The iPhone X is "the iPhone of the future". Cool. Here are 4 things that would've made it better

4. trojan_horse (Posts: 5337; Member since: 06 May 2016)

Everyone has been playing catch up in the smartphone industry, bruh.

Qualcomm and Samsung are playing catch up to Apple's A11 in the chipset department, no?

6. trojan_horse (Posts: 5337; Member since: 06 May 2016)

And by A11, I'm referring to the CPU side of it, as Qualcomm still rules the GPU game.

8. mikehunta727 (Posts: 1402; Member since: 12 Sep 2014)

A11 GPU seems like it'll comfortably beat the S835 GPU. We will have to see how good or bad the A11 GPU thermal throttles.

But not even S845 will surpass the A11 in CPU performance. A75 cores(that is going in the S845 as next gen Kryo cores) are not gonna cut it for next year

24. Back_from_beyond (Posts: 169; Member since: 04 Sep 2015)

You do understand why the A11 has two ridiculously overpowered cores right? Their sole purpose is to load apps really fast, then offload them to the smaller cores. Why you ask? To compensate for iOS hibernates and caches apps once you switch to another.

It was Apple's solution to one of iOS' shortcomings, it's something you still notice on older iPhone models, loadtimes when switching apps. Where Android opts to leave apps resident in RAM memory, for quicker accessibility, iOS hibernates and caches them and has to reload them each time, only a few apps are exempt from this in iOS. It meant that switching between apps frequently allowed Android users to more quickly return to using them than iOS users. Apple studies user data in depth and they know most people rarely use an app for longer than 2-3 mins at a time and switch between apps a lot, so to reduce those load times without fundamentally altering how iOS works, they had to come up with something that would work for them.

That's why Apple has those two super cores, loading apps as fast as possible. They obviously will come with a serious drawback, a significantly higher power use than the small cores, probably 10 times higher. Odds are the smaller cores barely touch 1500 in Geekbench single core, that's why Apple opted to cluster 4 this time around, so they could offload even more demanding apps to those lesser cores once they've been loaded, for power efficiency reasons.

I will agree with you that the Snapdragon 845 probably won't beat the A11. Reason behind that is Qualcomm probably doesn't really feel the heat from other SoC vendors for Android phones. The only ones that come close are Samsung's Exynos and Hisilicon's Kirin. The Snapdragon 835 was merely an 820 upgraded to an octacore design and slight improvements to other fields. It was by no means a new design and I'm not expecting the 845 to beat the A11 in single core performance either. Rumors have it though that it does top 2600 in Geekbench single core so it'll be a fair improvement over the 835, which hardly ever seems to beat 2000. If it's an octacore design again, with 4 cores topping 2600 and 4 smaller cores around 1500, it'll beat the A11 in multicore at least. It'll make for a plenty fast SoC, enough to rival it at least where it counts.

The fundamental difference however remains that the Snapdragon 845 is meant to be widely accessible, whereas the A11 is solely for Apple's latest iPhones. Their aims are completely different, designed with completely different applications, the A11 is highly specialized solely for the iPhone, the Snapdragon 845 genericly for a wide variety of devices and platforms. For Qualcomm it simply wouldn't make sense to create such a highly specialized SoC, unless for one very specific client. They'll obviously go with what makes the most money, that's what they do.

28. thxultra (Posts: 254; Member since: 16 Oct 2014)

The A11 chip is in my opinion the biggest improvement in the iphone X. This processor is a huge step up. Looking forward to seeing what they do with it.

11. Mreveryphone (Posts: 1397; Member since: 22 Apr 2014)

A11 is nice, I'll give it that much... But it doesn't have to do much, the A series is being upgraded every year for nothing. We can sit here are say Qual, and Sammy are playing catch up but in actuality they really aren't. I would love to see the a 835 with 6gb of ram in a iphone and a A11 in a Note 8... Lets see who comes out on top of that benchmark...

15. trojan_horse (Posts: 5337; Member since: 06 May 2016)

"I would love to see the a 835 with 6gb of ram in a iphone and a A11 in a Note 8... Lets see who comes out on top of that benchmark..."

That's partly why cross-platform benchmarks ain't my thing.

22. NoToFanboys (Posts: 3149; Member since: 03 Oct 2015)

When you say something good about Samsung, you're a Samsung shill blind fanboy, now that you're complementing the A11, those who bash you are being silent. LOL
People can't decide, no?

9. darkkjedii (Posts: 25633; Member since: 05 Feb 2011)

I was like...that's it.

10. BLUEBLASTER (Posts: 431; Member since: 23 Feb 2014)

Yeah that's what I'm waiting for. Plus all the iPhones will probably come with OLED screens and no bezels.

18. Lumberjack (Posts: 258; Member since: 04 May 2017)

Yesterday I read an article that says Microsoft has rights on screen as FPS...

21. ibend (banned) (Posts: 6747; Member since: 30 Sep 2014)

- no camera hump
- USB type-C
- fast wireless charging
- 2k screen
bonus:
- on screen FPscanner
- 10-feet wireless charging

26. P-YWS (Posts: 103; Member since: 12 Aug 2011)

No split-screen, no 3.5mm universal head-phone jack, no USB-C connector so that Apple can continue to milk money out of royalty on every lightning peripheral, no finger-print sensor as back-up to the face sensor, no dual-SIM neither, and true to the form of Apple, no uSD card slot so that Apple can make more profit by forcing customer to jump to the 256-GByte version, no ...

30. darkkjedii (Posts: 25633; Member since: 05 Feb 2011)

Eyes wide open bro. The flocks getting flocked.

27. P-YWS (Posts: 103; Member since: 12 Aug 2011)

Apple is ripping consumers with the same thick bezels and low resolution (750 x 1344 for $699 iPhone8!) as the yesteryears' iPhone6/6s/7.