text:
AMD Radeon R9 290X Performance Preview: Bioshock Infiniteby Ryan Smith on 10/17/2013 3:00 PM EST
- Posted in
- Radeon
- GPUs
- Hawaii
- Radeon 200
89 Comments
Back to Article
Elixer - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkWas this on a win 7, 8, or 8.1 system?
Also, you ever get a response from AMD about them dropping Vista driver support ? Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkWindows 8.1
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7400/the-radeon-r9-2... Reply
Flunk - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkSo it's slower than a Nvidia GTX Titan then, interesting but it gives us an idea of what it will cost. Reply
marc1000 - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkkinda disappointed too. not that the card is in my budget anyway, but I was hoping for a little more... Reply
Brutalizer - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkI am curious to see how much improvement Mantle API will give. Will Mantle give 25% more performance? Or 50%? But as one AMD rep said in an official interview "we will ridicule Titan when using Mantle", it seems that Mantle will give far more than 25% improvement. Because 25% more improvement is not "ridiculous". How much is "ridiculous" you think? 100%? 200%? 1000% would certainly be ridiculous. But 25% not. Reply
Frallan - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - linkIn marketing speak it means anything above tied lets say around 2%...
In engineeringspeak Id say it starts at 50+%
So just have a look at who said it is he marketing or engineering? Reply
tuklap - Wednesday, October 23, 2013 - linkthey sometimes exaggerate things. for us, 10-15% improvement is not that good. but for the designers, its excellent for them. we dont know what lies behind those numbers soo better just wait and appreciate Reply
Da W - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkSo effectively tying 780 at max detail while R9 280X was lagging by a wide margin. (in fact bioshock seems to favor nvidia cards).
Not bad. I need to see price still.
Hey Ryan are you able to include R9 270X in crossfire in your nexts benchmark? Seems to me that Pitcairn is the most power efficient chip, and with price, could be a nice option for eyefinity rigs (with GPU#2 shutted down while in simple desktop mode). I know i know about crossfire issues. Reply
nathanddrews - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkDoes it favor NVIDIA? I dunno...
I can't wait to see some objective reviews. Didn't Roy just call out the Titan the other day? If you're not royally handing the 780 its ass, you probably shouldn't taunt ye olde Titan... Reply
Spunjji - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkGraphs are funny things - different ones say different things:
To be honest I'd say that the game doesn't especially favour either side strongly, but there seems to be a marginal lean towards the nVidia architecture. Reply
nathanddrews - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkThere's a huge difference between pushing 2MP (1080p) and 8MP (4K). That's why I linked to a 6MP (triple screen) example. Reply
pattycake0147 - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkMaybe that's planned for the 270X and 260X article that was promised in the 280X launch piece. I hope it comes out soon as that's the article I'm most interested in. Reply
Hrel - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkBioshock favors AMD. Reply
tviceman - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkIt's a GE title, if anything it should "favor" AMD. Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkI only have 1 270X, so there won't be any CF results at this time. Reply
MoreDinosaurs - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkOutside of the realm of benchmarks, how useful/enjoyable/different is running Bioshock at 4k/60fps? Curious about this strange 4k future... Reply
inighthawki - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkI'd like to know too, but it'll probably be a lot more beneficial on large displays (30" or greater), pixel density is usually incredibly poor. On a smaller display such as 22-24" I'd be surprised if the difference is much different than 1080p with good AA and AF. We'll have to wait and see :) Reply
A5 - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkYeah. Not that I have the budget for a 4K monitor anyway, but I'd like to see a subjective comparison of how it feels compared to 1080p or 1440p, especially with the quality tradeoff. Reply
Sancus - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkIt's pretty cool. You can certainly see higher detail than 1080p in scenes with little or no movement. When there's a lot of moving(turning around, panning, etc) 120hz/Lightboost let you see more detail. For FPSes specifically I would say that higher refresh rates/lightboost add more to the experience than higher resolutions do.
However, if you like exploring in games like Skyrim, or you enjoy tile-based RTSes/rpgs/strategy games, 4k is pretty cool because you definitely see a lot more detail when you're not jumping/turning around like mad, scenes are sharper, and in the latter case with tile-based games, you get to see a lot more of the map at once without sacrificing the ability to read text. Civ5 is pretty awesome, for example.
The one big problem with 4k and other high resolutions is that at much smaller monitor sizes(say, 3200x1800 13.3 inch panels or a hypothetical 3840x2160 24 inch panel) scaling becomes a big issue, and even in Windows 8.1, the majority of applications you are going to use have messed up UIs and problems with scaling. Web browsers and built-in WIndows apps tend to be okay, but as soon as you get outside that box, the higher you set the scaling the weirder things are going to get, and then some apps like Skype will just be completely unusable because they don't support scaling at all. Fortunately, my monitor is 31.5 inches so it's only 140dpi, which means that I can get away with 125% scaling, and apps that don't support it at all(Steam, Skype) are still completely usable if a little uncomfortable at times.
reference: I own an Asus PQ321. Reply
Spunjji - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkCheers for the evaluation! Reply
nathanddrews - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkIf you haven't tried it already, you can copy the existing Steam skin and rename it. Open the skin file and replace all font sizes with a size of 18. It works beautifully. If all else fails, use BPM. Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkActually it might match Titan. I dont know why the chart only compares a 780 but this one shows Titan being about the same amount faster than a 780:
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph6973/54886... Reply
cmikeh2 - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkThey should be close at that setting. Looks like the 290X will really excel in high resolution gaming with the great memory bandwidth but NVIDIA will have better shader performance in that comparison. Reply
tipoo - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkThis is with "quiet mode" enabled, whatever that is. I wonder how much more performance is there in noisy mode.
Not bad for something still on 28nm and with a smaller/cheaper die size. Reply
dragonsqrrl - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkI suppose you could say the same for gk104 vs. Tahiti Reply
Spunjji - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkIndeed! Reply
200380051 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkIndeed not! Look at the compute performance on gk104...nVidia removed most of the transistor budget for that, for the sake of a more "efficient" gaming chip. Tahiti is roughly equal in gaming but has 3x the compute perfs.. Reply
dragonsqrrl - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkI suppose you could say the same for gf110 vs Cayman... oh, except that in addition to having superior compute performance the GTX580 also consistently outperformed the HD6970 in games. Tell me, since you're obviously so keen on judging the value of a gaming card by its compute performance, were you an Nvidia fanboy before the HD7900 series?
Oh, and another two points AMD fanboys don't seem to consider, and they're a big ones, Nvidia has had gk110 based Geforce cards on the market for 8 months now (let that sink in for a sec), and they had gk110 based Tesla's available long before that. And then consider that the gk110 based Geforce card in the benchmark above uses a heavily disabled gk110. And then consider that the HD7970 GHz already consumes a similar amount of power under load as the GTX780/Titan. And then, well... there goes all your market strategy, performance, and efficiency misconceptions. It's hard to interpret things any other way from an objective, informed standpoint.
But, but, AMD will likely bring greater value to the high-end...
Yes, they probably will, and that's fantastic for consumers, but that has nothing to do with your argument. Reply
jjj - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkAnd you guys thought this is ethical? Reply
sorten - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkWhich guys? Thought what was ethical? Reply
A5 - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkIf you think a controlled benchmark release is unethical, you should probably just quit following pretty much all product coverage of anything ever. Reply
brucek2 - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkA5 - Name one other video card review in recent memory where the manufacturer was allowed to pick the single game that would be benchmarked? As far as I can recall this is unprecedented.
Its unclear who picked the single game. If it was AnandTech, fine, I guess. But if it was AMD who told AnandTech the one game and specific setting(s) they were allowed to cover, the only responses with journalistic integrity would either have been to tell them "no thanks" or to run it as a paid ad and label it as such.
Controlling the release date via emargoes is routine and works out in everyone's best interest. Controlling the content of supposed pieces of journalism is not at all routine and in no one's interest but the manufacturers. Reply
DigitalFreak - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkDunno. Tom's Hardware has both Bioshock and Tomb Raider. Reply
cmikeh2 - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkThey did say: "And as with all controlled benchmark releases we'd advise not reading too much into any single benchmark here, as the relative performance of NVIDIA and AMD cards changes with the game being tested, at times rather wildly." That's a pretty straightforward disclaimer if you ask me. They don't make any recommendations off of this single benchmark and just use it as a starting point and a general realm of performance. Reply
brucek2 - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkYes, they adequately disclosed the situation as to what happened. But why did they accept the situation as all? To most mainstream journalists, these conditions would be unacceptable and simply result in no story until it was possible to adequately prepare one.
What will they agree to next? They can publish the review 48 hours early, as long as AMD gets to strike any sentences it doesn't approve of? Or 96 hours early, if they agree to include verbatim several paragraphs provided by AMD's PR department? Or a full week early, if they do the above and agree not to disclose any of the conditions?
Maybe AnandTech felt as a one off, they were better off getting some early coverage in. But since they and others went for it, they can assume more of these trades of journalistic integrity for early publish date will be coming their way in the future. It may be a short term gain but in the end they are selling off the things they have that matter most, their reputation and credibility. Reply
Drumsticks - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkHow is that at all related? They aren't striking out any part of the review and are in no way allowing AMD to "approve" what they're writing. AMD said they could release a benchmark, which they did, along with a hefty disclaimer. That's no reason for alarm at all. They aren't sacrificing the integrity of the benchmark or preview. It's just that - a preview.
There will still be a full 290X review. Every company is going to want to portray their products in a positive light, and the same is true for AMD. That doesn't make it unethical. It would be unethical if they fudged the numbers, which didn't happen. It's equally possible that they wanted a limited preview so they could *provide* a preview, but simultaneously give them time to actually prepare the other games for which drivers or other factors might not be ready.
Also, in a preview that AMD allowed where one of the data points is virtually even, I don't think they were too focused on cheating us out of "ethical" journalism. Reply
brucek2 - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkAMD's unwarranted approval power was preemptive, in that they approved one (or two?) specific games potentially at specific settings, while disapproving all other games/settings. That is way over the line of an unacceptable amount of journalistic control to give up in exchange for access to materials or sources.
If AMD wants to issue a press release touting overly specific performance numbers / controlled cases, then just forward the release as is and label it accordingly (if judged newsworthy), or don't. But don't attach your journalistic brand to something so obviously unbefitting of an actual independent act of reporting. Reply
HisDivineOrder - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkIt's very fugly when a company chooses the game and the scenario and the system that plays the game for the "limited comparison" point for a previously unbiased neutral third party. People expect Anandtech to be above the fray, unbiased, and certainly not playing favorites.
Here's something obvious. nVidia has a show today, but they said virtually nothing about it today. Meanwhile, other sites don't have a problem mentioning it. They mentioned it, but only in the AMD article and only briefly with next to no description of said event.
Meanwhile, they spent this entire article talking about AMD's limited comparison point made only under AMD's exacting requirements that ensured they looked great during the comparison.
This reminds me of what AMD did last year with Piledriver's launch. Allowing limited "reviews" of certain, favorable parts. Imagine how loud and constant the howls of fury would be if nVidia launched a new product with "limited reviews" or "comparisons" based on nVidia-selected games and/or benchmarks.
Say, nVidia is launching the new nVidia Geforce Titanic. They make a whole show at the Caribbean Islands. They have a special Green section at Anandtech that does nothing but report on news favorable to nVidia. Anandtech suddenly is virtually ignoring or going completely dark on the fact that nVidia's prior cards (686 series) are having massive problems with 4K in Crossfire despite being cards "designed for 4K." So every article in this "Green Section" is incredibly positive.
Then the new Titanic is coming. Journalists all in the Caribbean are drinking pina coladas and are fed new proprietary technologies like nVidia PureAudio DSP's limited only to nVidia cards and only a select group of the new cards. Plus, nVidia Glide 2.0, an initiative to lock in developers to only CUDA-based video cards built in the last year. Imagine then that said "Green Section" clinked glasses and danced in a loop, making a much-read, much-spread article about how the new Glide 2.0 is in fact a low level API from one of the next generation consoles that is about to hit without a shred of proof or much more than a hope and a dream.
Now imagine nVidia implies to all those reviewers that they'll open up more information about said upcoming Titanic in... a week, maybe two. Then three weeks pass and no one says anything. Waiting longer, they re-fresh and re-release the same products they previously released almost two years ago but with completely new names and similar pricing to what they'd already dropped to. Yet no one says anything but "Wow, the value is great" despite the bundle having been axed.
Now imagine they offer said "Green Section" a new benchmark for a very specific game guaranteed to give them a "win." Everyone is hungry for benchmarks, for the final answer to whether the card is better, and you have a seemingly unbiased review site popping up with an "early benchmark" that shows the new card in that "Green Section" winning at 4K.
Man, it looks like the "Green Section" has the goods and the Green Team has the cards, right? Except if they had the goods, then why are they only showing a very limited review instead of being brave and showing everything they got right now when they very clearly can?
Because showing everything would show everything, warts and all. AMD wants to show you only one specific thing, to choose the battleground, the benchmark, and win out completely in that one place. They're aiming to mislead because if they weren't, they wouldn't need to choose the game, choose the benchmark, and stack the deck.
That's just another part of how far Anandtech has gone away from ethical. That's what's not ethical. How can anyone NOT question their "unbiased" status now?
If I buy you a trip to a tropical island and I buy a section in your site and I get preferential treatment that seems suddenly to forget or just not mention any problems I have when they are rather widespread in being discussed and then I buy a free early benchmark of my choosing and design and somehow manage to get you not to talk about what my chief opponent is doing even when what they're doing is so much bigger than that benchmark for that day...
...then I have question if I wouldn't have you in my back pocket, right?
If it were nVidia or Intel doing all this and not AMD, you'd see a howling fit the likes of which the intarwebz would never cool. Reply
mycardbrokedown - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linki get your point but there is a falacy to it... this product is not yet released so any and all info is given out under nda. if the product was a launched and sold one you would be right in this case however not. plus all sites may now publish their results for the given games. on the other hand i get it why they did it... the srivers arn't there yet and i think they want to launch with fairly good drivers this time around. Reply
Principle - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkYou guys are ridiculous. You don't want any info, fine, dont read it, now shut up. There is nothing unethical about what happened, nothing. Making a mountain out of a non-issue in the name of Nvidia fanaticism. Reply
brucek2 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkWay to miss the big picture. The combined market share of the R290, and the 780 and/or Titan, is a rounding error away from zero. The competitive differences between them will affect at most a tiny slice of the PC user base, and any competitive rankings today will be obsolete within 6 months if not 3. All of that is small beans.
The larger issue, which will endure for much longer, and will apply to much more mainstream products affecting much greater numbers of users, is the rules of engagement between the tech press and the manufacturer. No one has yet responded to my original question, which was to name another example where the tech press accepted such one sided rules. I believe AMD's PR operation broke new ground today. They got away with it first, but now that precedent has been set they surely won't be the last. Nvidia will of course respond in kind, but the bigger picture is so will other manufacturers in other product categories.
Tech press is relatively new because tech itself is relatively new. Broader journalism has been around a lot longer, has covered issues that have much more far reaching implications, and has arrived at rules that make sense in protecting the freedom of the press and therefore its readers. Not accepting undue editorial control in exchange for materials, access, favors, etc is an important part of that. The tech press blew it today and we will all eventually be worse off for their mistake. Reply
WritersBlock - Monday, October 21, 2013 - linkI have to say, that bruck2 makes a good point. But in fairness to anandtech, their disclaimer was hard to miss. Reply
takeship - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkWe don't know just quite yet whether or not these numbers have been fudged, but we will in a few more days time. No doubt EVERY site will now run a Bioshock Infinite bench at this res to double-check AMDs claim, and yell to the heavens if AMD was dumb enough to fudge something so easily verifiable. I would like a comment of some sort as to why the 290X score is listed as "Quiet Mode." That parts seems to be marketing driven to me. (i.e. low PowerTune matches a 780, balanced matches a Titan, performance takes them out back) Reply
TheJian - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkhttp://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-radeon-r9-290...
Toms was told which games and how to run them...This type of crap would be pounced on here by Ryan if NV did this. Note they are completely ignoring NV's show in montreal...ROFL. Still don't see an NV portal page either to complement the AMD portal they have here. How much does AMD pay anandtech these days? Reply
nsiboro - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link@brucek2, @HisDivineOder:
You guys going hypotheticals and fantasizing "What-Ifs" = trying so very hard to make something out of nothing.
It's a preview result. The end. Reply
brucek2 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link@nsiboro - the admission that AMD "named the game, the cards, and the resolution" is in the 3rd paragraph. The fact that AnandTech accepted those conditions and ran the story anyway is evident by the existence of this article. There is nothing hypothetical or what iffed about it. Reply
nsiboro - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link@brucek2
Lots of Q?, "Maybe", "Assume", "Say...", "Titanic" (so sad, it sunk), "Imagine", "Implies", etc.
*These words. *sigh*
*According to you, the publishing of this 1 preview = doomed all journalistic integrity at this site and all over the Internet.
"The combined market share of the R290, "
*R9-290/X is not out yet, authority sources?*
"All of that is small beans."
*I dunno, 780/Titan are priced very high*
So, you are not OK with this site and many other (as they also published the same preview).
I can respect that. Reply
brucek2 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkI could answer those nits but I don't want to distract from my main contention, still unanswered. I believe that AMD broke new ground by placing such tight conditions on what could be discussed in the preview, and the press accepting it.
To all those claiming this is not a big deal and simply business as usual, my question stands -- point me to any previous AnandTech (or other similarly respectable site) article that allowed the manufacturer to dictate the content to that extent. I'm aware that sometimes there's just very little data to report period, so see that as a different case; but here, the team had the ability to generate as many data points as desired yet accepted the restriction to use only those of the manufacturer's choosing.
You may call it a hypothetical, but allowing control over the one and only game allowed in the story is not so very far from allowing say only positive vs negative comments in a story. The latter demand would have hopefully been laughed out of the room; but I am not understanding why the former should not also have been. Reply
nathanddrews - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkIf AMD invited me to their party and told me that I could run benchmarks for just one game on their brand new super double top secret GPU and share those results with the world, I would do exactly that. I would also include the disclaimer that AT did. I don't see the problem. It's labeled as a preview. No different than press events hosted by Intel or NVIDIA, Samsung or Apple.
Put down the Haterade. Reply
brucek2 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkThe difference is not having more information vs. accepting restrictions on information you do have.
Every reporter faces the challenge of receiving biased, partial information from one sided sources (i.e., a press conference.) Choosing how to evaluate and present that information, and how to complement it with information from other sources, and whether it is ready to run at all, are all basic tasks of journalism.
That's not what's happening here though. This and other blogs have more information, but they agreed to terms that they would first report only the specific portion of the information that the manufacturer requested. The response with journalistic integrity would have been to decline those terms. Reply
Principle - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkOMG, get over it. They were allowed to present their data any way they wanted, no one told them what to write, only the scope. The full set of data will come out in a couple weeks at the latest. THEY ARE OPERATING ON A NON DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT. they have had results to report for weeks potentially, but were not allowed to release it. Does that make Anandtech evil, because they may have information they did not give to you??? But now that they gave you a little they are bad people?? The terms of an NDA are clear, the people that pay millions of dollars to bring that product to market get to decide when information is released. That NDA ends when the product is publicly released and all the data will flow. Why does this not make sense??????? Reply
sorten - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkI'm not excited about the current generation of cards. It seems like NVidia and ATI both got caught napping when 4K monitors started to hit the scene and they've both been busy rebranding and overclocking existing hardware on the same manufacturing process. I'll wait and see what happens with the next generation. Reply
MrSpadge - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkWhat did you expect? A unicorn spraying fairy dust?
The improvements over the 40 nm generation(s) are starting to become very significant. Can't ask for much more on the hardware front, unless the software changes as well. Reply
sorten - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link@MrSpadge : I wasn't expecting anything. I'm just saying that I'm keeping my money in my wallet. The advantages of 28nm over 40nm were very significant two years ago when that process change occurred. Since then there has been relatively little movement unless you're spending $600+ for a card, and even then you might be better off with two lower end cards. Reply
A5 - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - link4K is still a tiny, tiny niche. They have SLI/XFire for the people who need to hit that resolution right now. By the time 4K is mainstreak (3-5 years?) they'll be able to handle it on one high-end card. Reply
ddriver - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkHopefully the madness will end at 4k. Anything above is literal overkill, considering most people cannot distinguish between a 150 and 300 dpi image from normal viewing distance. A 4k monitor at 31.5" is about 150 ppi... There is really no point in rendering pixels that the human eye cannot distinguish. Reply
mcnabney - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkThat is why I question need for some Ultra settings. When you can't really see the pixels the need for massive AA goes away. UHD resolutions need to be reviewed for appropriate detail levels. Reply
Nagorak - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkThese ultra high res monitors just seem idiotic to me. When it comes to games you're just shooting yourself in the foot trying to run at such high resolution. It's going to look works being on medium settings than it would at high settings at a lower resolution.
I bet most of the time people are going to end up running at half monitor res anyway if they want decent performance (basically equivalent to non-4K monitors). Reply
jasonelmore - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkIt wont. The higher resolution the resolution we can get, the closer we get to Holo Projection. Reply
Gigaplex - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkI can easily distinguish between 150 and 300 dpi at normal viewing distance... when it's static. It makes a massive difference for font rendering. I can't say I've experienced it in a game however so you may have a point for games. Reply
haukionkannel - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkYep! i agree. When you read anything from monitor, the 4K and even 8K are just fine! When gaming it all depends on how much GPU power you have. I am guite sure that in the beginning running the game in 1080p mode and upscaling it to 4K will be enough! I have read several test reports from TV sets that are 4K. The reports say that native 4K material is indeed very good, but upscaled 1080p material does look good too, better than in normal 1080p resolution TV sets (just like upscaled DVD movies in the distant past). So there definitely is need for 4k and even 8k monitors. Just run the games in resolution that can give you enough fps and upscale from that! Reply
c4toast - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkEach of the 8 ACE's can manage up to 8 compute queues for a total of 64 compute commands, in comparison the HD 7970 only has 2 ACE's that could only queue 2 compute commands for a total of 4 is that true? if so what kind of perf we get wen dev fully optimize. Reply
psuedonymous - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkWith AMDs current issues (http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Frame-... regarding frame rating with multiple monitors (and that all current UHD 60fps displays are driven by two separate 1920x2160 streams), are you allowed by AMD to publish the frame timings in addition to the raw framerate? AMD promised a 'fix' with the R290x, but it would be interesting to see how much things have actually improved. Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkFrame pacing with multiple monitors over a single GPU has never been an issue. It's only a remaining issue for multiple GPUs in conjunction with multiple monitors. So the 290X would not be affected here. Reply
SeeManRun - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkOne thing of interest is that ultra quality includes AA. What happens if you turn off AA since it shouldn't be needed at UltraHD? Reply
Principle - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkYou can see it at Toms, where they did something more reasonable and just put it on very high settings instead of medium and could manage nearly the same frame rates. Reply
Wreckage - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkSo any old factory overclocked off the shelf 780 will be better. Sigh. Reply
TwiSparkle - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkYou mean I can't overclock the 290X? :( /sarcasm. And really it will come down to price. If this is 550-600 it is a LOT better than a 780. Reply
TheJian - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkUmm, did you look at the watts and heat it puts off already at stock?
94 temps (titan had 84, 780 82), and 404watts vs titan 342. For that extra 62watts this thing should be blowing away Titan. It's not.
You're under the mistaken impression NV's pricing is stuck in stone. They now offer 3 free games and $100 off shield coupon. Also considering all the driver problems this year/last and still going, NV's reasonable asking for a premium for stuff that "just works" right? ;) You buy AMD you MAYBE get a working driver at some point. Or buy NV and forget about it. I'm sure the shoe will be on the other foot eventually but right now they haven't fixed everything with the last gen. To me, this kind of crap is why AMD has to give more free games away usually and can't get NV's 65% discrete share down one bit for years. Reply
just4U - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkOr just throw in a NV and it works? lol.. Driver related problems across both companies are fairly equal from what I can tell and have been for a long time. I am surprised people still tout this argument after 12 years... Reply
Principle - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkYou mean in that non-official release with no credibility? The extra 62 watts was actually the space heater running off the same socket blowing into the PC intake of the AMD machine. Reply
Gunbuster - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkI'd love to see how warm you get from a space heater that only consumes 62 watts... Reply
Principle - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkwow, you took that literally..... Reply
zeock9 - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkThroughly unimpressive considering the rumor that they are upping the MSRP of these cards from $600 to something close to $700.
This kind of cliff-hanger PR marketing ploy clearly aimed at hurting its competitor's market more so than boosting its own has always disgusted me.
If 290x does indeed end up barely competing with Titan at a higher price point than 780, then I will just go with the green camp out of spite for AMD's dubious business practices. Reply
Amoro - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkWhat about the fact that the GTX 780 costs more than twice as much as a 7970 but isn't twice as fast? I mean it's all relative to how much performance you are willing to pay for. The Titan is also ridiculously overpriced as a gaming card. Even compared to the GTX 770, the 780 is not worth $250 more. Reply
Principle - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkYour argument makes absolutely no sense. They were never promised at $600, maybe youre thinking of the 290, not the 290X. And MSRP and actual pricing are not usually the same. Reply
Amoro - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkWas the 290X ever promised at $600? I just don't see how it's dubious when the 290X is faster than the GTX 780 and the Titan but priced only slightly above the 780, if it launches at ~$700. It seems to be slotted in well there. If anything, it's the fact that the 780 and Titan were crazy overpriced at launch which allows them to price their 290X at ridiculous prices as well. This is all assuming that they will launch the R9 290X at ~$700
However, if NVIDIA responds back with immediate pricecuts then AMD could have a situation on their hands. Reply
TheJian - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - link"As something of a counter-event to NVIDIA's gaming showcase taking place in Montreal, Canada this week,"
So Where is coverage of Nvidia's show? Day one in the bag and already announced 770/780/titan holiday bundles come with Batman, Splinter Cell Black list and Assassins Creed 4 + $100 off shield coupon. Not bad, and even better if 290x turns out decent forcing a black friday price cut from NV on top cards. Anyone on the fence about shield would surely be pushed over with a $200 price and 3 great games. Of course I want shield rev2 with maxwell...LOL. Watts/heat look bad on 290x and I need a cool card in AZ to replace my 5850 (which was cooler than NV at the time when I bought it to replace my 8800GT). It shouldn't be a surprise watts and heat would go up on 432mm sized chip vs. 7970ghz.
I'm guessing NV will just release a jacked up 780/titan pair next week or two running an extra 100mhz to keep their top end pricing the same. The 290x does not appear to be a titan killer and usually is between it and 780. But hey, that does mean the price will drop on 780/770 etc. All will be pushed down by the ULTRA models released soon (or whatever NV calls them) with 100-200mhz more (essentially OC'ed versions of the same cards out now no doubt). Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkIt's coming. Anand is in Montreal and the work queue is quite deep at the moment. Reply
Shlomi - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkwtf new series and tech plus the card is not released yet
just for 1/8 fps more??
i say NVIDIA won before it even started... Reply
Will Robinson - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkI am glad all the NV fans are enjoying the pre launch rumors. Reply
Principle - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkSo no big deal your 780 got shown up, you are in the first stage of grieving. Reply
Roboyt0 - Thursday, October 17, 2013 - linkWhy does everyone keep going back to the, likely, fake results from that Chinese site, specifically the temperatures! These are the first possibility of REAL numbers we have to work with. With plentiful actual results just around the corner.
If in fact the 290X does best the 780 by a bit, and matches Titan performance occasionally, this is still a win for the AMD camp. The 780/Titan houses 1.1 Billion MORE transistors, +18%, on a die that is 25% larger; 551 mm^2 for 780/Titan compared to 438 mm^2 for the 290X. AMD is doing more with less. Let's do some simple math: Nvidia 780 GPU is 25% bigger, with 18% more transistors, and either has a miniscule lead or is losing...what happened? What would Nvidia be doing with a smaller die and transistor count? Not many of you green guys want to focus on this very important detail.
Also, the exaggeration of the information surrounding the 290X 'crushing' the Titan is obnoxious. To clarify, AMD said the 290X will perform much better than the Titan SPECIFICALLY in BF4 while using the Mantle API. If you think the Titan will beat the 290X under these SPECIFIC conditions, you are sadly mistaken. We won't know exactly how this will play out until Mantle is released...
" Devon Nekechuck says that the new card will compete with the Titan and GTX 780 straight away, but "with Battlefield 4 running with Mantel, the card will be able to ridicule the Titan in terms of performance." Nekechuck clarified that he means that Battlefield 4 will run much faster with the R9 290X and Mantle than it will with Titan. "
At the moment we can only be certain of one thing...AMD has erupted the internet into a frenzy regarding their new hardware :D
This post brought to you by someone currently running a GTX 670
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7331088 Reply
6kle - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkWe were already told that this card will do well with high resolutions. It is obvious to me that AMD did some cherry picking by saying you can only test at 4k resolution. They probably also chose Bioshock for the same reason.
In my opinion AnandTech should have said in this article that AMD was likely to choose the most flattering test enviroment for their card for this early benchmark release or simply not release this info because it's borderline free advertising for AMD instead of real benchmarking. Reply
Principle - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkThey did not only test it at 4K, they could only release that data and comment about that.
What makes you think Bioshock will be the most flattering for AMD?? How about pick one that HD7970 could keep up with the 780, like Grid 2. AMD didn't even beat the 770 before on BioShock. Reply
DZtruthseek - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkWhen you guys are able to, could you make a article with benchmarks of the R9 series in crossfire?? Or just post the 290X, 280X, and 270X crossfire benchmarks?? Reply
wwwcd - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkWindows 8.1 is a too new version. So we need or correct drivers for it.I think I deliberately tested with this version of the OS, and that this was done in favor of Nvidia, which have been prepared their drivers precisely such a test Reply
James5mith - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkJust need to get something off my chest...
AA is not needed at that resolution in my opinion. Why would you try and use it? Reply
Paullwar - Friday, October 18, 2013 - linkFirstly greetings from across the pond and yes ole blighty has been foggy and cold.
Ryan, in you're honest opinion are we saying that the ref board is middle ground between titan and 780 on a subjective game review.
If so - as you cannot disclose pricing what was the power draw in comparison to 780. This I feel shouldn't go against AMD 'embargo' as they are openly asking Anandtech to review both boards.
For the record and IMO AMD are being more than a tad cheeky with this request. Reply


text:
Announcing the 2011 Winner Randy Bullock
2011 Lou Groza Collegiate Place Kicker
Award Banquet Highlights
December 6th, 2011 - Kravis Center, West Palm Beach, FL
Contact Us:
(561) 233-3180
Palm Beach County Sports Commission
1555 Palm Beach Lakes Blvd.
Suite 930
West Palm Beach, FL 33401
Fax: (561) 233-3125
Follow us!
Presented by:
Sponsored by:

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Nick Carter & Jordan Knight teaming up for new album, tour
Listen to Nick Carter on iHeartRadio | Listen to Jordan Knight on iHeartRadio
Nick Carter and Jordan Knight are joining forces. The Backstreet Boy and New Kids On The Block member made their debut on Wednesday's "Good Morning America."
Nick and Jordan will be releasing a new album on September 2nd. They'll also be hitting the road together later that month for a 39-city tour. Fans can visit their new site NickAndKnight.com to pre-order the album and get a free download of their first single "Just The Two Of Us."
The singers say their respective boy bands are fully supportive of their decision to branch off on their own. They've been recording the album as a side project during breaks from touring with their groups.


text:
HTC HD7: Now With NoDoby Vivek Gowri on 5/12/2011 6:30 AM EST
- Posted in
- Windows Phone 7
- Snapdragon
- Smartphones
- Mobile
44 Comments
Back to Article
softdrinkviking - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linknice clip vivek. :)
i am interested in WP7, but i am totally underwhelmed by the weak hardware, especially the displays!
basically, a phone is like 90% display, and it seems like apple is the only company that gets that.
but i am not huge IOS fan.
i am going to be back in the US at the end of June after working overseas for 3 years, so i am really hoping that something awesome comes out by about then. (droid 3 maybe?) Reply
sviola - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkI know everyone here is a hardware enthusiast, but I don't think it is a major problem with WP7, that seems to run very well on the current hardware, in terms of processor and memory. Of course there is room for improvement and I could add a few examples: cameras, 4G, front facing camera, removable flash storage, multi-SIM; but this will probably come with the Nokia handsets (seems their first handset will be built with the N8 as reference, so we will get 12 mp camera and many other nice stuff).
As for the software, there is a need to improving it and I'm sure that with Mango we'll see a lot more than has been disclosed so far:
- Multitasking
- Twitter integration
- Turn by turn navigation
- Voice to text
- Bing Audio
- Bing video
- Messenger integration
- Unified Inbox
- SkyDrive sink for Mobile Office
- Skype
Of course, we'll have the complete list on May 24th when they'll show it to the press. Reply
Silent_Rage - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkTo say that WP7 runs well on last generation hardware is an understatement. I currently have an HTC Arrive (gotta have the keyboard) and while there are features I wish it had such as front-facing camera and 4G, I really enjoy using it. I got one for my wife and the best part was that she didn't need me to show her how to use it....she figured it out herself!! I think that WP7 has a lot of promise, but I agree with Vivek that the update cycle must be more aggressive to catch up with the competition. From what I read about Mango, it looks promising but they cannot afford to delay this update like what happened with NoDo. Reply
softdrinkviking - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkthe only thing i really want is a better display. that's it. processors they have are good enough to do what i want for the most part, but i would really like a nicer, crisper, display, and hope against hopes, one that is easy to read outside! Reply
damianrobertjones - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkI don't think that removable storage is a sensible thing. We used to have people here who simply didn't 'get' removable micro-sd storage back in the 6.5 days and neither do many of the people out there in the street. If it works for apple then I say 'don't' have removable storage as you open the company to complaints. People will also buy MEGA cheap cards and THEN complain of speed issues. Reply
FrederickL - Friday, May 13, 2011 - link
I have to say that I really disagree. I do not see why my choices should be damaged by the brain-dead amongst the customer base. I have some respect for what MS are doing with Win7 and will definitely be interested when Nokia start delivering. If however there is no removable storage (and they continue like other companies with non-removable batteries) that will be a total deal-breaker for me. MS are clearly running hard to catch up on the software front but if every new release of a WP7 is more of the same old same because Redmond refuse to lighten up on the hardware restrictions, I for one will not even bother to look at a Windows phone. Reply
xype - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkiOS 5. :P Reply
xype - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkDamn, should have been a comment to softdrinkviking… anyhow, the hardware will get its updates—if WP7 looks like an interesting alternative, I wouldn't worry too much about the hardware part. Reply
Psycownage - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkAs always a great review from ananndtech however i have noticed a couple of problems with the graphs, first on battery graphs 2 are identical, looking at image links i guess one of these should show talk time. second, shouldn't black levels be lower is better not higher is better? Reply
VivekGowri - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkFiiiiixed, thanks for catching! Reply
damianrobertjones - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkI don't want a super resolution phone with S-lcd or two processors...
What I DO WANT is a much, much larger battery. I'm sick and tired of charging the thing nearly every single day. Sure, I've lived with the situation since the Qtek days but the HD7 (and HD2) that's in front of me does take the biscuit.
Also, HTC, stop designing the back of your phones so the people in China can't make a suitable cover for their extended batteries. Either do it yourself or design well.
AggHhhhgghg Reply
Crono - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkAs a Dell Venue Pro owner/user, I have to agree with all the points in this article about Windows Phone 7.
In one sense, Microsoft stepped forward with their new phone platform to come close to what Apple has done with iOS, even (dare I say) surpassing Apple with some features and elements of the GUI.
But they have done so by limiting the options available. It's as if Microsoft gave up the "Windows" aspect and really just went the Apple route, albeit in their own way. Microsoft has always been apt to learn from/copy the innovations of other companies, but it seems like they gave up a bit much in recreating a Windows branded platform over the ashes of the old Windows Mobile. I find it odd that Google's Android OS is more akin to Windows than WP7 is. I miss the "power" options that the Windows Mobile/CE phones and PDAs had, like the ability to close and switch between apps and the ability to overclock/underclock with an application, among other things. Reply
Trefugl - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkI don't find it odd that Android is "more akin to Windows than WP7" assuming that you are referring to the openness/scalability and "power user" aspects. Google comes from a Linux mindset, and Linux has always been that way... what is amazing is that Google has managed to polish Android to the point that the average user finds it accessible (much like they do Windows).
I always hoped that Microsoft could find a balance between Google and Apple's approaches, but they are still just too far behind. At this rate, Google will manage to provide an appropriately structured environment for their userbase before WP7 is relevant in terms of market share and features. (This comes from a guy who had high hopes for WP7) Reply
Flunk - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkI have an HTC HD7 and I can see your point. Windows Phone 7 is more of an offshoot of Xbox and Zune than a successor to Windows Mobile. It's not designed to be the most flexible pocket computer it can be but instead focuses on doing common tasks well and quickly.
I used to use Windows Mobile and I think this is the way to go for a phone. Sure I can't use it to code Java programs, but it's much better at things I normally use my phone for. Reply
Stuka87 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkFor the Black level, isn't lower better? This graph seems to the opposite of the ones we normally see. Reply
Spivonious - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkI just wanted to point out that "NoDo" was done in January. It was carrier testing that has delayed it.
For other readers, watch the videos from this year's MiX to see what Mango contains. If MS really puts some marketing muscle behind it, it really has a good chance of knocking the iPhone out of second place. Reply
Stuka87 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkYou are aware that the iPhone is in first place right? Well, unless you compare all Android devices against the single iPhone device (rather than iOS devices).
But even if you do measure it incorrectly like that, WP7 would need to have the single largest sales increase of any device in history to even get close to Android or iOS. Reply
duffman55 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkIt's trivial to compare the number of users of an individual smartphone model, unless you're going to be holding some sort of smartphone popularity contest.
What's important is the number of users of the OS. Developers are more likely to develop for a platform with more users.
You're right, WP7 does have a ways to go to compete with the likes of Apple and Google. It's going to be a while, but I think they'll get there eventually.
Vivek, I noticed "it's" was used where it should have been "its" a few times in the article. I don't mean to nitpick, just letting you know :) Reply
VivekGowri - Friday, May 13, 2011 - linkReally? I'm usually better about that. Damn English grammar, lol. Reply
earle36 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkI really have to disagree with part of the conclusion here... I have been using a Samsung Focus for several months and love the OS. I don't need custom ring tones - sure its 2011 and they don't offer custom ring tones - big deal. I'd rather they focus on ACTUAL core OS improvements rather than extras like custom ring tones. And mango will offer several improvements to the OS. Within one year they will have added copy paste, improved app loading, new browser, multitasking, messenger integration, and so on. That is huge. I understand that they are just playing catch up - but that's what happens when you release a completely new mobile OS. Several months ago Anandtech published reviews of the WP7 devices and and the WP7 OS - knowing full well what it did and didn't offer, and what the next year was to offer. The reviews were very positive when looking at the big picture. Fast forward to today, MS has delivered exactly what they said they would and (as of now) are on track to deliver some MAJOR improvements to the OS, and now its not enough? What changed? Reply
VivekGowri - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkNot much, other than the NoDo update being delayed from January to April. I very much understand that Mango will cure most, and very close to all, of the fundamental issues with WP7. But it needs to come out sooner. June-July would be preferable, but I'm willing to settle for the October-ish time frame. If it gets pushed back another 2-3 months like NoDo, and Mango devices end up shipping in December-January, Microsoft is screwed. This isn't a question about the OS itself or what Mango will bring, it's a question about how quickly Microsoft needs to iterate and how basically flawless their execution needs to be to catch up within the next 24 months. Reply
irsmurf - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkVivek,
I had an HTC HD7 and now own a Dell Venue Pro. Thank you for writing such a thorough critique of the state of the Windows Phone 7 OS. I love my phone and while I accept lacking the advanced functionality of iOS and Android, I can do so only because Microsoft's promise to include these components in the next OS update.
You're list WP7's shortcommings, "...3rd party multitasking, decent JavaScript performance, Silverlight, Flash, USB mass storage support, some decent form of IM support, VoIP and video calling, tethering or WiFi hotspot support, file transfers via Bluetooth, and custom ringtones," is the most complete I've seen attached to constructive criticism.
I can't agree more about keeping the OS update cycle shorter than twelve months. Like movie studios, these mobile operating systems futures are only as bright as the next OS update. Microsoft will generate an enormous amount of good will if Mango is delivered ON TIME with its promised features. Reply
VivekGowri - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkI went the opposite direction - first the DVP, now the HD7, with a little Android in between. Honest to god, I'm probably dumping the platform for Android again, probably whenever the Sensation comes out. I love the UI, I just really need IM support and better Gmail support.
And man oh man, WP7 needs Mango soon. Like, it'd be great if they could get it out in the next five weeks kind of soon, but at this point, I'd settle for September or whenever they said they'd release it. If it ends up three months late again and we see it in December or something...well...to quote Russel Peters, "SOMEbody gonna get a hurt reaaaaaal bad." That somebody will probably be Microsoft. Reply
XMason386 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkExcellent article!
So far the only irritating problem I have encountered with the HD7 is finding a holster and arm band that it will fit in easily. I hear that owners of the Droid X and EVO 4G experience similar challenges with 4.3 sized devices. In store accessories are also a bit hard to find because just about everywhere I go, most of the mobile accessories are for iPhones.
I have had this HD7 for 6 weeks now and love it. It's very simple to setup and use daily. The integration with Windows Live, XBOX and Zune is great. I'm not an app hoarder so all the apps I will really use are available.
The battery life is better than I expected and I'm hoping multitasking enhancements do not interfere with power consumption or stability later on. Reply
paulpod - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkI like the simple functionality of Windows Phone tiles but the missing functionality and wasted space of the homescreen take this to too much of an extreme.
In that first screenshot, above the tiles you could have a signal strength indicator, a ringer setting indicator, a bluetooths conneciton indicator, a location setting indicator, and many more. But instead you have BLANK SPACE. That makes no sense whatsoever. And having to touch something to see indicators is a massive step backward for even the earlies "dumb" phone.
Then look at all the wasted space down the righthand side below the arrow. You could have optional settings switches here (airplane mode on/off, etc,) and smaller quick-launch buttons for apps that do not warrant a full tile and get buried way down the page. Reply
paulpod - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkWish I could edit the typos! *backward from even the earliest Reply
VivekGowri - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkIt's an industrial design thing - it's just cleaner that way. I'm not going to bug Microsoft for the minor UI details, because I know how much they sweated each and every single UX interaction and the thinking that went into it. The UI design is one of the single best things about WP7 in my mind. Reply
Belard - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkI'm an Android user... and the design of WP7 is a clean and easy look. I wish Android didn't copy Apple so much with its icon layout.
While they are called "tiles" on WP7, they are still icon-buttons with interactivity really. But hey, for a main screen on a phone, only 4-8 buttons are needed.
On my Android, I have it mostly clean of buttons... just 8. I wish they were bigger (double size). I still like it over Apple a bit more, which doesn't give you custom desktops. Reply
cj100570 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkThe problem with WP7 is that Microsoft is incompetent. Reply
VinnyV - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkImagine sitting on your couch in the living room, saying: Xbox Kinect, Skype, call Anand!
Then Anand's new Nokia rings (with his custom ringtone of course!) and over his Wifi Internet connection instead of over 3G or 4G or whatever, he sees you on his nice big clear WP8 Nokia screen, sitting on your couch, feeling like the future's finally arrived.
I wouldn't just be worried if I was an Apple or an Android, I'd be worried if I was making my money sending people bills for using my mobile network... Reply
TIGGAH - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkI think the battery life estimates are wrong. I own an HD2, HD7 and Focus - they all get comparable battery life. With the HD2 being a bit worse, the 7 in the middle and the Focus slightly better. Are the battery life figures presented obtained from the manufactures?
Just curious.
Also I as always I have to gush about WP7. I support blackberry, android, ios and wp7 phones at my work. Hands down my user base who has WP7 are the most happy and require less support. Once we get a few critical apps that are iphone only available for WP7 we will dump almost all the iPhones.
Once mango comes out I think people will be even happier with WP7. Microsoft has truly created a gem here. Reply
VivekGowri - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkThe battery life figures were obtained in instrumented battery life testing. Overall, in day-to-day usage, the Focus and HD7 are very similar, but our battery life test takes a larger toll on AMOLED displays due to a higher percentage of white backgrounds in the pages we load. What I will say is that if you use the Venue Pro or Focus with the "light" WP7 theme, you will get awful, terrible, woeful battery life.
I love WP7. I really do. It just needs some updating to get to feature parity with the iOS/Android crowd. Reply
Ushio01 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkNokia uses 2 platforms S40 and S60, the major differences between these platforms are that the S60 smartphone platform has multitasking and customization while the S40 feature phone platform doesn't those are basically the only difference in software yet the WP7 phones i've used are at best equal to S40 on the software side. Reply
Penti - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkActually technically S40 does multitasking since it's a Java ME device.
And S60 is legacy.
Nokia has Symbian^3 and Maemo. Both modern OS's with a modern framework on top of them with Qt/Qt Mobility/QML and Gstreamer etc powering it. Modern frameworks and API for writing software. With Symbian still having the legacy frameworks for supporting S60-programs. So you can write POSIX C/C++ programs, Symbian C++ programs, Qt C++ programs, programs in scripting languages like Python, Java ME, Compiled web apps and so on. And you can compile and ship Qt with older S60 devices/apps. To just drop that platform makes no sense. It was the software platform driving MeeGo's mobile branch. Symbian was driving that platform into the wild and into stable code.
Microsoft is basically killing the future of Nokia all together, they sold over 100 million Symbian devices last year, and they kill Symbian and the investment in the software platform that was about to take over even in cheaper devices. Presently Symbian^3 devices only goes down to $309, but it can easily outplace older and cheaper S60 devices and go down as low as maybe $150 pretty soon, and would have sold well if they didn't kill it. Effectively killing all mobile phone OS development outside North America. To promote a platform that isn't as good (currently) or complete. Nokia already has all the modern bits there. In devices shipped already. They can also support stuff like Lotus Notes Traveler so you can have your notes mail in the phone. Which is at the moment technically impossible to do on WP7 phone even if IBM wanted to. Hoping that Nokia survives on S40 like Elop is, is just lunacy. S40 today is sub $150 devices. Not 400 dollar feature phones any more. If they themselves don't outplace the S40 devices someone else will and Nokia will drop their sales by hundreds of millions of devices, which is crazy, for a company that has production capabilities and plants themselves ruining billions in previous investments and tens of thousands of workers must go.
The mobile phone business of Nokia must bring in €40 billion euros to go around. Which of course Microsoft couldn't care less about. The future market of maybe 20 million a year WP7 devices don't make a dent in a company that size. They will earn less and has to destroy property and have it totally written off to have any money for the share holders. Microsoft 2 billion US or so deal will make them loose billions and billions of Euros. They could only keep a few thousand employees busy with building WP phones. The rest of the 60 000 is gonna have no future. They where however profitable before the Microsoft deal. Nokia can't survive on that chump change.
.NET CF before internet sockets, multitasking and alternatively native code isn't much use as a platform. Reply
VivekGowri - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - linkI almost feel like this comment needs commercial breaks.
I think what it comes down to is this - hanging onto Maemo and Symbian^3 was no longer a winning proposition in the smartphone game, while with Microsoft, Nokia has the chance to become the premier handset manufacturer for a platform with a lot of potential for both improvement and growth. Risk vs reward, at the base level. Reply
FrederickL - Friday, May 13, 2011 - link
Very interesting article Vivek, most informative.
"I almost feel like this comment needs commercial breaks"
Actually what it needs is editing out all the malicious wishful thinking. I do not claim to know whether or not Nokia have made the right decision
- only time will tell. The point with Penti's post is that he/she *wants* the alliance to be a major fail. It will be interesting to see, in the event that it turns out to be a success, just how many of his/her words he/she will be able to eat and how much seasoning it will take to make them palatable.
"Nokia has the chance to become the premier handset manufacturer for a platform with a lot of potential for both improvement and growth. Risk vs reward, at the base level."
I agree wholeheartedly, Nokia have taken a big gamble and we will begin to see in the next year or so how it pans out. Personally I wish them well although I have no current intentions to move to WP7. I am very happy with my Desire Z! Reply
Penti - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - linkWell even the N8 sold better then all the WP7 phones together, definitively they all together sold well over WP7. Only counting the latest Symbian^3.
The wishful thinking is thinking Nokia could sell 100-150 million WP7 devices like next year or so. The market for all the manufacturers won't be that high by all account's even the overly optimistic ones. I do not wish WP7 to fail, but I still think it will for Nokia even if it's great for Microsoft and the users if they manage to sell 20-30 million devices a year again. As said you do realize there is no longer any mobile phone OS development outside of Canada and US? If they would have tired to bought them they couldn't have.
Obviously they had some challenges, but how are they suppose to meet those without any developers? They still turned a profit, so I think it was prematurely and possibly disastrous and harmful for the company, they are god damn fudding their own platform to death before they have a new one. Why behave like a broken company before you are one and stop building for the future.
In the event Nokia won't go under it will still turn into a company with 20 000 - 30 000 employees, and competitors would have gotten a hand on their manufacturing on fire sale outplacing Nokia in every segment. A success would be something like 1/3 of the current Symbian volumes, and that would be huge, and I don't think that is worthy a company like Nokia however I do not think they can't pull that off. And I wouldn't count that as a success, just like Motorola is just a abandoned shell of a company. I have no doubt Microsoft can be successful on the platform, it would do great if they can pull off all the promised features in Mango, however wishing for three platforms doesn't make it so. I don't think firing thousands of developers and closing down OS-business is a way to achieve that. Nokia is simply interesting for Microsoft because of Ovi Maps and Navteq. I wish Microsoft platforms the best, I simply just don't think it's good fit for Nokia as their exclusive platform. I think Nokia would need something that in a few years could sell 150-250 million devices a year, and I don't think WP has a chance do that, but I think their own had a small change to do so at least. Simply I don't see the benefit for the development to disappear. If they whore a failing company I could have seen a benefit to sell the OS/software and development like ones Symbian did in the 90's. Simply disregarding Qt and Nokia's recent effort just seems dishonest. Metro UI won't churn out hundreds of millions of new smart phones from Nokia. There's no reason to be overly optimistic about the move, they could put out some great phones, but I wouldn't translate that to commercial success. This is isn't desktop computers. There's still a good 5-6 months before Mango, and probably you won't see proper WP7 phones until next year. And in 2 years we won't see them sell 100 million smart phones like last year. Nothing malicious about that, it's just a totally different path they are taking. Selling a few millions devices in the US definitely won't save a global company.
They had the ST-E platform ready for Symbian and MeeGo, they had their hardware platform partnership which will just go to waste now when they have to start from scratch. They are also the only mayor manufacturer that will use one platform exclusively on smart-phones. So just closing down Symbian-shop rather then pursuing a multiplatform strategy don't make sense if you would like to be a big profitable company. It's not like S40 can take over for Symbian, neither should it. Nokia needed to get rid off all that, but now they are getting rid off their own company instead, which certainly don't give me confidence.
// Android Froyo, budgetphone user. Reply
paul112 - Friday, May 13, 2011 - linkin this review it says there are 2 speakers, there isnt there's only 1 situated next to the camera, i was really dissapointed when i got home to hear the really crap sound quality output it has too Reply
dew111 - Friday, May 13, 2011 - linkWho's your source for that story? That's not the true story. The circle waiting icon in Windows 7 is nicknamed the donut, so no donuts means that there's less loading time...which there is in NoDo. Ridiculous pastry story killed. Reply
DLeRium - Friday, May 13, 2011 - linkBecause seriously, I'd like to see how the copy and paste works. It's not all about benches. Just like in motherboard and GPU reviews you spend the first 2-3 pages looking at the external appearance, analyzing the layout etc. You also look at the BIOS for motherboards before you just jump into benches.
So seriously, I'd like to see some software stuff. This is like talking about Android 2.3 but just looking at benches only. Reply
brucek2 - Friday, May 13, 2011 - linkWho's the marketing genius who let the name "NoDo" be attached to their product? I understand that within Microsoft this is understood to mean "No Doughnut." Of course, to any regular consumer who hears the name (such as those who see it in the press because it was apparently leaked to them...), it is much more likely to mean "No Do" as in can't do it, won't do it, etc.
Think this is a small matter? Many years ago Chevrolet tried launching their Chevy Nova in Mexico. Without changing the name. Unfortunately, "Nova" or "No va" means "it doesn't go" in Spanish. The predictable result was that it didn't sell there. Reply
KrazzyDJ - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - linkPerhaps NoDo (or No Doughnuts) is Microsoft taking a dig at Android considering one of their OS upgrades was christened Doughnut. So, the name might mean Microsoft trying to say No Android !!! Reply
crazzeto - Monday, May 16, 2011 - linkYou reference a wiki listing of things wmo 6 did that 7 doesn't do. It would have been nice to include a link. I can sympathise with such a listing, I was an avid wmo 6 user until I switched to google with Droid 2. When I read about what wp7 would have feature set wise, I couldn't believe how limiting it was. Reply
Lilitu - Friday, May 20, 2011 - linkI have high hopes for the WP7 platform.
This review was quite lucid and fair.
While I like my HD7 a great deal I do miss a working IM client but for texting, calling and browsing it works well.
Unlike WM6.5 in my HD2 and every single Android device I have ever used; it does NOT freeze.
IMHO that is worth the price of admission.
We'll see what Nokia comes up with as well as the rumored HTC "Bresson"! Reply


text:
Gator flavor in Super Bowl
Published: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 at 11:10 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 at 11:10 a.m.
Another Super Bowl will have former University of Florida football players in action. Florida has had a former player on at least one Super Bowl roster for the 11th straight year.
On Sunday, for the San Francisco 49ers, it will be defensive lineman Ray McDonald representing the Gators. And for the Baltimore Ravens it is wide receiver Deonte Thompson.
McDonald started all 16 games of the regular season for the 49ers and totaled 38 tackles with 2.5 sacks. In the playoffs, he has started both games and recorded nine tackles.
Thompson, who signed as an undrafted free agent with the Ravens last summer, played in six games during the regular season and had five catches for 51 yards while also contributing on special teams. He has yet to see action during the playoffs and is expected to be inactive Sunday.
Sunday's winner will join receiver Dallas Baker as the only two players in UF history to win an SEC Championship, national championship and Super Bowl.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.


text:
Business Hours
Experts are standing by your side seven days a week!
Lighting Experts
Monday - Friday 8am to Midnight EST
Saturday & Sunday 9am to Midnight EST
Customer Care
Monday - Friday 8am to 6pm EST
Can't find what you are looking for? We're here to help!
Design Inspiration, Email EXCLUSIVE Previews,Sale Alerts & Offers


text:
HTC launches the One (M8)by Joshua Ho on 3/25/2014 11:15 AM EST
- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- One
72 Comments
Back to Article
blanarahul - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkAny thoughts on the wasted space below the screen (HTC Logo Bar) ?? Reply
Esko747 - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkWhere is Brian Klug?Is he no longer with Anandtech? Reply
Esko747 - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkThat should not have been a reply. Sorry! Reply
creed3020 - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI was wondering the same. We had MWC but there wasn't as much from Brian as I am accustomed to. I know that Josh has been handling mobile topics since he joined AT but it does seem like Brian has a time leech on his hands! Reply
gregounech - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI'm pretty sure Brian talked about going back to graduate school at some point in time, maybe he's studying again and can't be as active as before #speculation Reply
CrystalBay - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkThanks JoshHo and welcome to the family. Reply
aryonoco - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI'm wondering about the same thing, where is Brian Klug?
We barely heard anything from Brian in MWC other than the podcast. There has been nothing from him, he is even pretty silent on Twitter. His workload seems to have been distributed between Ian, Jarred and Joshua, all of whom are doing a great job, but I personally very much miss Brian's insight and quirky humour. Reply
sna1970 - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkThere is no waste space. Behind it there is a larger battery and hardware components Reply
blanarahul - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkSorry. I meant "height". The phone could have been shorter. Reply
fokka - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkit's clear that the space behind the black bar isn't hollow, but still, we came to expect devices to make better use of the available front area. Reply
phoenix_rizzen - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkWasted space is wasted. :( If they removed the HTC logo from the front, then that black bar could be used for an extra 48-odd pixels, which would mean the onscreen nav bar wouldn't "waste" screen real estate.
IOW, they could use a 1080x1968 screen, which would give a 1080x1920 screen + a 48 pixel nav bar. Instead of a 1080x1920 screen which only has a 1080x1872 effective resolution when the nav bar is visible.
Note: 48 pixel nav bar is what it used to be, not sure what it actually is now on these high DPI screens. 48 is used just to illustrate the issue. Reply
Sivar - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkLet us know when you find a 1080x1968 screen available in large quantities. ;)
I suspect that electronics occupy the space and that it isn't wasted, but that the designers chose to lengthen the phone rather than widen it. Reply
tipoo - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkThe capacitive buttons are beside that logo, not wasted. Reply
fokka - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkno, the one uses on screen buttons. Reply
Shark Tek - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI remember those days that people made fun of the iphone getting bigger on each release. Now many of the competitor phones can't be considered phones anymore. They are as big as a tablet. Reply
StormyParis - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkCurious: what size did god say phones are supposed to be ? Reply
Shark Tek - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - link5in is far from portable. Reply
inighthawki - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkAs someone who prefers smaller phones (4-4.5")... what? Reply
extide - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkMaybe if you have hands the size of a lawn gnome... Reply
Death666Angel - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkSomewhere in here is a "that's what she said joke".
That aside: Wow. I mean to each his own opinion, but you should really label it as such. Your statement is objectively wrong.
I've had a 4.65" (I think) Galaxy Nexus for over 2 years now. If I find some money I'll upgrade this year. Anything below 5" will not get a consideration from me (I'd really love something 5.2" to 5.5" with small bezels). And despite 7" not sounding that much more than 5", my Nexus 7 2013 is a whole lot bigger than any "non-portable" phones you know. And still perfectly portable in my jacket pockets. Reply
heffeque - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkYou must be from the US and/or like huge baggy clothes a lot. What kind of jacket has pockets where a 7" tablet fits perfectly? Jeez! Reply
chaosbloodterfly - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkSuit jackets usually have an inside pocket that can get pretty big. Lots of other jackets have similar pockets. Reply
jasonelmore - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkits pretty damn portable. People love to brag how they can carry their 8" ipad mini in their pockets, and this is half the size.
Also: http://doublehappiness.ilikenicethings.com/wp-cont... Reply
SparklesP - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkThey made fun of the iPhone getting bigger on release because Apple was copying those copycat Android phones. Reply
QJ - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkGetting bigger on each release?? Really?? Exactly HOW MANY times did the screen on the iPhone get bigger?? :) Reply
tipoo - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkPeople made fun of the iPhone getting bigger each release? Because the screen size only changed once... Reply
solipsism - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkJoshua Ho wrote, "802.11ac/a/b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, MHL, DLNA, NFC"
802.11ac should come after a/b/g/n, not before since it's essentially a BASE-26 value which makes ac the 29th 802.11 standard. Reply
JoshHo - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI'm commenting so you know that I didn't overlook this. I will get to correcting this once I get access to a computer. Reply
Gunbuster - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkSame boring styling: Check
Same unibody your screwed if anything needs fixed design: Check
Got larger: Check
Camera didn't: Check
Manufacturer is struggling: Check
So whats good about this phone? Oh right MicroSD to satisfy a vocal 3% of the market. Reply
solipsism - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkConstruction seems good, it seems to have a design that is better than most devices that are in an AT&T store which will attract attention by people that aren't buying on specs, and the free replacement for any accidental screen breakage within the first 6 months adds value. Reply
Impulses - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - linkI think it's a compelling package, the fact that it may not tempt anyone who already owns a N5, 2013 One, or SGS4 says less about HTC and more about how the market is maturing IMO. If I hadn't gotten used to USB OTG and I didn't have a decent camera with fast glass I'd be tempted... Return of removable media and embracing on screen buttons are both good moves IMO. Reply
Gunbuster - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkP.S. HTC you do not have nearly the brand recognition to name the phone exactly the same thing as the old one and expect consumers to know the difference. To compound it you don't even have the name on the handset. Maybe add it to the front where you insist on having a HTC logo for no reason. Reply
mjcutri - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI'm one of the "vocal 3%" who won't consider a phone without a microSD slot. I keep all my music (42GB) on a 64GB microSD card. It is a lot faster to pop that out of my phone an into my USB 3.0 reader than to plug in my phone, wait for it to be recognized, and then sync over a USB 2.0 connection...
I had been considering getting the Galaxy S5 (or waiting on the S5 mini), but this phone just gave me another option to consider Reply
sna1970 - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkWell it is the best looking android device. Reply
phoenix_rizzen - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkDual, front-mounted speakers means it will be great for watching movies and video clips, playing games, and using as a speaker phone. Should also make it a better navigation device when mounted to the dash.
Larger battery + more efficient SoC means it should get more than a day of normal usage, and should get over 6 hours of screen-on time. Similar to the LG G2, which gets phenomenal battery life.
And it ships with Android 4.4.
Whether or not those are large enough pluses to sell a lot of units will remain to be seen. Reply
cgramer - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkIf it becomes an officially supported phone for CyanogenMod, I'm buying it when my contract is up in November. :-) I really want a Nexus (5 or perhaps 6), but I'm on Verizon, so... Reply
MarcusMo - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI think aesthetically its a step back. I don't care for the larger radius of the corners. And I don't get why they couldn't take the opportunity that the onscreen buttons presented and get rid of that horrible htc bar. Why is it that all manufacturers except google and apple insist of placing big glaring logos on the front of the phone? Brand recognition should come from well executed and recognizable industrial design, not by hijacking my phones already limited usable front area. Reply
SodaAnt - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI'm actually fine with less NAND and a microSD card slot. I can easily buy a 64GB microSD card right now for $45, and if I want to upgrade to a 128GB option later, I can. Further, I usually keep phones for two years, and I tend to upgrade storage if possible a year later, when I might even be able to buy a 256GB microSD. Reply
jasonelmore - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkPlus Last years HTC ONE 64GB was a AT&T Exclusive. I'm betting they sold maybe 1000 64gb worldwide lol. Hardly a bad design choice considering the micro sd slot. Reply
madwolfa - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkHonestly, from the design standpoint, this looks like a downgrade from my original HTC One. And why make it even bigger, for Christ's sake?! Reply
fokka - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkexactly my two main gripes. take the m7, put in a better soc, a bigger battery and an sd slot and you have a winner. the m7 was almost perfect, but htc insisted to "improve" (some of) the wrong aspects. Reply
Laxaa - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkWho thought refocusing was a good idea? I know it's easy to marked and will look good in commercials, but come on! Two similar cameras with different focal lenghts(for zooming) is much more usefull. Reply
Thermogenic - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI think it's because Nokia is readying their tech that has a dozen little cameras that all focus independently. I don't think we'll see it in 2014, but in 2015 perhaps, assuming that's something that goes with them to Microsoft. Two lenses doesn't make a lot of sense, but a dozen? Yeah, that opens up some cool opportunities. Reply
Impulses - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - linkI thought they might go with two different focal lengths too but I dunno how practical it'd be, not like they could realistically put a 90mm equivalent lens on a phone this thin... 28mm & 50mm would've been interesting though. Ultimately this refocusing trick is just something you could accomplish in Photoshop, and losing OIS for video was a dubious choice. Reply
phoenix_rizzen - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkWasted opportunity with the naming. Should have been the HTC Two.
Now you're going to have conversations like,
"I've got the HTC One."
"Me too. But which One do you have?"
"The One."
"Well, is it the new One, or the old One?"
Are they going to name next year's model the One as well?
Bad enough Google flubbed this with the Nexus 7, and that Apple flubbed this with the iPad (is that the 3, the 4, or the 5? Wait, none of those exist!). And adding a year after the name isn't really a solution. Reply
fokka - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - link2013. 2014. not that hard. and much better for brand recognition than one 2 x +. Reply
Gunbuster - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkOkay, so besides brand juggernaut Apple name some companies who have named the new product the same thing as the old one and had that work out?
And by the way the brand is HTC. phoenix_rizzen is talking about the model name. Reply
cgramer - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkThe reviews I've seen of this phone state that it has a "4 Ultrapixel" camera. However, the specs for the Verizon version of the phone show:
"HTC UltraPixel Duo camera with 16MP front-facing camera, 5MP front-facing camera, HTC Zoe Lens, Smart Flash and 1080p Full HD and slow-motion video recording"
[Link: https://store.bbymsolutions.com/detail/5895]
Any idea if there are two versions of the phone, or if the various review sites (CNET and AnandTech that I've read so far) got it wrong somehow? Or is there just confusion regarding terminology (how many megapixels equals an Ultrapixel, etc.)? Reply
Xinn3r - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkJoshua I hope you will add that there is no more OIS anymore, which is IMO a huge step back in the camera department. Reply
Thermogenic - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkOh wow, that's really sad if true. Apple has managed to do a really solid job with EIS on the iPhone 5s, but it still doesn't compare to the OIS found in the various high end Lumias and the HTC One. Reply
Xinn3r - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkTrue, that's why I think it's a pretty important information to be missing.
They did say that the EIS will be helped by the second depth sensing camera, and I think if implemented correctly, will still benefit a lot.
We'll just need to wait and see...
Engadget already has a review up, but, as usual, no in-depth information of anything at all, I seriously can't call that a review. Reply
HangFire - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI want to be enthusiastic about OIS on my HTC One/M7, but after waiting 4 seconds to take a picture, it is hard to be enthusiastic about that great picture I missed 3.5 seconds ago. Reply
Impulses - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - linkThe presence of OIS doesn't inherently mean super long focus and shutter speed, that's just bad programming on the software end and/or particularly challenging conditions. Reply
JoshHo - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI'm aware, although the 2013 One had extremely small accommodation angle so the OIS had relatively little effect on photos, although videos were noticeably less shaky. Reply
buckschris - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - link"it seems that the two major flaws of the 2013 One, its tall profile and poor daytime camera resolution, have been carried forward."
I would add in the camera, which performs admirably in certain situations, and falls well short in others.
HTC had an opportunity to take what many marked as 2013's Smartphone of the Year, and improve upon it to an extent that it would once again be clear front runner. The phone was already too tall and was pushing it in terms of weight. Now, we have a phone that is significantly taller and significantly heavier. They added onscreen buttons, which I personally view as a positive, yet they kept the black bar where the capacitives used to be. They had an opportunity to improve the camera and build on their philosophy that it's not all about megapixels, yet we get a recycled unit with a second camera that appears to be mainly for gimmick purposes.
Aside from the typical new generation of processors, the only two positive changes appear to be a more uniform metal build and improved BoomSound.
The 2013 One was a phone with few tradeoffs. The 2014 One appears to be a phone full of trade offs. Reply
HangFire - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI will wait for the in-depth reviews before writing off the camera, but the size thing totally turns me off as well. I already have awesome battery life and a 1080P screen on my M7, not sure what the point is to the biggering. (Sorry Seuss reference). Reply
Hrel - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI really hope they release a version where the ONLY difference is that it's 4.5" instead of 5". I'm 6'4" with large hands, even I think once you start getting beyond 4.5" it becomes too big. 5" is firmly out of range. 4.7" is at least acceptable, but really I've found (with my hands large enough to one hand basketballs) that 4.5" is as big as you can make a smartphone before the size becomes cumbersome. If I have to strain my wrist to reach the upper/left side of the screen, then it's too big.
This phone is too big, I hope they release one that's the exact same in every way except 4.5". As long as I can use it on MetroPCS I'll buy it ASAP. Reply
Hrel - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI could see going down to 4.2" really. I currently have a 4" smartphone and there's no problems, but a little more screen real estate would be really nice. I'm unsure if raising the 800x480 resolution would be enough in the same physical screen space, it might. Anyway, I think somewhere around 4.2-4.4" is probably the perfect size.
I'd like to see a full review of this, especially with some daytime pictures taken. That's normally the one type of shot a smartphone can do competently, is it really so bad on this phone? Reply
JBVertexx - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI have the 2013 One VZW version and have been overall very happy with it. I can't tell you how many time people have complemented me on the phone, saying it's the best looking Android phone they've ever seen, but then have also said never heard of the HTC One. That experience matches the story of having critical acclaim but little market success.
I agree with most on this forum - 5" is too big. I wouldn't buy it. The biggest flaw I run into is the combination of the location of the Power Button and the Volume buttons plus the sequence of turning the phone to vibrate and adjusting the volume. Keeping my phone on vibrate all the time, there have been dozens of times when I've accidentally kicked up the volume button up one while powering on or off the phone. This has the affect of turning it from vibrate to silent - doesn't tend to make the wife very happy with my phone accidentally placed on silent.
I also really like the camera, as I mostly take indoors or low-light shots with my phone and the outdoors shots are really good enough. Not said very often, but the wide angle of the camera makes for very good shots indoors - perhaps a preference thing, but I like the wide angle shooting. It's still unfortunate though that they failed to improve on sensor, which was really the only flaw routinely pointed out.
Overall, it looks great, but the size and relatively small bump in capability means I'll pass this time around. But that's unfortunate, because I think HTC being in a better competitive position would be better for the market as a whole. Reply
HangFire - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkNot surprising no-one has heard of it. Every VZW store I checked out had a broken, dummy, or no HTC One on display at all, and immediately steered me towards a Samsung. Reply
Impulses - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - link35mm equivalent isn't very wide, their pseudo 16:9 sensor crop makes it seem wider tho. Reply
HangFire - Friday, March 28, 2014 - linkFrom AT's M7 article: "The HTC One sensor is 16:9 aspect ratio natively, not the usual 4:3 we're used to seeing for sensors, with a resolution of 2688 x 1520, for 4.08 MP. " Reply
HangFire - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkLove the return of microSD, I understand that internal NAND is faster, but if a good Class 6 can record 1080p continuously, what's the difference (except a few AT benchmarks)?
Hate the new size. My One is already a little bit too tall, I certainly don't want anything bigger. I suppose there may be a smaller version coming out, but I have to hesitate about buying that. First of all what to call it- HTC One M8 Mini? Really? More seriously, it is doubtful that a new Mini M8 would get all the latest Android updates, because HTC has a terrible reputation for dropping updates on their non-flagship phones.
Except for the camera (BIG disappointment in low-light after all the UltraPixel hype), I'll be content to stick with my M7 for a couple of years and then see what's available.
I do hope HTC stays in the game and steps up their game on Android updates for non-flagships. We need competition, I would HATE to live in a Samsung vs. Apple only world. Reply
Impulses - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - linkI don't think the likes of LG, Sony, and Lenovo would just hand the market to Samsung... They're large enough that their phone divisions can suffer for years. I agree tho, I hope HTC pulls thru, my first three smartphones were all HTC (and all my dumbphones were Nokia except for a Sony Ericsson). Reply
apertotes - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - link"although I find it disappointing that HTC has decided to view microSD as a way to cut costs on internal NAND rather than a supporting feature"
That! It is so disappointing. Also, given all the aluminium, and industrial design, etc, it would not hurt to add a bit of water resistance in there. Reply
Anders CT - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkGood: Removing capacitive buttons
Bad: Keeping bezel for placement of non-existant capacitive buttons
Good: Frontfacing speakers
Both: No OIS. OIS is good for taking video, but often causes shutter lag Reply
Impulses - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - linkOIS itself shouldn't cause shutter lag, bad camera software hunting for focus or over emphasizing slow shutter speeds would, I'd think. Reply
Hairs_ - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkBut... weren't we assured by Brian and Anand that it was *totally impossible* to get a micro SD slot into these unibody phones? That nobody wanted anything else, and that cloud data was not only available, but reliable, trustworthy and reasonably priced?
It's almost as if... that was a load of piffle.. spun out by Apple and other companies whose PR wanted to spin that line, because it allowed those companies to pursue anti-consumer price gouging tactics and introduce unnecessary forced obsolesence!
Say it ain't so.. Reply
Impulses - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - linkIt'll be interesting to see how the slot is implemented. Several years ago lots of dumbphones and even a few smartphones had edge mounted card slots (like lots of tablets still), but for some reason moving it under the battery became the norm which made it far less useful. Reply
Gigaplex - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - link"although I find it disappointing that HTC has decided to view microSD as a way to cut costs on internal NAND rather than a supporting feature"
In Australia, if you want more than the bare minimum NAND capacity on contract, you have to go with the iPhone. Every other model is offered by the carriers in the lowest tier possible with no option to upgrade. I don't even consider phones without microSD anymore. Reply
HangFire - Wednesday, March 26, 2014 - linkEven in the States, finding a 64GB model of ANY phone also available in 16/32 in a major carrier store is near impossible. Reply
shmittty89 - Tuesday, March 25, 2014 - linkI'm dissapointed that the phone was made even taller than last years without any extra wideness to even it out. I was looking to switch from GS4 to this, but now I think I may go LG G2. I got GS4 because the one was too tall, and now it's even worse. Reply