Re: *The* Galaxy Note 7 review!
1440p on the GPU is much more taxing than 1080p. If the 1080p mode is true hardware scaling, there should be significant battery savings and less heat. Any app that leverages the GPU over the CPU would benefit. The software would grossly underestimate the battery savings estimate in this regard.
The two main heat producers are the GPU and LTE radio (weak signal areas).
You might be surprised
Oh I absolutely agree that decreasing the effective resolution makes things a lot easier on the GPU. But I also think you maybe overestimate how hot the Note 7 is getting when you're playing games — I don't think that this is an issue that should require the user to change the resolution to mitigate heat.
Andrew, this will be my first Samsung phone. I have a question that you did not cover in your review. Please bear with me until the end of the question.
On some "review" videos, and reading anecdotes from actual users, I see that RAM management is a long standing issue with Samsung (or maybe Android?).
Touchwiz seems to be killing the apps in the background far too fast.
Will you be amending your initial review to add such minutia or will someone else focus more on the Note's new Touchwiz?
I'm just very curious about Samsung's RAM management.
You're correct that some people tend to harp on Samsung (and, well, every phone manufacturer) about RAM usage ... and in most cases, they don't really know what they're talking about.
I can say that just like previous Samsung phones, the Note 7 focuses its software to make sure that the system, launcher, camera and most-used apps are readily available in RAM so that you get the best possible experience in the daily use of your phone. No the Note 7 will not fill up the RAM to 99% and leave a week-old app sitting there ready to go, but then again you have to understand that there are trade offs associated with doing so.
Samsung, just like Google and everyone else, does some sculpting of RAM management to make sure the phone runs the way they want it to.
I'm not sure if I'm not calculating SOT the same but I have been using the DTEK50 for a week as I'm a legacy BB guy but have the Note 7 pre-ordered and on the DTEK I get over 4hrs of SOT with about 14hrs total before I have to charge again. I would expect the Note 7 to have the same if not better SOT and longer time between charge. I just go into the Battery Settings and hit "Screen" and it tells me how long the screen has been on I assume that's how you calculate this?
We are indeed calulating SOT the same.
The issue with SOT as a measurement is it doesn't tell you what was being done when the screen was on. If I just turn off the screen timeout and have the phone display a static webpage, it can do that for probably 10 hours. If i just load up a TV show in Google Play Movies it can likely run that for like 6 hours. But turning the phone on and off throughout the day, using it for various things, you won't always be able to measure that as being the same. There's also substantial drain from other processes and background tasks that happen when the phone is idling with the screen off.
Could I easily hit 4 hours of SOT on the Note 7 throughout the day? Sure. Did I regularly do that? Nope, I don't often look at my phone for a total of 4 hours a day. But with my average usage, which includes about 3 hours of SOT, the Note 7 didn't die before the end of the day.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram