Exynos vs Snapdragon: Samsung wants to enter into a war with Qualcomm


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Samsung has been making homegrown Exynos processors for a few years now, but they still used the Snapdragon for most of their devices. The reason usually involved LTE compatibility, but production capacity could have also played a part. Now recent reports of the Snapdragon 810 overheating has fueled speculation that Samsung will ditch Qualcomm in favor of their own chip on the Galaxy S 6, but other analysts contend the Exynos isn’t ready for primetime yet. However, overheating or no overheating, it appears that Samsung might not be making this decision based on that. It appears that Samsung is ready to expand the Exynos to not only most of their their devices, but hopefully with other manufacturers, thus entering into a war with Qualcomm.


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Samsung Galaxy S Edge name exposed on Vodafone’s site


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When the Galaxy S 6 launches this spring, the handset will likely be joined by an Edge variant. The Edge variant would be similar to what the Galaxy Note Edge is for the Galaxy Note 4 – identical internal specifications with a modified exterior. The naming for the Edge variant of the Galaxy S 6 has been up in the air; however, Vodafone may have given away its official name.


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Apple’s iPhone gaining on Samsung sales


samsung_vs_appleThe iPhone 6 is doing abundantly well when it comes to sales. So well, in fact, the phone is closing in on Samsung‘s top smartphone maker title. It’s a title that the Korean company took from Apple in the third quarter of 2011 and one that it has held onto since. However, given the iPhone’s strong sales and Samsung’s market share decrease of 34 percent in 2013 to 25 percent this past year after only shipping 78 million smartphones in the third quarter, it appears that Samsung may not hold the title for that much longer.


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Samsung Exynos 7420 surfaces on Geekbench


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With all of the talk recently about the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy S 6 and Samsung’s apparent decision to drop the Snapdragon 810 processor for their own Exynos chip, you may be wondering what kind of performance Samsung will be able to deliver with their new device. A new listing that surfaced today on Geekbench may help answer that question. A new entry for an “SC7 Full Android on avl7420″ appears to be a listing for a device running an Exynos 7420 chip, a new entry from Samsung Exynos 7 line of chips that was announced last year.

According to the entry, the chip that was tested was running at 1.5 GHz with 8 cores. On the multi-core test, the Geekbench score landed at 5478. For comparison, the current generation Exynos 5433 processor will produce a score of around 4000 in testing at 1.3 GHz. On the single-core test, the 7420 produced a score of 1520 which compares favorable to the NVIDIA Tegra K1 used in the Nexus 9 which runs at 2.5 GHz to produce a score of 1895.

The posted Geekbench results also reveal the tested device, believed to be the Galaxy S 6, is running Android 5.0 Lollipop and is equipped with 3GB of RAM.

source: Geekbench
via: Gizmochina

Qualcomm to deliver updated version of the Snapdragon 810 in March


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The saga regarding the Snapdragon 810 and overheating issues continues. Will Samsung use the Snapdragon 810 in the Galaxy S 6 is one of the biggest questions this year. There have been reports indicating that Samsung would go exclusively with the homegrown Exynos, and others indicating that Samsung could never drop Qualcomm completely.

Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Qualcomm has worked around the heating issue and will deliver a new version of the chip to Samsung in March. Some analysts have already predicted that Samsung will launch the S6 in Korea on time, but delay it in other markets because of this very reason.


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Survey finds 50% of phones activated last quarter came from Apple, 26% from Samsung


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Apple trumped all other smartphone manufacturers last quarter based on consumers activating a device. The usual Android foes were all far behind Apple with Samsung leading the way. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) conducted a survey with five hundred subjects in the United States and aimed to find which phone brands were most popular among activations. The devices, both old and new, were activated between October and December of last year.


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Samsung to use their own camera module in the Galaxy S 6


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Rumors have the Galaxy S 6 sporting a 20 MP main rear camera along with optical image stabilization (OIS), but that’s not all that surprising. What might be surprising is the fact that Samsung is going to use their own camera module.

Samsung has been using Sony modules for the past few flagship phones so this is a major change. This news comes from a report in which Korean analysts were talking about Samsung Electro-Mechanics (SEM) in that they will benefit from a 20 MP module for smartphones that will be available during the 1st half of the year when the Galaxy S 6 will be released.


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Samsung working on a wearable sensor for detecting strokes early


Samsung ESDAPSamsung’s Creativity Lab has been working on a new wearable health sensor for the past two years. This sensor, called the Early Detection Sensor and Algorithm Package (EDSAP), monitors brain waves and give the wearer information to track potential strokes.

EDSAP uses multiple sensors and a complex algorithm that keeps up with brainwave activity. The user can then use a smartphone or tablet to check up on the brainwave activity and predict the probability of a stroke. The sensor won’t do much for treating a stroke, but if the brain waves start to point towards a stroke, you’d know to seek out medical attention before things got serious.
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