of SoC Samsung uses in these handsets, and attempts to throw Exynos chips back in the running. To recap, at first everyone was talking about the GS4 being powered by Exynos chips, and the Exynos 5 Octa in specific. Then we saw a number of benchmark results turn up that appeared to suggest we were looking at handsets ...
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by Michael Fisher | February 7, 2013 7:01 AMRead OnEven if it takes six Skype calls to make a podcast happen, we're gonna do it for you folks, because that's just the kind of guys we are. And it's a good thing, too; while the news cycle has calmed down somewhat in the wake of last week's big BlackBerry event, there's still plenty to talk about from the worlds of Android and Windows Phone, from rumors and speculation to ... well, no, just rumors and speculation, really. But it's scintillating stuff, especially if you're into things named "M7" and "Nokia Tablet." All that, plus listener mail and a heaping helping of Joe Levi's robot voice, ...
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by Stephen Schenck | January 24, 2013 3:50 PMRead OnThere are plenty of next-generation SoCs on the horizon, from NVIDIA's Tegra 4, to Huawei's K3V3, to Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800. While they've all got their own reasons why we should look forward to them, Samsung may have one of the most eagerly-anticipated chips of them all, its Exynos 5 Octa. After all, even if it's not crunching numbers with all eight cores at once (something Qualcomm seriously doesn't want us to forget), just the thought of all that power in our hand-held devices is enough to make us positively giddy. While we await word on what will be the first device to feature the ...
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by Stephen Schenck | January 17, 2013 2:23 PMRead On
Is it fair to call Samsung's Exynos 5 Octa an eight-core processor? After all, it doesn't operate all eight cores simultaneously, choosing from either a bank of four A15 or four A7 cores, and it's not like we commonly call the Tegra 3 with its extra power-saving core a five-core chip, right? Qualcomm CEO Dr. Paul Jacobs doesn't seem too pleased with how Samsung is trying to position this chip, and had a few choice words about the Exynos 5 Octa while speaking to reporters in Beijing. Mind you, this is all coming from a Chinese translation, so while these may not be the exact words Dr. ...
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by Jaime Rivera | January 15, 2013 7:00 PMRead OnWatch today's Pocketnow Daily as talk about the Sony Xperia Tablet Z and why you should care to take a look at yet another Android tablet. We then move to the Android 4.2.2 rumors, though we sadly won't celebrate the reason why it'll be launched eventually. Samsung later takes the spotlight with their Exynos 5 Octa processor and we go through some of the technical reasons why this processor isn't a crazy idea. Later we move through lots of the rumors of a cheaper iPhone coming this year and why this is not such a far-fetched idea. We end today's show with a huge Thank You to all of you for ...
Posts tagged with: Exynos 5 Octa