To Buy or Not To Buy it. - Samsung Galaxy S21 Questions

To Buy or Not To Buy it. - Samsung Galaxy S21 Questions

I've been hoping for two years already that my Note 10+ will, some day, serve as “trade-in” phone for a worthy, future upgrade. Since then I saw two unimpressive 'flagships' S20s and N20s came and went and now I'm looking with disappointment at the next rendition, the S21 models. Both, the S21 and S21+ are basically a stripped down S20 and S20+ phones with lower screen resolution, less RAM and no external SD. I feel like my Note 10+ built two years ago, is way more advanced phone than those brand new S20 and S21+. It's Samsung's conscious intention to steer everyone toward buying the top S21Ultra.
Well, I'm thinking about it, got excited once about that camera zoom on S20 Ultra, haven't bought it when I realized that the zoom quality was overhyped, now they say it's “greatly improved”. I'll be watching the release show, will see.

I have the 10+ and after little more then a year see nothing in the Samsung line up I like.
Part of that is Q's fault, another failed OS release and no faith 11 will be much better.
My 10+ runs fast, is rock solid stable, looks great and packs close to 1 tb of storage.
I refuse to buy a phone with no SD card slot as it serves as my data drive.
So I'm just sitting on a fence...

blackhawk said:
I have the 10+ and after little more then a year see nothing in the Samsung line up I like.
Part of that is Q's fault, another failed OS release and no faith 11 will be much better.
My 10+ runs fast, is rock solid stable, looks great and packs close to 1 tb of storage.
I refuse to buy a phone with no SD card slot as it serves as my data drive.
So I'm just sitting on a fence...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's sad to see Samsung lowering their standards that much. People who are planning to buy S21 and S21+ will be comparing the specs to S20 and S20+ and right now they can buy S20 or 20+ for $600 less, still having 50% more of RAM(12GB v 8), SD card extension and better screen resolution. Unbelievable. People who never had a Samsung phone and for some reason are disappointed with their iPhones, Pixels or OnePlus devices will buy it just for a change and they are accustomed to missing SD card slot. But that's a small market share, Samsung is moving backwards.
My daily phone is now Pixel 4a5G, great phone, reliable, I really like it and I paid for it $420 after some Amazon discounts so it's about a ½ price for pretty much the same experience that the S21 would provide.

I was very excited for the new 2021 "flagship" and after seeing all the leaks I don't even know how to feel. I mean, what is going to be Samsung's excuse to bring a stripped down model this year?
Very disappointed.

Well, I bought the ultra as the only option to be slightly excited about. Watched the presentations, pretty much samo-samo as the previous ones, but I decided to recycle my N10+ and one of my cc has almost $300 in points so the whole purchase won't be that painful. Funny thing I've noticed, is that they totally omitted the fingerprint, that means the S21 series will have the same sensor as S10-N20 again, otherwise they would make out of it one of the main points in this presentation.
So, there is 'one carrot' - seemingly lower price for those S21 models and than a lot of 'sticks' like, no SD slot or chargers.
Still, am looking forward to put my hands on that new camera phone.
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01/16 edit: order changed to 512GB phone for the sake of 16GB RAM, forgot about the RAM differences and am gonna double the storage for only ~$130 more.

mzsquared said:
It's sad to see Samsung lowering their standards that much. People who are planning to buy S21 and S21+ will be comparing the specs to S20 and S20+ and right now they can buy S20 or 20+ for $600 less, still having 50% more of RAM(12GB v 8), SD card extension and better screen resolution. Unbelievable. People who never had a Samsung phone and for some reason are disappointed with their iPhones, Pixels or OnePlus devices will buy it just for a change and they are accustomed to missing SD card slot. But that's a small market share, Samsung is moving backwards.
My daily phone is now Pixel 4a5G, great phone, reliable, I really like it and I paid for it $420 after some Amazon discounts so it's about a ½ price for pretty much the same experience that the S21 would provide.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't forget, Pixel 4a 5G comes with e-sim too, which is missing from all Samsung S & Note series.

mzsquared said:
Well, I bought the ultra as the only option to be slightly excited about. Watched the presentations, pretty much samo-samo as the previous ones, but I decided to recycle my N10+ and one of my cc has almost $300 in points so the whole purchase won't be that painful. Funny thing I've noticed, is that they totally omitted the fingerprint, that means the S21 series will have the same sensor as S10-N20 again, otherwise they would make out of it one of the main points in this presentation.
So, there is 'one carrot' - seemingly lower price for those S21 models and than a lot of 'sticks' like, no SD slot or chargers.
Still, am looking forward to put my hands on that new camera phone.
View attachment 5187241
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm sticking with the 10+ that's still running on Pie. No SD card means no sale... I demand to have a data drive.
Samsung still hasn't upgraded their bt chipset hardware to include AptX-HD... I call foul, again. Lame.
I'm stuck on the 10+ Pie for the foreseeable future unless Samsung and Android get their sorry acts together. Q and up scoped storage and lack of overlay support just plain sucks.
No way Sammy can bribe me to trade in my 10+ that's in near perfect condition and is running fast, stable, with close to 1 tb of storage on it.
You'll love the Buds+, the best bt Buds set for this phone. With Poweramp's EQ you can dial them in pretty good.
There are -still- issues with the Bud's firmware. Occasionally I need to reset them as nothing else seems to cure them when their sound goes wanky. Reboot, clearing caches and cursing does nothing. It may happen when they switch codecs... not sure what the trigger is. Could be a 3rd party apk or game that goofs them up?
Be nice if Samsung would get it spot on... for once so we didn't have to do their job and try to play in their muck!

I got the Ultra too. While I was dissapointed that they ended up removing the SD card, it really is not that unusual these days for phones to have onboard storage only - no SD Card. The options to have from 128 to 512 GB adds quite a bit of additional storage and for me, will be more than enough. I will miss the SD card a little - but I will get used to it. (my wife uses my Pixel 5 and sometimes we switch and I use it. Not really a big deal to go without that SD card....)
I wonder if mzsquared Is right about the Fingerprint sensor? I know they didn't talk about it at all, but I hope that Samsung will surprise us when we get the phones.....

I was looking to upgrade which I have done after every new release since the S6. As prerelease rumors were confirmed I am no longer looking at the S21 as an upgrade. What made Galaxy devices unique was not following iPhone's "Advances". Now Samsung has eliminated the 3.5 Jack, MicroSD, 1440 Screen Resolution, Eaphones or Buds, Immersive Display, Back Panel Glass and the Charger.
For me the biggest setback is no MicroSD. Sorry, I have no faith in Cloud Security and my current MicroSD already has more data than the S21's highest capacity device. As a musician and serious audiophile no bluetooth connection will preform as accurately or sound as definitive as a wired connection, it's just not happening! Not to mention the hassle of changing wireless buds. I couldn't care less about S Pen functionality, even if it was included with the device. Some of these are personal preferences but based on initial responses it's obvious there's widespread disappointment in Samsung's new direction.
The only features worth having are a more efficient SoC, some photo or video processing and the 120Hz refresh rate. I'm not opposed to spending top dollar for a worthy smartphone but the S21 has eliminated many features which are truly valuable. For now I'll stick with my S10 Plus, IMHO it's still the best Galaxy device currently available. The S20's worldwide sales dropped 35% when compared to the S10, this latest offering has no hope for reversing this decline.

Fingerprint Sensor has been improved!
I know we have to take information we get from Samsung Support with a grain of salt, I am hoping they were right when I asked about whether Samsung had improved the Fingerprint Sensor on the new S21 Ultra.
Customer Support told me:
"The in-screen fingerprint sensor in Samsung's Galaxy S21 is easier to use than ever. it has the second generation of its 3D Sonic Sensor that's faster and bigger, making it easier for people to to unlock their devices using their fingerprints."
Hopefully, he was right - we will find out in a couple of weeks...

mindseye0803 said:
Don't forget, Pixel 4a 5G comes with e-sim too, which is missing from all Samsung S & Note series.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not so, Galaxy S20 Exynos devices have e-sim enabled.

Geekser said:
I got the Ultra too. While I was dissapointed that they ended up removing the SD card, it really is not that unusual these days for phones to have onboard storage only - no SD Card. The options to have from 128 to 512 GB adds quite a bit of additional storage and for me, will be more than enough. I will miss the SD card a little - but I will get used to it. (my wife uses my Pixel 5 and sometimes we switch and I use it. Not really a big deal to go without that SD card....)
I wonder if mzsquared Is right about the Fingerprint sensor? I know they didn't talk about it at all, but I hope that Samsung will surprise us when we get the phones.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The problem with the SD card is people don't utilize it to it's full potential by making it the dedicated data drive. I did this too for years until I realized I could use exactly like I used data drives for years on my PC rigs.
Downloads stay on internal memory until they can be vetted malware free. A small security buffer but one that has already saved my data on the 10+ from a tainted jpeg with embedded script as well as a trojan preloader.
Up to 1 tb is supported... I could use 3 tb but it's irrelevant for now as even 1 tb cards are prohibitively expensive. A .5 tb V30 Lexar can be had for reasonable $75.
What I like to see is dual SD card support; you can never have too much fast storage.
Over a decade ago my PC with packing 2 tb of data drive storage. Even my E6400 laptop now has a 2 tb data drive with a 7200 rpm 1 tb OS drive. Hell yeah.
I'm wondering if the mobo chipset Samsung chose even supports an sd card?
Either way Samsung wants to skimp and still charge big bucks... No!

blackhawk said:
The problem with the SD card is people don't utilize it to it's full potential by making it the dedicated data drive. I did this too for years until I realized I could use exactly like I used data drives for years on my PC rigs.
Downloads stay on internal memory until they can be vetted malware free. A small security buffer but one that has already saved my data on the 10+ from a tainted jpeg with embedded script as well as a trojan preloader.
Up to 1 tb is supported... I could use 3 tb but it's irrelevant for now as even 1 tb cards are prohibitively expensive. A .5 tb V30 Lexar can be had for reasonable $75.
What I like to see is dual SD card support; you can never have too much fast storage.
Over a decade ago my PC with packing 2 tb of data drive storage. Even my E6400 laptop now has a 2 tb data drive with a 7200 rpm 1 tb OS drive. Hell yeah.
I'm wondering if the mobo chipset Samsung chose even supports an sd card?
Either way Samsung wants to skimp and still charge big bucks... No!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup I usually without fail switch back n forth from the s line to the note line to have the latest and greatest but the fact that stupid samsung decided to kill micro SD support on all 3 models is absolutely ridiculous so I will be skipping the S21 Ultra and hoping Samsung can pull there head out of their asses and at least keep micro SD support for the next Note model cause without it I have no use for it,I have a 512 gb. Internal storage Note 20 ultra with 1tb.micro SD card so Samsung either step your game up or prepare to be disappointed.

on samsung dot com, it said Esim supported.
it listed Ultrasonic Fingerprint: 7.5x8.25mm
i dont know the size of previous galaxy.

I've ordered the 256GB S10 Ultra as an upgrade from the S10 5G, which also has 256GB internal storage with no memory card slot.
I've ran all my old Samsung phones at 1080p rgardless of maximum resolution, and I gave up using SD cards several years ago. From my perspective, the eSIM support, camera upgrades, larger battery newer hardware and software makes it a worthy upgrade. I returned the Exynos Note 20 Ultra because the battery live was unbearably poor, so I'm hoping for an improvement in that area.

I ordered the Ultra as a replacement for my Note 10+ too.

blackhawk said:
You'll love the Buds+, the best bt Buds set for this phone. With Poweramp's EQ you can dial them in pretty good.
There are -still- issues with the Bud's firmware. Occasionally I need to reset them as nothing else seems to cure them when their sound goes wanky. Reboot, clearing caches and cursing does nothing. It may happen when they switch codecs... not sure what the trigger is. Could be a 3rd party apk or game that goofs them up?
Be nice if Samsung would get it spot on... for once so we didn't have to do their job and try to play in their muck!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They used 15 minutes this morning to talk about these buds, it's a nice piece of technology, the internals are very impressive.

Geekser said:
I wonder if mzsquared Is right about the Fingerprint sensor? I know they didn't talk about it at all, but I hope that Samsung will surprise us when we get the phones.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That was a wrong guess on my part fortunately. In the presentation, they spent so much time talking about a 'heroic efforts" to get that specific 'phantom black' on the back of the Ultra phone that I thought they must have exhausted all available R&D brain power working on it and the fp sensor was postponed again to next year. They never mentioned it.

mzsquared said:
They used 15 minutes this morning to talk about these buds, it's a nice piece of technology, the internals are very impressive.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Buds link up seamlessly with a Samsung if bt is active. That and range are not issues.
They never fall out... for calls I don't even put them all the way in and they still stay in place.
They're pretty light too.

now i really thinking of cancelling my S21 Ultra order.
no Samsung Pay MST, i'm nervous to use mobile pay, when you tap phone to credit card reader and it doesnt work, it' embarrassing !

Related

OnePlusOne from a Nexus 10 perspective

Hi in this Nexus 10 thread I was asked about the OnePlusOne thoughts.
So posting not a OPO review but how it affects my "relationship" with my Nexus 10.
The Nexus 10 "sucks" now relatively speaking primarily because it suffers from a relatively slow CPU and significantly from only really 1GB of memory.
So I've had to view the Nexus 10 as a "special purpose" device rather than a "general device" and use it in a deliberately complimentary way to the other device.
Until I got the OPO the other device to the Nexus 10 was really the N7 (latest), in that it has fast cpu, sufficient memory. I'd use both tablets side-by-side on a desk or pick up N7 to do something whilst using the N10.
Example problems with the N10 are too many browser tabs open it would reset, or if I'm doing anything much in the background, so I couldn't really do any work like an Office file edit at same time as browsing. So I'd be using my N10 for one-thing-at-a-time like browsing one website, or watching a video and nothing else open.
Given the N10 is the one-thing-at-a-time machine, it places a lot onto the complimentary device in terms of it needing to be a pretty good device by itself.
Hence to the OPO, with a 5.5" screen, fast CPU and lashings of memory 3GB, it is such a complementary device, I can easily have many apps running, all the background apps that each gobble some memory, like Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, XDA app, etc. Whilst the Nexus 10 pretty much only has MX Player, Dolphin (for Flash sites) not even Chrome but I installed CM11-M9 and just use its "browser".
Since the high-spec complementary-to-N10 I moved N10 from stock to CM11-M9 and the random reboots stopped and performance is about the same so only major benefit is more stable.
So in this hybrid OPO+N10 I got the big-screen experience for when I want it, plus stability and performance, across two devices.
I got this complimentary hybrid with N7+N10 also and to a lesser degree N5+N10 but the more you push onto the non-N10 device the more it needs to be bigger screen, so I'd say OPO+N10 are good complements to each other.
FYI I paid $278 for a refurbished N10 in November, and I paid $360 delivered for a new OPO a month ago. My N7 was $160 refurbished and my N5 new $385. Overall, the N7 is the most value, followed by OPO, then N5, then N10. The N10 is only used for a narrow, but long-running tasks like watching a video, I'm usually on MX Player on it.
I have given my N5 and N7 to my wife, they complement each other well in that the smaller the phone screen the more it beckons for a tablet and N7 is a good tablet.
When away from home, the N10 I find is simply not worth removing from the house, it is simply too big and not really that useful, battery life sucks, it is slow to recharge even with the Pogoplug, despite its big screen it is too temperamental. Before OPO I'd leave house with N5+N7. Now I leave just with the OPO, as its got everything in one device, memory, storage (64GB) and speed to handle all the apps concurrently, so in that regard the OPO as a "one plus one" i.e. human plus one device, is correct.
So OPO is flawed, but its cheap and powerful and whatever bugs exist, I've not noticed them, in contrast to the N10 the OPO is much more stable and bug-free.
Any negativ reviews of the OPO, if you look at polls from owners, they show up about 8% have a problem which is major, put that in proportion the relatively happy 90% owners, such as myself.
I bought 3 OPO, one for my son, then my neighbor, then myself, then I helped out the local phone shop staff who helped me on a discounted family plan and an OPO forum member who impressed me with a balanced perspective.
OPO not perfect, its a cheap-support-sucks-from-China phone.
Nexus 10 though is even worse. I can't imagine how sick I'd feel if I'd paid RRP $499+tax+shipping $550 from Google Play for it. It is not even good value at $278 refurbished relative to other devices (vs say $160 N7 refurbished). I won't sell it though as its good to have a silent "laptop" type screen in bed, not far ever from Pogo cable.

Nexus 10 was released in November 2012 - that is 18 months ago - by Moore's law it is obvious that any device on the market will seem relatively slow 18 months after release.
To be fair Nexus 10 16GB model only cost 349$ at release and was a the time the highest resolution screen you could find on a tablet(still is tied highest) - and higher display resolution than almost all laptops on the market, even 1000+$ ones. It seems like a reasonable price - of course they should have cut the price a year after release or so.
I find that the Nexus 10 is still somewhat useful as a laptop replacement - it is much lighter than a laptop you can use an external keyboard for editing code or documents(or just reading books,without external keyboard) on a screen which has sharper and nicer looking text than any laptop in this price class. The battery on my device lasts around 7 hours with constant use - which is more than the average laptop which only lasts 3 hours roughly. (More expensive devices such as ultrabooks last longer, ofc). That being said there are tasks which the Nexus 10 just isn't suited for and agree it must complemented with another device.

xIsei said:
Nexus 10 was released in November 2012 - that is 18 months ago - by Moore's law it is obvious that any device on the market will seem relatively slow 18 months after release.
To be fair Nexus 10 16GB model only cost 349$ at release and was a the time the highest resolution screen you could find on a tablet(still is tied highest) - and higher display resolution than almost all laptops on the market, even 1000+$ ones. It seems like a reasonable price - of course they should have cut the price a year after release or so.
I find that the Nexus 10 is still somewhat useful as a laptop replacement - it is much lighter than a laptop you can use an external keyboard for editing code or documents(or just reading books,without external keyboard) on a screen which has sharper and nicer looking text than any laptop in this price class. The battery on my device lasts around 7 hours with constant use - which is more than the average laptop which only lasts 3 hours roughly. (More expensive devices such as ultrabooks last longer, ofc). That being said there are tasks which the Nexus 10 just isn't suited for and agree it must complemented with another device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried one trip Nexus 10+ other but N10 just not reliable enough. N7 is more reliable. I think its really down to the 1GB memory, its just too little. They should have actually had 2GB not claiming 2GB of which 1GB goes to video.
So that's my problem with N10 as laptop, the reliability problem.
Plus of course if you spent $500 on Wintel, you get globs of specifications like hdd capacities, it somewhat defeats the point of a tablet when it costs the same as a laptop but inferior. My Netbook was getting 7-8 hours, comparable to N10.

I have to disagree with this review too. Purely on the basis that I don't use my phone at home, not even for phonecalls or texts because it all works off the N10. It's still a very useful and usable device that has kept up in pace with the latest devices coming up. Yes it shows it's slowness a bit when I compare it to a galaxy tab pro but that's the difference two years makes. By no means does it "suck", or even relatively "suck". If you really want to see what actually sucks, try using the original galaxy tab and then see. The N10 plays the content, games, music I want to my smart TV and on the device itself without straining itself.
I don't see the N10 as a laptop replacement either because I use my laptop for playing games, photo editing, CAD modelling because the N10 won't do it to the level of detail I want it to.

ace9988 said:
I have to disagree with this review too. Purely on the basis that I don't use my phone at home, not even for phonecalls or texts because it all works off the N10. It's still a very useful and usable device that has kept up in pace with the latest devices coming up. Yes it shows it's slowness a bit when I compare it to a galaxy tab pro but that's the difference two years makes. By no means does it "suck", or even relatively "suck". If you really want to see what actually sucks, try using the original galaxy tab and then see. The N10 plays the content, games, music I want to my smart TV and on the device itself without straining itself.
I don't see the N10 as a laptop replacement either because I use my laptop for playing games, photo editing, CAD modelling because the N10 won't do it to the level of detail I want it to.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Crashing and rebooting counts as "sucks", and is a factual non-debatable point.
Performance, is debatable and is context specific. I guess you don't have the random reboot issues, which in my case CM11-M9 fixed, but I've still got the performance issue.
The 1GB is I think the problem, not so much the 1GB as memory has to be flushed for apps active to release up prior to loading new, whilst 2GB memory would have less, i.e. the phone is "swapping" (yes I know its not actually paging but you know what I mean).

nigelhealy said:
Crashing and rebooting counts as "sucks", and is a factual non-debatable point.
Performance, is debatable and is context specific. I guess you don't have the random reboot issues, which in my case CM11-M9 fixed, but I've still got the performance issue.
The 1GB is I think the problem, not so much the 1GB as memory has to be flushed for apps active to release up prior to loading new, whilst 2GB memory would have less, i.e. the phone is "swapping" (yes I know its not actually paging but you know what I mean).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that's ROM specific. I'm using slimkat and I have zero issues, tried liquid smooth before that and still no issues at all.
Also why do you keep quoting 1GB as a problem when the N10 has 2GB memory?

Have you looked at the memory?
sent from my OnePlusOne

ace9988 said:
I think that's ROM specific. I'm using slimkat and I have zero issues, tried liquid smooth before that and still no issues at all.
Also why do you keep quoting 1GB as a problem when the N10 has 2GB memory?
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Look in settings you will see it is a 1GB memory. This from mine. Also for comparison from my OPO.
sent from my OnePlusOne

ace9988 said:
I think that's ROM specific. I'm using slimkat and I have zero issues, tried liquid smooth before that and still no issues at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is something in stock Android which makes my N10 unreliable.
I have only tried CM11 not tried any other. I also just installed only the apps I uniquely need for my N10. It is for sure more reliable but I don't know exactly the cause or what is different to fix. Could be luck.
Why I picked CM is the OPO came with it and so why not CM for the N10 was the only depth of thinking.
My N7 N4 N5 all rock solid stable no matter what on stock Android.
I might have a dud N10 its camera doesn't work.
sent from my OnePlusOne

OPO is one of the most over rated phones. To come here to a N10 thread and bash it because it's slow compared to a phone is really a waste of everyone's time.
The N10 is far from slow. I use it every day and have had zero issues with it. And it was purchased on launch day.
The OPO is the black plaque of devices. It's been riddled with a marketing nightmare, bug issues, and now hardware promises that is another failed launch. Their marketing campaign was one of the worst things I've ever seen coming from a flagship device.
It's just my opinion, but then again writing this was about as useful as reading the thread.
One last thing. Read the specs on the n10 posted here http://www.google.com/nexus/10/specs/
You will find it has 2gb ram. And with these issues you have on the n10, let me guess, you are using a custom rom? I run stock rooted and have zero issues. Still is faster than most devices. The N10 set the bar on how to build a lasting device. Yeah, I drank their cool aide. Only because it is the best Damn 10" tablet to be marketed.
Sent from my SPH-L900 using XDA Premium HD app

nigelhealy: Your device shows 1.1GB ram in settings because 900MB ram is hard-dedicated to the GPU on the N10. Snapdragon phones don't have to hard-dedicate ram to the GPU in this manner, but it's of course important to note that the GPU does obviously take up whatever ram it needs regardless.
So the only practical effect of hard-dedicating the ram in this manner is that a few hundred meg can sometimes be sat idle on the GPU side if the you app you're using isn't particularly GPU heavy.
Otherwise, I must agree with the others. My N10 is still a great tablet, nearly 2 years after initial release.

I have both the OnePlus one and the Nexus 10. While the one is faster the Nexus 10 keeps up very well and has the advantage of screen size. I like both of them for different tasks. Both are stock and rooted.

Leoisright said:
OPO is one of the most over rated phones. To come here to a N10 thread and bash it because it's slow compared to a phone is really a waste of everyone's time.
The N10 is far from slow. I use it every day and have had zero issues with it. And it was purchased on launch day.
The OPO is the black plaque of devices. It's been riddled with a marketing nightmare, bug issues, and now hardware promises that is another failed launch. Their marketing campaign was one of the worst things I've ever seen coming from a flagship device.
It's just my opinion, but then again writing this was about as useful as reading the thread.
One last thing. Read the specs on the n10 posted here http://www.google.com/nexus/10/specs/
You will find it has 2gb ram. And with these issues you have on the n10, let me guess, you are using a custom rom? I run stock rooted and have zero issues. Still is faster than most devices. The N10 set the bar on how to build a lasting device. Yeah, I drank their cool aide. Only because it is the best Damn 10" tablet to be marketed.
Sent from my SPH-L900 using XDA Premium HD app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The N10 has 1GB memory. Scroll up and see the screenshot.
The OPO has simply more of everything greater apart from physical screen size .
http://our.antutu.net/api/?action=v5&act=benchmark&id=3147201
http://our.antutu.net/api/?action=v5&act=benchmark&id=3146867
So the N10 current niche is for screen size non performance purposes.
I've tried stock all the versions, CM11 and currently on Thunderkat with f2fs /cache /data
FYI the price drops we saw a year ago of $278 - $330 for 32gb N10 are now showing for GPad 8.3 $199 with 64Gb SD card $30 gives a performance boost if wanting a bigger fast tablet.

Ok. The N10 has 2gb ram. Plain and simple. But let's do this. Let's compare my note 2 to the Sony Erickson shall we? The point is you are comparing a new phone to an almost 2 year old tablet. They are meant to do very different things.
You should compare apples to oranges. Like I said, the one+one is one of the most over rated devices where as the N10 still set the standards for a tablet. And yet to have been beat.
Sent from my SPH-L900 using XDA Premium HD app

Leoisright said:
Ok. The N10 has 2gb ram. Plain and simple.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1GB available to OS a 1GB is given to graphics.
By all means stop typing and begin looking, pick any method. Here's one in terminal with free command.
Code:
[email protected]:/mnt/shell/emulated/0 # free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 1121716 973484 148232 0 224
-/+ buffers: 973260 148456
Swap: 0 0 0
[email protected]:/mnt/shell/emulated/0 #
So that's 1121716 bytes ~ 1GB.
Scroll back a page and I show an Android screen shot comparing with a OPO's 3GB like-for-like measurement, below is the same free command method.
Code:
[email protected]:/storage/emulated/legacy # free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 2954792 2603164 351628 0 74608
-/+ buffers: 2528556 426236
Swap: 0 0 0
So is that "plain and simple" enough for you, i.e. showing you than you simply pasting from a wiki which lists the physical memory of which half is gone to graphics.....

You have read that the gpu uses shared ram right?
Sent from my SPH-L900 using XDA Premium HD app

Leoisright said:
Like I said, the one+one is one of the most over rated devices where as the N10 still set the standards for a tablet. And yet to have been beat.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The OnePlusOne is indeed hyped, but for its price it is excellent specifications.
Fact.

Leoisright said:
You have read that the gpu uses shared ram right?
Sent from my SPH-L900 using XDA Premium HD app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, and so 1GB is available for apps.
Scroll up and see like-for-like memory comparisons.

Better yet. Since you like comparing devices that are completely different. Let's compare my msi gaming laptop to the one plus one. Lol
Why do you care so much about comparing a new device to an older tablet? Enough where you felt the need to start a thread pretty much bashing the N10 in a N10 forum? Kind of silly. So much so there really is no need in responding to me because I am done with this thread.
Sent from my SPH-L900 using XDA Premium HD app

Leoisright said:
Better yet. Since you like comparing devices that are completely different. Let's compare my msi gaming laptop to the one plus one. Lol
Why do you care so much about comparing a new device to an older tablet? Enough where you felt the need to start a thread pretty much bashing the N10 in a N10 forum? Kind of silly. So much so there really is no need in responding to me because I am done with this thread.
Sent from my SPH-L900 using XDA Premium HD app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK so you unsubscribed then after getting the last word in then.

The galaxy s6 doesn't support SD cards. It this a clue to the future of Samsung?

There are two features in galaxy phones that make me a return upgrade customer; removable battery and SD card support. If the next note does away with either, I will seriously rethink about upgrading! Sprint never sells the biggest capacity available for the phone. Judging by their previous behavior, they'll probably offer a 32gb device at the max. Even with a note 3 and 64gb of combined storage, I find myself often offloading content on the phone to external hard drives. Even when I crossed the line, back in the iPhone 4s days, and spent over $800 to get the biggest ram available model, directly through apple, I got rid of it about two months later because I hated the way apple did things. There is no such thing as a Samsung retail store to buy the biggest model anymore, as far as I know. 32gb, to me, is nothing. 64 is better but still too restrictive for me. If Samsung follows this strategy, then I predict this will be the beginning of their ending. Maybe I'm too old fashioned?! I don't care if SD cards are slower than built in storage! I'm willing to pay more for SD card availability! Samsung, you better not do the same thing with the notes!!!

oscarthegrouch said:
There are two features in galaxy phones that make me a return upgrade customer; removable battery and SD card support. If the next note does away with either, I will seriously rethink about upgrading! Sprint never sells the biggest capacity available for the phone. Judging by their previous behavior, they'll probably offer a 32gb device at the max. Even with a note 3 and 64gb of combined storage, I find myself often offloading content on the phone to external hard drives. Even when I crossed the line, back in the iPhone 4s days, and spent over $800 to get the biggest ram available model, directly through apple, I got rid of it about two months later because I hated the way apple did things. There is no such thing as a Samsung retail store to buy the biggest model anymore, as far as I know. 32gb, to me, is nothing. 64 is better but still too restrictive for me. If Samsung follows this strategy, then I predict this will be the beginning of their ending. Maybe I'm too old fashioned?! I don't care if SD cards are slower than built in storage! I'm willing to pay more for SD card availability! Samsung, you better not do the same thing with the notes!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I truly hope not, I was planning on getting the Note 5 later this year and if it has no removable battery or SD card I may leave Samsung completely.

This is crazy, what are Samsung doing?
I guess like most here I have stuck with Samsung because of the removable battery and Micro SD slot. Why are they trying to follow other manufacturers?
Sandisk have now developed a 200GB Micro SD card, so why do this? With smartphones becoming more powerful and cable of playing and recording Ultra HD, this is crazy. We are already installing more apps and downloading more than ever due to 4G, I just cannot understand their thinking.
If the Note 5 follows the S6, then my Note 3 will most likely be the last Samsung phone that I will own.

terry1000 said:
This is crazy, what are Samsung doing?
I guess like most here I have stuck with Samsung because of the removable battery and Micro SD slot. Why are they trying to follow other manufacturers?
Sandisk have now developed a 200GB Micro SD card, so why do this? With smartphones becoming more powerful and cable of playing and recording Ultra HD, this is crazy. We are already installing more apps and downloading more than ever due to 4G, I just cannot understand their thinking.
If the Note 5 follows the S6, then my Note 3 will most likely be the last Samsung phone that I will own.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That card you mentioned is crazy expensive. $400+.

There is a whole thread dedicated to off topic and other devices. Please follow the rules and guidelines set forth in these forums.
Take this conversation there.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2466102
Thank you for your future cooperation with this.
Edfunkycold
Have a great day!

[Q] Upgrade

So as everyone knows the GS6 will be available mid April. When Samsung first announced the GS6 I was pretty certain I wanted to get it, however I've wanted a bigger screen (currently using gs4) and the more I compare the note 4 and GS6 the specs are extremely similar. My question is 1 obviously which phone should I get and 2 does the gs6 offer anything the note doesn't. I know I can get a back for the note for wireless charging so that doesn't concern me. And I don't really use my camera to much so that's another factor I'm not concerned about.

The Note 4 has a removable battery and MicroSD slot.
It also has an Spen with all its enhancing features (pen window is infinitely useful)
And a bigger screen.
And 670mAh bigger battery (and the possibility of using a Zerolemon 10.000mAh) The S6 battery is actually 250mAh smaller than that of the S5.add to that the fact that it's non-removable.... They made a massive mistake there.
Also, a Snapdragon. Exynos is pretty powerful in regular use, but it simply doesn't have enough gHz for the heavier apps, and a Mali GPU simply isn't as powerful as an Adreno for gaming.
As far as I know the S6 offers no advantages over the Note 4.
I'm a long-time Note user so maybe I'm a bit biased, but I'd go for the Note 4 without a second though.
Sent From My Samsung Galaxy Note 3 N9005 Using Tapatalk

ShadowLea said:
The Note 4 has a removable battery and MicroSD slot.
It also has an Spen with all its enhancing features (pen window is infinitely useful)
And a bigger screen.
And 670mAh bigger battery (and the possibility of using a Zerolemon 10.000mAh) The S6 battery is actually 250mAh smaller than that of the S5.add to that the fact that it's non-removable.... They made a massive mistake there.
Also, a Snapdragon. Exynos is pretty powerful in regular use, but it simply doesn't have enough gHz for the heavier apps, and a Mali GPU simply isn't as powerful as an Adreno for gaming.
As far as I know the S6 offers no advantages over the Note 4.
I'm a long-time Note user so maybe I'm a bit biased, but I'd go for the Note 4 without a second though.
Sent From My Samsung Galaxy Note 3 N9005 Using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How large is the note in the pocket? Is it easily manageable or does it take time to get used to?

Go for the S6.
1- its size is more practical for daily use.
2- much better then the Note 4 in term of performance. The combination of the new processor (64-bit too), the new RAM (DDR4) and the new UFS storage (which is much faster than emmc) looks pretty impressive.
3- more future proof, and is already optimized for android lollipop. You don't know what kind of issues/performance problems you might get after such a big upgrade, or after future updates (many phones reported worse performance and/or worse battery after the upgrade to lollipop). Why risk it? Just go for the device that's made for this version of android.
4- Better speaker, better fingerprint scanner, Samsung pay, wireless charging out of the box, ... just a better device overall. Only thing missing is the SD card (I don't think many people really make use of the removable battery option) and considering you're going to have 32GB minimum of storage (+115GB free cloud storage) and the option to buy a 64GB or 128GB version if you want, it would actually be a waste of the power this phone has in term of speed and performance to slow it down with an SD card.
5- better version of Touchwiz (much lighter with several improvements).
6- It looks better.

Depends if you want active development or not. The note 4 will have far more development then the G6

General_Led said:
How large is the note in the pocket? Is it easily manageable or does it take time to get used to?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I find it pretty easy to manage.
I did have to extend my pockets, but then the pockets in female jeans can't even fit a classic phone. :laugh:
It felt a bit big the first day, but after a week you won't even notice it. By then everything else will feel tiny. In terms of handling, I can manage it with one hand quite well. (Size 6 female hands, so really small hands.)
In truth the S6 isn't much smaller, the Note 4 is only slightly less than a centimeter taller and 0,8cm wider, in total. That's +-4.5 mm on either side.
Send from my Galaxy NotePro 12.2" LTE P905

zelendel said:
Depends if you want active development or not. The note 4 will have far more development then the G6
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What do you mean by more development?

General_Led said:
What do you mean by more development?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With the chip in the gs6 most developers won't touch it. It is very difficult due to Samsung not release documentation for the chip and it being hard to develop for.

D15 said:
Go for the S6.
1- its size is more practical for daily use.
2- much better then the Note 4 in term of performance. The combination of the new processor (64-bit too), the new RAM (DDR4) and the new UFS storage (which is much faster than emmc) looks pretty impressive.
3- more future proof, and is already optimized for android lollipop. You don't know what kind of issues/performance problems you might get after such a big upgrade, or after future updates (many phones reported worse performance and/or worse battery after the upgrade to lollipop). Why risk it? Just go for the device that's made for this version of android.
4- Better speaker, better fingerprint scanner, Samsung pay, wireless charging out of the box, ... just a better device overall. Only thing missing is the SD card (I don't think many people really make use of the removable battery option) and considering you're going to have 32GB minimum of storage (+115GB free cloud storage) and the option to buy a 64GB or 128GB version if you want, it would actually be a waste of the power this phone has in term of speed and performance to slow it down with an SD card.
5- better version of Touchwiz (much lighter with several improvements).
6- It looks better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
zelendel said:
With the chip in the gs6 most developers won't touch it. It is very difficult due to Samsung not release documentation for the chip and it being hard to develop for.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
One thing I have never looked into or have been concerned about is bloatware. Does bloatware actually have any impact on performance? Currently I use a custom home screen and lock screen (nova launcher and hi locker). I hide all the bullcrap apps samsung and att include so I never see them and for most of them notifications are off. I know the apps take up space but that's not a huge deal since i have a micro sd. And honestly transfer speeds aren't that important since I keep all my apps on the phone memory and movies and random files on the sd card.

General_Led said:
One thing I have never looked into or have been concerned about is bloatware. Does bloatware actually have any impact on performance? Currently I use a custom home screen and lock screen (nova launcher and hi locker). I hide all the bullcrap apps samsung and att include so I never see them and for most of them notifications are off. I know the apps take up space but that's not a huge deal since i have a micro sd. And honestly transfer speeds aren't that important since I keep all my apps on the phone memory and movies and random files on the sd card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Disabling them do help, but too many needless apps do affect the performance, especially with Samsung embedding their apps deep in the system. With the S6 though they cleaned that up and only left two of their apps (S-voice and S-health) pre-installed. The concern about bloatware is performance not storage.
The SD card slows down the system more than you think because many apps do access or try to access the SD card when available. Simplest to illustrate would be the gallery app which will slow down considerably if you use an SD card. Also the camera app can't record some (very) high quality videos on SD cards (because it needs quicker write speed than SD cards allow) and will require you to switch to internal storage... etc.
The SD card imo was a good option to have when internal storage was very expensive and most devices would ship with only 8GB/16GB storage (of which less than 10 GB is accessible). But with internal storage getting cheaper (in addition to it being faster and more reliable) it's logical that the industry is making the shift towards the better experience, and even though some people (including me until recently) are still clinging to what they're used to, in this case the change is imo pretty justified (that's my opinion though).
Having said that, the best way for you to decide is to wait until you got your hand on an S6 and experience it yourself, so my advice would be wait until then and I'm pretty sure your decision will be much easier.

D15 said:
Disabling them do help, but too many needless apps do affect the performance, especially with Samsung embedding their apps deep in the system. With the S6 though they cleaned that up and only left two of their apps (S-voice and S-health) pre-installed. The concern about bloatware is performance not storage.
The SD card slows down the system more than you think because many apps do access or try to access the SD card when available. Simplest to illustrate would be the gallery app which will slow down considerably if you use an SD card. Also the camera app can't record some (very) high quality videos on SD cards (because it needs quicker write speed than SD cards allow) and will require you to switch to internal storage... etc.
The SD card imo was a good option to have when internal storage was very expensive and most devices would ship with only 8GB/16GB storage (of which less than 10 GB is accessible). But with internal storage getting cheaper (in addition to it being faster and more reliable) it's logical that the industry is making the shift towards the better experience, and even though some people (including me until recently) are still clinging to what they're used to, in this case the change is imo pretty justified (that's my opinion though).
Having said that, the best way for you to decide is to wait until you got your hand on an S6 and experience it yourself, so my advice would be wait until then and I'm pretty sure your decision will be much easier.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think the one issue with only on board storage is that if you damage your device then you lose everything. At least with an SD card you can save the important stuff

zelendel said:
I think the one issue with only on board storage is that if you damage your device then you lose everything. At least with an SD card you can save the important stuff
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True (in most cases), but corrupted SD cards (which leads to losing all the info on it) is far more common than damaged devices. Two relatives of mine lost valuable data (pictures) because of SD card problems.
Also with the option of having 115 GB free of cloud storage (that comes with the S6), you can easily backup all the important data you have on your phone.

D15 said:
True (in most cases), but corrupted SD cards (which leads to losing all the info on it) is far more common than damaged devices. Two relatives of mine lost valuable data (pictures) because of SD card problems.
Also with the option of having 115 GB free of cloud storage (that comes with the S6), you can easily backup all the important data you have on your phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not everyone has data like that. Take where I live. Going out of town and I dont even have cell signal for days.
Odd I have been using the same SD card for almost like 4 years and never had an issue.

zelendel said:
Not everyone has data like that. Take where I live. Going out of town and I dont even have cell signal for days.
Odd I have been using the same SD card for almost like 4 years and never had an issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not saying it happens to everyone, I'm just saying it's far more common than damaged whole devices. I haven't had a problem either with my SD card (using it for over 2 years now).
The cloud storage is an option (which I imagine most people can make use of), and it's not meant that you synchronize your data all the time, you can just do it once or twice every month when you have wireless internet. That should at least limit the loss of data because of any damage to your device. But regardless of this option, internal storage is still much more reliable than SD cards on its own.

D15 said:
True (in most cases), but corrupted SD cards (which leads to losing all the info on it) is far more common than damaged devices. Two relatives of mine lost valuable data (pictures) because of SD card problems.
Also with the option of having 115 GB free of cloud storage (that comes with the S6), you can easily backup all the important data you have on your phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd really like to invite you to try my daily routine for a month. 80% of my 7.5 hour commute by train (per day), my signal is limited to "Emergency Calls".
64GB of internal memory, (the 128GB is far too expensive) that allows for, let's see... 3 hours of film in 1080, give or take. Since obviously everything else will be filled with all the other formerly-on-my-SD data, such as 30GB of magazines, 15GB worth of comics, 5GB worth of photo's, 5GB of ebooks, 25GB of music and... Oh. Hang on. 30+15+5+5+25 = 80GB. I guess that doesn't leave much room for, well, anything.
Now whatever am I going to do in the remaining 4.5 hours?
Even if I buy the 128GB S6, that would still leave me with over 40GB of missing space (counting 8GB for Android+system apps), since I have a 32GB Note 3 and a 128GB Sandisk MicroSD.
A MicroSD is an absolutely vital component for me. Without it, a device is worthless to me as a mobile media center. (And since I average 2 minutes per month worth of calling... I'm not exactly using it for the mobile functions. )
I've never had a memory card corrupt on me, and I've been using them for pretty much everything for over a decade. Now, cracked screens, damaged phones, random wipes and sudden death syndromes? That happens far too bloody often. I remember receiving over 5000 SDS cases in a month once. A MicroSD would've saved their data...
The cloud is perfectly fine when you're in a country that spans a continent, or you don't leave your home city. And your country offers unlimited data.
Me? I live on the border. There's this nightmare called 'Roaming'. And the biggest available data subscription? 10GB per month. MAX. And it doesn't apply when I walk 1km due east. There's this massive thing called Germany there, where my data is invalid and I have to use Roaming for the price of 2 quid per MB..
Let's see how much that 115GB cloud is going to cost me, then.
115GB, that's 117760MB.
117760x2 = 235520 euro/dollar/pound. I don't know how rich you are, but unless you're Bill Gates, that's not happening.
So. 235520 quid to use all of your cloud once, or 89 quid for an unlimited-use, no additional fees, no network required 128GB MicroSD?
That's not really a choice, is it?
Make no mistake. well over 90% of the world does NOT have a stable, unlimited, constant high speed mobile network connection. The cloud is useless outside that little bubble.
(Edit: Sorry if that sounded a little rude. Wasn't meant to.)

ShadowLea said:
I'd really like to invite you to try my daily routine for a month. 80% of my 7.5 hour commute by train (per day), my signal is limited to "Emergency Calls".
64GB of internal memory, (the 128GB is far too expensive) that allows for, let's see... 3 hours of film in 1080, give or take. Since obviously everything else will be filled with all the other formerly-on-my-SD data, such as 30GB of magazines, 15GB worth of comics, 5GB worth of photo's, 5GB of ebooks, 25GB of music and... Oh. Hang on. 30+15+5+5+25 = 80GB. I guess that doesn't leave much room for, well, anything.
Now whatever am I going to do in the remaining 4.5 hours?
Even if I buy the 128GB S6, that would still leave me with over 40GB of missing space (counting 8GB for Android+system apps), since I have a 32GB Note 3 and a 128GB Sandisk MicroSD.
A MicroSD is an absolutely vital component for me. Without it, a device is worthless to me as a mobile media center. (And since I average 2 minutes per month worth of calling... I'm not exactly using it for the mobile functions. )
I've never had a memory card corrupt on me, and I've been using them for pretty much everything for over a decade. Now, cracked screens, damaged phones, random wipes and sudden death syndromes? That happens far too bloody often. I remember receiving over 5000 SDS cases in a month once. A MicroSD would've saved their data...
The cloud is perfectly fine when you're in a country that spans a continent, or you don't leave your home city. And your country offers unlimited data.
Me? I live on the border. There's this nightmare called 'Roaming'. And the biggest available data subscription? 10GB per month. MAX. And it doesn't apply when I walk 1km due east. There's this massive thing called Germany there, where my data is invalid and I have to use Roaming for the price of 2 quid per MB..
Let's see how much that 115GB cloud is going to cost me, then.
115GB, that's 117760MB.
117760x2 = 235520 euro/dollar/pound. I don't know how rich you are, but unless you're Bill Gates, that's not happening.
So. 235520 quid to use all of your cloud once, or 89 quid for an unlimited-use, no additional fees, no network required 128GB MicroSD?
That's not really a choice, is it?
Make no mistake. well over 90% of the world does NOT have a stable, unlimited, constant high speed mobile network connection. The cloud is useless outside that little bubble.
(Edit: Sorry if that sounded a little rude. Wasn't meant to.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not at all.
I wasn't talking personally to you. I was talking generally about the pros and cons of SD cards.
As I said in my last post, I wasn't talking about the cloud as everyday storage option, I was talking about it as a safety measure to backup your data in the very rare case you damaged your phone. I understand that you're not home for long periods of time, but eventually I imagine you'll have to get home and you'll have wireless internet, through which you can easily backup all the important data you have on your phone to avoid any loss of data. That was my point.
There are good deals for the 128 GB version of the S6 right now (much cheaper than when I bought the 16GB S4 2 years ago), and there will be better deals in a few months because internal storage is getting cheaper. I was explaining why internal storage, even though it's still more expensive than SD cards (though not as expensive as it was a year ago), is indeed a huge improvement in term of performance and reliability compared to SD cards, which is why it's imo worth the extra money.
I totally understand if for you that 32GB extra (128GB vs 160GB, not 40GB because the Note3 also comes with a system loaded on it) is a deal breaker. But not everybody is in a situation like you. In fact if you asked me for my opinion about what phone you should get I would have definitely told you to get the Note 4, not because of the SD card, but because if you're using your phone to watch movies 7 hours per day then for you the bigger screen will have a higher value and will outweigh the practicality of carrying a smaller device.
However like I said, not everybody is in your situation, and from what I've seen with people around me, most people actually don't need more than 64GB of storage, including me, even though I'll be getting the 128GB version of the S6 because I got a good deal for it. And for people who don't need that 32GB extra (on top of the 128GB) there are a lot of pros of getting 64GB/128GB of internal storage (rather than 64GB/128GB SD card) that imo justifies the extra cost (which is now not as big as it was a year or two ago). After all performance is also a very important factor why we upgrade our devices.

D15 said:
Not at all.
I wasn't talking personally to you. I was talking generally about the pros and cons of SD cards.
As I said in my last post, I wasn't talking about the cloud as everyday storage option, I was talking about it as a safety measure to backup your data in the very rare case you damaged your phone. I understand that you're not home for long periods of time, but eventually I imagine you'll have to get home and you'll have wireless internet, through which you can easily backup all the important data you have on your phone to avoid any loss of data. That was my point.
There are good deals for the 128 GB version of the S6 right now (much cheaper than when I bought the 16GB S4 2 years ago), and there will be better deals in a few months because internal storage is getting cheaper. I was explaining why internal storage, even though it's still more expensive than SD cards (though not as expensive as it was a year ago), is indeed a huge improvement in term of performance and reliability compared to SD cards, which is why it's imo worth the extra money.
I totally understand if for you that 32GB extra (128GB vs 160GB, not 40GB because the Note3 also comes with a system loaded on it) is a deal breaker. But not everybody is in a situation like you. In fact if you asked me for my opinion about what phone you should get I would have definitely told you to get the Note 4, not because of the SD card, but because if you're using your phone to watch movies 7 hours per day then for you the bigger screen will have a higher value and will outweigh the practicality of carrying a smaller device.
However like I said, not everybody is in your situation, and from what I've seen with people around me, most people actually don't need more than 64GB of storage, including me, even though I'll be getting the 128GB version of the S6 because I got a good deal for it. And for people who don't need that 32GB extra (on top of the 128GB) there are a lot of pros of getting 64GB/128GB of internal storage (rather than 64GB/128GB SD card) that imo justifies the extra cost (which is now not as big as it was a year or two ago). After all performance is also a very important factor why we upgrade our devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What are the prices for the S6? I haven't seen anything on it yet. I'm in the US btw.

General_Led said:
What are the prices for the S6? I haven't seen anything on it yet. I'm in the US btw.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I got it with contract in the Netherlands and the device (128GB S6) itself cost me a total of 779 euro (the combination of the 16GB S4 I have right now + 64GB SD card cost me about 750 euro two years ago).
Check service providers, it's likely that you'll find very good deals.

D15 said:
I got it with contract in the Netherlands and the device (128GB S6) itself cost me a total of 779 euro (the combination of the 16GB S4 I have right now + 64GB SD card cost me about 750 euro two years ago).
Check service providers, it's likely that you'll find very good deals.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There hasn't really been any pricing in the US yet. For us the s6 isn't released until april 10.

Tab S3 or Google Pixel C

I'm in the market for a new tablet. Is the Tab S3 the best option? What are your thoughts?
Does google movies work on a rooted Tab S3?

I looked at the pixel but poor wifi put me off. Got the tab s3 and loving it. Prefer a slightly bigger bezel making it easier to hold but it's very nice with great performance. Pen is a nice accessory. Can't find a decent cover though!
Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk

droid10 said:
I'm in the market for a new tablet. Is the Tab S3 the best option? What are your thoughts?
Does google movies work on a rooted Tab S3?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, Google movies work just fine on a rooted device. After you root your device you'll have to rename the liboemcrypto.so file in system/vendor/lib in order to get NETFLIX working again.
As for picking between the Pixel C and the Tab S3, I have both tablets and I prefer the S3. The Pixel C has known hardware issues (touchscreen stops responding to touch, and WiFi will occasionally refuse to connect to a "weak" signal unless I'm in the same room as my router). Unfortunately, I'm so far past my original purchase date that Google will only replace my device rather than refunding my money. Their replacement will work for a 45-60 days before the touchscreen dies and the replacement cycle begins anew.
The Pixel C has a superior processor, but only 3GB of RAM vs 4GB on the S3; the Pixel also lacks a SD-Card slot. Both devices have beautiful displays, but the S3 has HDR support whereas the Pixel does not. The Pixel is also heavier, especially with it's optional keyboard.

Depending on where you are in the world, the S3 might already be on sale (right now I could get it for $750 vs. $800), perhaps in a month or two it'll be even less (or if your dollar is crap like ours then it's probably better to buy now than wait for it to become $850 magically overnight). If it's actually cheaper to buy the C over the S3 then I'd say go for it. Amazon seems to let sellers gouge the hell out of people so in my case the C is more expensive than the S3 - given the nature of tech supposed to be cheaper with time, logic dictates the S3 to be the better value.
Personal preference but no SD card on the Pixel vs the S3 because Google thinks everything has access to the net 24/7. 32GB isn't enough but that extra storage is sure nice (high speed SD cards are cheap these days, just make sure you're not buying from Alibaba or eBay lol).

Was in the same position before but ended up buying the Tab S3. The Pixel C is a great tablet but it is a year old already. It will still receive Android O but that's the last update it will get. (According to Google, they committed to 2 years of updates for their products)
The Tab S3 was my choice because of the added features Samsung put into it. The S Pen sets it apart from its competition. It will get update to Android O although very late. And im pretty sure it will be upgraded again to Android P before it reaches end of life status (based on past Samsung tablet updates, they usually update tablets with 2 major OS versions).

Seven Reasons Why I Gonna Return The Poco F1

It's strange that I feel I don't have most of the discussed problems in this forum. But let me tell you my reasons, why I decided to return the Poco F1.
1. Buggy microphone: the hands free mode has huge problems. There seems to be an unfixed problem with the internal microphones which makes it impossible to have understandable conversations in hands free mode (Skype, WhatsApp). This problem also occurs in the internal voice recording app in interview mode. This probably will be fixed in future versions, but as by now (9.6.14.0, European version) it just doesn't work and I need that function almost every day.
2. The MicroSD slot doesn't help much if I can't allocate the card to the internal drive. I have an ultra fast U3 SanDisk extreme card with 128 GB, but I can't merge it with the internal drive. Some would say: who cares? Just use it as an external card, whats the point? But just think of losing your phone and someone else has access to all your data on the memory card. Allocating the MicroSD to the internal drive encrypts everything on the card. I do understand the arguments of the manufacturer (speed issues because of fricking slow crappy sd cards), but I don't understand, why they won't leave that function open to experienced users (e.g. within the developers menu).
3. Can't get rid of Google Apps. I don't need and want certain Google Apps, but I can't disable them. I am not even asking for uninstalling, I just want to disable them, but Xiaomi won't let me. It just feels that I don't have control over the phone.
4. The rounded corners are strange: when watching a video you have one side with rounded corners, the other one with, well, normal corners.
5. The task switcher is a step backwards. I was used to switch between apps very quickly using the vertical task switcher. The task switcher on the Poco F1 works horizontally. Seriously? Phones are becoming longer and longer, not wider. I need much more time to switch between apps because I simply don't have a good overview of the open apps.
6. No HD-Streaming on Netflix and Prime.
7. Bad frequency coverage. Check the specs and compare them to your former phone (I used phonearena). I was shocked when I saw that the Poco F1 has really bad coverage of the available frequencies. I travel to Hong Kong and Japan a couple times a year and use local SIM cards. But looking at the very few supported frequencies, I am afraid I won't have a good reception anymore.
Remark: I have had the Poco F1 for about a week and will return it to the shop. I had a Moto G5 Plus before and will switch back to it again. I am aware of that certain points might not be bugging for some people. I consider myself as an experienced user which some major requirements about functions of a smartphone. If a phone doesn't match most of these requirements, I consider it as crap. This has nothing to do with the manufacturer. Ah, and I don't like custom roms. I went through that stuff so many years and spend so many weekends on that. I am not willing to spend my leisure time anymore trying out new roms because something is always not working well.

FTPFreezer said:
It's strange that I feel I don't have most of the discussed problems in this forum. But let me tell you my reasons, why I decided to return the Poco F1.
1. Buggy microphone: the hands free mode has huge problems. There seems to be an unfixed problem with the internal microphones which makes it impossible to have understandable conversations in hands free mode (Skype, WhatsApp). This problem also occurs in the internal voice recording app in interview mode. This probably will be fixed in future versions, but as by now (9.6.14.0, European version) it just doesn't work and I need that function almost every day.
2. The MicroSD slot doesn't help much if I can't allocate the card to the internal drive. I have an ultra fast U3 SanDisk extreme card with 128 GB, but I can't merge it with the internal drive. Some would say: who cares? Just use it as an external card, whats the point? But just think of losing your phone and someone else has access to all your data on the memory card. Allocating the MicroSD to the internal drive encrypts everything on the card. I do understand the arguments of the manufacturer (speed issues because of fricking slow crappy sd cards), but I don't understand, why they won't leave that function open to experienced users (e.g. within the developers menu).
3. Can't get rid of Google Apps. I don't need and want certain Google Apps, but I can't disable them. I am not even asking for uninstalling, I just want to disable them, but Xiaomi won't let me. It just feels that I don't have control over the phone.
4. The rounded corners are strange: when watching a video you have one side with rounded corners, the other one with, well, normal corners.
5. The task switcher is a step backwards. I was used to switch between apps very quickly using the vertical task switcher. The task switcher on the Poco F1 works horizontally. Seriously? Phones are becoming longer and longer, not wider. I need much more time to switch between apps because I simply don't have a good overview of the open apps.
6. No HD-Streaming on Netflix and Prime.
7. Bad frequency coverage. Check the specs and compare them to your former phone (I used phonearena). I was shocked when I saw that the Poco F1 has really bad coverage of the available frequencies. I travel to Hong Kong and Japan a couple times a year and use local SIM cards. But looking at the very few supported frequencies, I am afraid I won't have a good reception anymore.
Remark: I have had the Poco F1 for about a week and will return it to the shop. I had a Moto G5 Plus before and will switch back to it again. I am aware of that certain points might not be bugging for some people. I consider myself as an experienced user which some major requirements about functions of a smartphone. If a phone doesn't match most of these requirements, I consider it as crap. This has nothing to do with the manufacturer. Ah, and I don't like custom roms. I went through that stuff so many years and spend so many weekends on that. I am not willing to spend my leisure time anymore trying out new roms because something is always not working well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most of the stuff you mentioned are related to MIUI and can be fixed by flashing a stock rom ( custom) which will be available soon. For notch, you've to deal with it as most of the upcoming phones including Moto One includes Notch. Give credit to Apple for this stupid notch. I'm used to it as my main phone is iPhone X so I've been using notch phone from a long time now. Yes, rounded corners on one side sucks.
No hd streaming is still in que to be fixed by Xiaomi. Though I've no idea why people complain about it, I can't really tell difference between the quality what it streams on Amazon Prime and Netflix without HD. May be I'm used to watching videos on iPad so can't tell the difference on small screen.
Coverage is excellent here with this ph. I used to get less than 1mbps with Redmi Note 5 Pro and now I easily get 10-12mbps on 4G.
I don't use microsd card, remind me this is 2018 na? People still use microsd when OEMs offer 128/256gb phs. I've purchased Poco 128GB may be that's why I never thought this ph supports microsd.
No buggy microphone here. May be it's issue with your phone.
Since you're not into custom roms, get One Plus 6 or upcoming 6T. I bet you'll still find reasons to complain about that phone too. That's just human nature. Everybody wants top end hardware by spending less money, nobody realise when you pay less for such hardware you're going to get compromise somewhere be it notch, hd streaming, touch issues, camera etc. No phone is perfect not even the iPhone X.
Good luck with the return.

Ermm which brand phone allowed micro SD to be main drive ?

Aimara said:
Ermm which brand phone allowed micro SD to be main drive ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No the main drive, but merged with the main drive. My Moto G5 Plus allows that. It is, as far as I understood, a normal function of Android (since 6.0?) but can be disabled by the manufacturer.

FTPFreezer said:
No the main drive, but merged with the main drive. My Moto G5 Plus allows that. It is, as far as I understood, a normal function of Android (since 6.0?) but can be disabled by the manufacturer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see, this option goes way back then android 6 ,where micro SD card can be the main ,didn't know it's a android feature to merge storage

Sorry but way to much crying about this phone everywhere.
What do u expect for 300 euro in this price range and with those spec u don't find a phone with widevine.
I come from Oneplus and now I know why are people always laughing about the Xiaomi community always complaining.
Maybe it is the price range.. I don't know.
It is not a offensive post to u personally, but everywhere I look there are complains.
Good luck with the return.

Thank you for your feedback. I understand, that people might think that complaining about a 300 USD phone is exaggerated, but on the other side there's also kind of a hype about that phone, so I thought I just let people know what my expectation were and how I feel about the phone.
I intentionally didn't mention the positive things about the phone (and there, fur sure, are good ones). I believe it isn't a bad phone at all. It just doesn't suit my very specific expecations well.
My focus was set on some key features I thought some other people would also want to know about, so this hopefully help them to decide whether to buy the phone or not.

@FTPFreezer, surprised to read a few points in your post - perhaps most surprised when I came to read that you are shifting back to a G5+. I moved from a G5, a bit slower than your phone, granted, but when I came to shift some files from my G5 earlier today after a week with the F1 I was stunned by how sluggish it was. Really, there's no comparison.
Adoptable storage has been a pain in the ass rather than a boon - mine has not failed in the way many G5 users have experienced, but getting data off the card to switch phones is misery. The F1 camera is worlds better. There's no comparison in terms of build quality, the G5 feeling like a toy. Until today I never realised the G5 screen is as poor as it is. Battery life is obviously incomparable.
Miui is not to my taste, but Rootless pixel launcher makes it tolerableme features done nicely. I'll still probably move to a custom ROM, but likely not if it means losing the face unlock.
Face unlock - reminds me how shockingly poor the G5 fingerprint reader is; the Pocophone is bang on every time.
Good luck with the switch back, but I really don't appreciate your reasoning.

Easily disable from playstore head to help and feedback then select delete or disable app and you can disable

FTPFreezer said:
Thank you for your feedback. I understand, that people might think that complaining about a 300 USD phone is exaggerated, but on the other side there's also kind of a hype about that phone, so I thought I just let people know what my expectation were and how I feel about the phone.
I intentionally didn't mention the positive things about the phone (and there, fur sure, are good ones). I believe it isn't a bad phone at all. It just doesn't suit my very specific expecations well.
My focus was set on some key features I thought some other people would also want to know about, so this hopefully help them to decide whether to buy the phone or not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Should've just bought a more expensive phone if you have such specific needs. Most people are satisfied with what they got.

teddyanuj said:
Easily disable from playstore head to help and feedback then select delete or disable app and you can disable
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried this by yourself or do you just contribute something without knowledge? This is simply not possible on the Poco F1. You can just uninstall all updates, but you are not able to deactivate the app.

Undead_Son said:
Should've just bought a more expensive phone if you have such specific needs. Most people are satisfied with what they got.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why do you say this? Which of my points are related to a higher price? The only one I could think of is the frequency coverage, but other thread in this forum suggest, that Xiaomi might just block them by software.

FTPFreezer said:
Have you tried this by yourself or do you just contribute something without knowledge? This is simply not possible on the Poco F1. You can just uninstall all updates, but you are not able to deactivate the app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did it.. just follow step and disable them

teddyanuj said:
I did it.. just follow step and disable them
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Then it could be a region related issue. My region is set to HK (because otherwise face unlock isn't possible in Germany). It definately doesn't work like you said. But anyways, I gonna return the phone today, so it doesn't matter much anymore. I'll just keep the G5 Plus for some while.

FTPFreezer said:
Then it could be a region related issue. My region is set to HK (because otherwise face unlock isn't possible in Germany). It definately doesn't work like you said. But anyways, I gonna return the phone today, so it doesn't matter much anymore. I'll just keep the G5 Plus for some while.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Whether u take or let it go...it doesnt matter to anyone here . M trying to help u out just this ..

LOL with adb you can uninstall all you want

FTPFreezer said:
Why do you say this? Which of my points are related to a higher price? The only one I could think of is the frequency coverage, but other thread in this forum suggest, that Xiaomi might just block them by software.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A more expensive phone is more likely to match those major requirements of yours, that's all.

@FTPFreezer thank you for your review. I, for one, enjoyed your critique of the product. It's these kinds of review I like to search for before buying a product.
Only the Google Apps thing worries me, personally. I will still be getting the poco phone.

1. Buggy microphone
can't verify that, mine is good
2. The MicroSD slot doesn't help much if I can't allocate the card to the internal drive
why would you want to do that? if you have to format data even everything on SDcard is gone, UFS is anyway much faster
3. Can't get rid of Google Apps
yes, you can - just use a custom ROM
4. The rounded corners are strange
I have to admit the corners are big but I'm not playing games, so I can live with it
5. The task switcher is a step backwards
not an issues on custom ROM
6. No HD-Streaming on Netflix and Prime
for what? do you really see a difference at a 6.2" panel? regarding bandwith L3 is enough for me
7. Bad frequency coverage
can't verify that, works good here in austria

I can't help but laugh. This is a 300 hundred dollar phone. This is not the S9+ even though the Poco is faster.
I installed the SD before setting my F1. During setup of Miui 10, it asked me if I wanted to use it for app storage or just as portable storage.
If you were rooted, you could get rid of any app you want. Not sure why this is even an issue. All OEM's stop you from removing apps bundled like Google Duo, play movies etc.
There are hacked versions of Netflix out there that let you play ultra HD shows. The problem is on a 6" screen, not sure what the big deal is.
I get no 4g here in the US on T-Mobile but I've had no issues with sound quality whatsoever.
Sounds to me like a nice S9+ is what u want. Heck, it's only 600 dollars more
Let me say it again, this is an amazing phone for 300 bucks. People will always find negative things to say about any phone.

Better Mobile App

welcome