Poll: How important to you are cores on the next HTC EVO?
Many G&E readers have been expressing discontent that the next HTC EVO, possibly named the HTC EVO One, will have a dual-core Snapdragon S4 (Krait) processor, instead of the quad-core Tegra 3. However, it seems that oftentimes LTE, battery life, and benchmarks are left out of the equation. Namely:
- Tegra 3 processors aren't yet optimized for LTE. The Snapdragon S4 is. Therefore, if you want LTE included in your next EVO, you'll have to settle on the Snapdragon for now.
- Some indicators point to the possibility that the Snapdragon S4 is also more battery efficient than the Tegra 3, which is especially important in power-hungry 4G devices.
- The Snapdragon S4 has beat the Tegra 3 in multiple benchmarks (you can check out our story at Pocketables for more info). In real world everyday use, you probably won't notice much of a difference. But if these numbers are important to you, then the Snapdragon S4 wins.
With this information at hand, I'm curious: how important are those cores to you? Is it really necessary to have four cores in a 4.7-inch device? Vote below, and let us know!
cores wont matter until win8 comes along ..then we get to do some real computing and will need as much processing power we can get
My issue isn’t that two cores isn’t enough, it’s that I don’t want my phone to feel outdated next year.
Dual core just doesn’t feel like cutting edge anymore.
I don’t care about Cores I am still getting it.
agreed, duel core is fine now but in 9 months to a year i will be very jealous of the quad core. I can’t afford to buyu a new phone every year as well.
While I recognize the benchmarks showing that I shouldn’t notice any performance difference and that the battery life might be better TODAY, what I am worried about is that in making my next phone purchase, I’m living with the device for the next 2 YEARS into the FUTURE, and who knows where we’ll be at in 6 months, 1 year, 1.5 years and how much difference a dual core versus quad core will will make.
And yes there’s the fact that I’ve been sitting on my single core EVO for 2 years now, seeing friends get shiny new dual core phones and being envious being the gadget geek I am. While it may not really mean anything (again TODAY), dual core, boasting/asthetically/spec wise, is just old hat. If I’m buying the latest and greatest for the next two years, I want the best I can get for the next two years, OTHERWISE……
I’ll just wait. So you can’t give me quad core/LTE/battery life right now, ok, I’ll wait a few months until someone can (Samsung Galaxy SIII?) I think we’re in a transition period, and in no time at all, we’ll get to have those three specs as standard in high end phones, and I’m not locking myself into something for 2 years until I can get that.
Thanks for posting this…hopefully it will educate the masses. As I commented early today in another post, more is not better. Better is better. The Snapdragon S4 is better than anything else on the playing field right now.
This is like everyone wanting more megapixels. If it doesn’t give you any practical advantage, it’s just marketing hype and something to brag about. My friend likes to brag about his iPhone screen but it’s so small it doesn’t matter how pretty it is to me. I still can’t read stuff on it. Anyway, if this lack of cores keeps people away it’s fine with me. Less waiting for me to get one.
cant have your cake and eat it too unless you got the money to update every year. S4 snapdragon is better right now n will probably match everything till the s5 comes out next year which will prolly b quad core. Im on the evo 3d since june that mean i get the s5 device next year unless sprint give me a major discount to get this phone lol. But ppl with the original evo gets an update now (june), evo 4G is a nice device and gave you a solid two year which is great just like my 3d will give me a good two year run so will the Evo One if that’s really the name. As far as non removable battery goes, I hope it has a soft reset somewhere for rooted users who need to pull the battery when something goes wrong lol
If you are going to wait 2 years for a refresh, it makes all the sense in the world to get the best of what is available today…and that happens to be a new, advanced chip that also happens to be dual core. Does having a lower performing quad core actually make you feel better? If you have an inferior chip today which happens to have 4 cores, how do you think you will feel in 6 months, 1 year, 1.5 years, etc…?
Well when I 1st learned about the one X i was super excited as I found out it was going to carry the Tegra 3 but then I found out the Sprint version was going to be dual core but then I did some more digging and found out that this S4 dual core was actually based on the A15 ARM architecture as pose to the A9 arch the Tegra 3 & apples A5(X) are based off of. I think I remember hearing this new design is like 40% more efficient than A9’s.
This will be a great phone. The fact the you have to wait two years on any product in the tech world is what is causing any doubt of that fact. I recommend the Best Buy, buy back program. This will help ease pain of your friends next phone.
Removeable battery ,micro sd card ,micro hdmi, bottom chargeing same as og evo, wireless to t.v stuff …. Raise the hood boys …that engine is red
I WANT SOME CROME ON MY LTE BABY
I’ve been extremely happy with the Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 chipset in my EVO 3D (as well as my TouchPad). The Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Krait chipset looks to be more of the same, but faster and more efficient than ever.
I’ve seen the benchmarks of the S4 and they do look really good, but real world experience of them will be a much better measuring stick of their performance. Honestly, as long as performance (and battery life) is good, I’m open to dual or quad core.
The S4 is based around newer A15 cores which entails a big redesign of the operating logic and they’re a big leap forward in performance even at the same clocks as older designs. Tegra 3 is based on four older A9 cores plus a lower power companion core which it needs for efficiency’s sake (even tho it can individually power gate cores) because it’s built on an older and more power hungry 45nm process, the SoC is literally physically larger due to this.
Moving to 28nm allowed Qualcomm to integrate the LTE modem more efficiently, Tegra 3 isn’t incompatible with LTE modems by any means (that’s just a rumor formulated by clueless bloggers), S4 is simply the smarter/cheaper choice for LTE right now. I dunno why all this keeps getting lost in the conversation, too much marketing hype and uninformed blog posts imo.
Tegra 3 vs S4 is like comparing an old Intel Core 2 Quad against a newer Intel i5 / i7 dual… Apples and oranges, but the newer processor is gonna be as fast or faster at everything but the most threaded tests (and mobile apps are generally not very multi-threaded, that is, optimized for multiple cores).
Something that also gets lost in every single one of these discussions is any mention of the GPU… Right now S4 is gonna ship with an older design that’s just clocked twice as fast, which keeps it in contention with Tegra 3’s GPU but both are outclassed by the latest PowerVR GPU that Apple is using (altho they’re behind on CPU, all their current designs are dually A9s). Towards the end of the year S4 will be available with an all new GPU, albeit too late for the next EVO.
Actually, Tegra 3 is based on an outdated A9 core design and it’s the fact that it has four of them that keeps it relevant. It’s also built on an outdated 45nm process which leaves no room to integrate an LTE modem natively, thus requiring extra chips and making it less attractive for LTE phones because it ends up being more expensive and power hungry…
Everyone BUT NV is gonna be moving to dual core A15 designs THRU the rest of this year and the start of 2013. Qualcomm’s just ahead of the pack, but Texas Instrument and Samsung have already announced or hinted at designs based around two A15 ARM cores. NV marches to their own beat and decided to do something different for now…
That allowed them to be the first to market with a new design but by this time next year everyone with a Tegra 3 device might be kicking themselves the same way Tegra 2 devices suffered for a while (lack of NEON instructions on Tegra 2 kept Skype and other apps off those devices for months…).
I agree comparing the cores to the Core 2 and I7. When this came up last week I was misinformed. I thought for some reason the Qualcomm quad was going to be ready for the new Evo refresh. I don’t want a Nvidia part in my new Evo even though that means a dual core inside. The Nvidia cpu always seemed like a tablet part to me. I’m an Evo fanboy so I’ll probably buy the Evo……just wish I could wait until the end of the year for the real Quad.
ps however I REALLY REALLY hope Sprint doesn’t come to New York with the same HTC One that AT&T already showcased. The EVO name deserves more!!!
I honestly don’t care about cores or anything like that. What is the point of having something that feels a hair faster if the screen is still slow.
swipe your finger quickly across ANY smartphone out right now and there is an inherent delay, a trailing of what is actually showing up on the screen. No phone/tablet has a fix for that yet. I really don’t feel like updating to a new phone until that is fixed. you can make it razor thin and compute Wall-E in real-time, but as long as there is still a slow response-time I’ll pass.