15
Condor
6y

I'm thinking of buying a Samsung Galaxy S7 as a replacement to my Nexus 6P.. from what I can tell, it ticks all the boxes.. nice battery (3000mAh), 5GHz Wi-Fi, octacore CPU, kernel source being available, QHD display... However, it being sold at €350 - and that only in the Netherlands - does introduce quite some hurdles. For anyone who's owned this device, how long did you own this device and did any issues show up, especially hardware-related ones? Last time I owned a Samsung device was with a Galaxy S3 Mini, which was a delight to use. Other than that I don't really have any experience with it.

Another thing that piqued my curiosity - I still have 3 Raspberry Pi's unused, as well as one LCD display (but without touch). It got me thinking, the only things that I really use my phones for on the go is for calling, texting and listening to music via Bluetooth. Perhaps a Raspberry Pi or even an Arduino could take care of that? The smart devices that I'd consume and produce most content on are my tablet and my PC anyway.

Comments
  • 1
    @Haxk20 Anything else that you'd suggest within a €200-300 price range?
  • 13
    @Haxk20 I love opinions without reasoning.
  • 5
    @Codex404 every php "rant" every made here lol
  • 2
    @ScribeOfGoD most PHP rants Ive seen have reason in the comments, most of them its inconsistency or speed
  • 3
    @Haxk20 "Samsung is bad", the best sold and most recommended ssd is made by Samsung.
    Samsung is trying its best with a new competitor to android.
    Their monitors are decent.
    I really dont see why Samsung would be bad. And on XDA I dont see anyone saying Samsung is bad.
  • 2
    @Codex404 Most of my experiences with them were pretty good as well. From my perception it seems to be a good quality brand. The only thing that I've experienced issues with so far is Odin vs Heimdall compatibility.. but I've got a WanBLowS host for that now. Guess I could put it to good use for these things :')
    Their kernel source seems to be available too, so as long as it can build, I could spin up my own Androids with it, no?
  • 3
    @Condor I do have bad experiences with the samsung layer on top of android. But I do have bad experiences with android overall as well.
    But their hardware is decent as far as I know.
  • 4
    For me there is no alternative to Samsung phones at the moment. They have everything I need and Samsung Experience is just amazing. I have never had any unsolvable problems.
  • 1
    @Haxk20 Hmm, yeah the Samsung TouchWiz layer I don't really care about, I can remove that no problem. The Odin layer however.. I don't have much experience with that. The Galaxy S3 is something from quite a few years ago - a time during which I didn't even know of the existence of Linux and make. What are the particular issues that you've faced with it?
  • 1
    @RantSomeWhere I've just looked into the OnePlus 3, but some things I don't like about this one.. for one, it being discontinued. Also its resolution.. 1080p after I've seen the glory of a 1440p AMOLED doesn't really seem like a good deal anymore. Granted, it's the highest resolution available when it comes to videos.. but I quite value the ability to set textures to small and still be able to see things crisply. I doubt that a FHD display can offer that. Lastly a quadcore CPU... Octacores have become quite mainstream on Androids nowadays. Something that I do find a killer feature though, is its 6GB of RAM.. that's actually really impressive. And given that it's got 5GHz Wi-Fi as well.. eh, maybe I'll give a secondhand unit of that a try as well :) thanks for the suggestion!
  • 2
    @Ovyerus Samsung phones work terribly with custom OS based on AOSP. It used to be nice, right up until the Note 2 / Note 3 line. When it got to Galaxy S6 it was long gone.

    Fingerprint reader issues, screen issues, battery issues. Whole thing was a giant issue.

    The best thing that worked well was a ported ROM from Galaxy S8, and still it felt horribly slow. I couldn't wait to switch it. Don't get me wrong, the Galaxy S7 looked simply amazing, but only with brightness at max, and only as long as you're not trying to do something fast.

    I got the OnePlus 6 after that (but really you can get any flagship Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, whatever), and first impression I had was that it had some weird telekinetic AI that knew what I wanted before I asked for it. That was my brain adjusting to a much smaller lag on every action, compared to Galaxy S7.

    I mean sure, those cost a bit more, but at this point I saw that even a new SD 6** series chipset is better than that Samsung crap.
  • 2
    @Condor you won't see a difference between 1440p and 1080p in day to day life. Eyes aren't that good. The OnePlus 3T is an a-mazing device, that is still one of the best you can get even today. In my personal opinion, it's the best device ever produced by anyone, that I didn't own. It came out too soon for me (I had the OP2, which was already good, despite its bad start), and when I switched, I made the mistake of getting a Samsung Galaxy S7. It looked good. Damn was I sorry for that decision.

    Also, what would you rather have - a quad core flagship or an octa-core Rockchip that barely loads its Android TV OS? Number of cores is very deceiving.

    But I would still get something new rather than old. Xiaomi MI A2 maybe? It's cheap but packs a good punch. And it's running Android One. Or Nokia 7 Plus or something.

    Good software support is better than top-of-the-line hardware.
  • 4
    @Condor I recommend my own, Xioami Mi A1 or A2. Check them out. The best, they come with Android One, no bloatware.

    https://gsmarena.com/xiaomi_mi_a1_(...-8776.php

    https://gsmarena.com/xiaomi_mi_a2_(...-9140.php

    My phone Is filled with Apps, really filled, have folders instead of icons in 3 screens and no lag. Also, recommend installing Greenify and Android Assistant apps
  • 2
    My recommendation is definetely Xiaomi. You can find it for cheap price, with a lot of memory, 2 days battery life (even after 1.5 year). My phone Redmi 4x is really full of everything and still works great, has gorila glass and if i drop it sometimes nothing happens. I bought all this 4000 mAh, 3/32, 5" for like 120 euros and im very satisfied. I know that my next phone would be again Xiaomi. I just recommend you to find one with gorilla glass, and you will be satisfied. From my point of view other phones die after guarranty expires, battery starts to drops from 35 percents to zero or just randomy turns off when talking on the phone, its usualy case with samsung and huawei from my experience, so thats why i never gonna buy those again...
  • 0
    @Codex404

    PHP is pretty fast for a interpreted language, it is multiple times faster than both Python and Ruby.

    Source: https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/...
  • 1
    The kernel source is publicly available? Really?

    Anyway: The phone is nice, but rooting it is very difficult thanks to Knox, among other hurdles. (Thanks, Samsung.)

    The Edge version is soo pretty, but so difficult to hold, and it's very fragile. I don't know about the non-edge variant. I have had no other issues with my phone. Except a persistent notification to "use my Samsung account" that won't go away. Agreeing to their terms includes sending them about as much data as the phone sends Google. 😕 but if you manage to root it, you could kill all that nonsense.
  • 2
    @feroza Some of those benchmark programs in Ruby are pretty poorly optimized (A new class for every step? Class vars for everything?). Take the results with a grain of salt, or a kilo. 😕
  • 2
    @Root

    Ruby is generally conceived as a slow language, and that's pretty justified.

    Even if those benchmarks are not squeezing every millisecond of performance, the margin is huge, and in favor of PHP, so it won't really make a difference.

    Even PHP 5.6 beats Ruby in many of the benchmarks, so the difference with PHP 7 is even bigger.

    Ruby is still a great language, but for reasons different than performance.
  • 3
    @feroza Ruby >= 2.0 kills most of the "Ruby is slow lol" jokes. PHP is typically faster, but not by very much. Even with PHP7.

    "Squeezing every millisecond of performance" lol. When you're instantiating new objects hundreds of times a second in one benchmark but not the other, the results are going to be seriously skewed. You can't compare e.g. a bubble sort with a radix sort and expect the results to mean anything.

    Really though, write your own benchmarks and compare. You'll find the gap isn't nearly as wide as you think. If you're too lazy to write your own, at least compare the worse-performing benchmarks with the better ones. You'll see a marked difference in code patterns.

    Source? I've written pretty extensively in both languages, and have a particular love for optimizing.
  • 2
    Why not go with OnePlus, instead if going for a very old Samsung device?
  • 1
    Had the samsung s6, s7 and made the jump to the s9. Superb devices all of them but I will admit on the s9 being the best by obvious reasons. I kept my s7 as a backup in case something happens to my s9 I will have a perfectly capable and working device to go back to. The s7 does feel sluggish now compared to the s9, but otherwise I would most definitely recommend the s7 if you can't get the s9 for whatever reason. Was great for watching movies, browsing the web, playing games(albeit i just played really casual games) and taking pictures with really good quality.

    I loved the phone, had it in its standard version and the edge(changed to edge because of a promotion making it cheaper than the standard, go figure right?)

    Other than that there are some other good phones priced around that range that might be to your liking man. But if you need peace of mind over the s7 go for it, really goos phone being used mainly for porn now :)
  • 1
    @Haxk20 brother mine have been really good to me :( if you had a bad experience with them I feel ya in terms of contempt, but Samsung has been one of my top smartphone brand for years now.
  • 2
    @Root i endorse this comment completely!!

    Ruby is not the slowpoke many make it out to be and it continues to be an absolute joy to write in. One of my favorites. Even more than Python. But I use python more since it is all the rage with machine learning.
  • 0
    @Root

    I'm providing you as sources actual tests done by performing a variety of algorithms and calculations.

    Here are some more benchmarks, which you can verify by running yourself, if you still don't believe that PHP is generally twice as fast as Ruby.

    https://github.com/kostya/...

    The difference is by no means as insignificant as you think.
  • 0
    @AleCx04

    The fact that it's slow does not make it bad or not enjoyable to write in.

    Ruby is quite an elegant language and I sincerely enjoy using it, but it is a known fact that it's not a top performer by any means.
  • 1
    Go for Oneplus, Pixel or an iPhone
  • 2
    @feroza never said it wasn't. My point is that it is a general belief for many people(amateur developers for the most part) to discard Ruby because "its slow" which in turn makes the community smaller or concentrate on one field only(web dev in this case)
  • 2
    @AleCx04 The average response time (50th percentile) for the primary Rails application at work (over the past 24 hours) is 16ms. Its 99th percentile is 43ms.

    Let's see PHP beat that 🙂

    @feroza You didn't address the discrepancies in benchmark optimizations. Why are you defending PHP / attacking rails so fervently? I don't understand. (Or really care; I have better things to do than argue.)
  • 0
    @feroza PHP 7 is, I know. You dont have to convince me.
  • 2
    buy a phone with a removable battery and then buy 2 fat (3x the size of the small ones usually) batteries for it (or 3..4 small ones) + a wall socket loader + a usb loader for the external battery. You'll never go back ;)

    I go through the equivalent of 4 batteries on a normal busy day. the wall charger will charge the battery up quicker than you use up the other one, but the usb chargers are a slow last ditch effort.

    for reference: Samsung Galaxy S4; LG G4 (which is still nice and powerful, even with 600+ apps)
  • 2
    This rant was read on a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. I've had it for 2+ years, and still love it.
  • 1
    It's a flagship device, which shows. There is an official nougat LineageOS rom, which means almost everything must work. But the support from Samsung is already almost over so I don't know about getting one new. Why buy something that's already obsolete?
  • 0
    @Root

    You're making claims that no one here can verify. I'm providing you with actual stats that you can verify yourself. Your "application at work" can have various optimizations that improve performance, but are not present in the core library. A PHP app with all the optimizations that your "application at work" has will still run circles around Ruby, due to the simple fact that PHP at its core is faster.

    Instead of making it seem like there is a conspiracy on the internet to make Ruby look slow, have you ever considered that it is actually a slow language?

    I'm not attacking Ruby, I'm simply stating facts. You are the one going around making claims that developers "don't like" PHP because "it's a slow language", meanwhile you couldn't be further from the truth.
  • 2
    @feroza You are really pissing me off.

    Some of the benchmarks you provided are lopsided. Some are not. That's my entire friggin' point here, which you've conveniently ignored twice now. Seriously. Go. Look.

    The "work application" bit is unrelated because a) it's in Rails, not Ruby proper, meaning b) those optimizations you mentioned (preloading, parallel workers, short-circuit optimizations, initial responses + deferred content, ...). It's also why I didn't tag you in that paragraph.

    But to reiterate a fourth time:
    Lopsided.
    Benchmarks.

    Do you want me to write balanced benchmarks in both? Would that make you happy? Feel free to hold your breath.

    >inb4 wow, rude.
  • 1
    @Condor
    Arduino? Realy?
    Nokia 3310 had a better cpu than that!

    Try using Rasbery Pi Zero, it think its small enough. You only need the gsm module thats relativley small and you might be able to send sms!
    (Forget about the internet or phone calls tho... unless there is a module that supports that, i doubt that)
  • 4
    @RantSomeWhere @w3bh3adjay @BugsBuggy @vlatkozelka OnePlus does seem to be a solid choice. I'll take it into consideration.. OP3 or OP3T may be sold secondhand.. that'd greatly reduce the price too 🤔

    @Root I've never heard about Knox, but I guess that I don't want to have that then? Is it something like SafetyNet perhaps?
    Anyway, the kernel source code should be linked here: https://xda-developers.com/samsung-...

    @Gregozor2121 just for shits and giggles mostly 😛 I could also mod a Raspberry Pi 3 for it (remove USB, Ethernet, display connectors etc to make it thinner) and then try to make a phone out of that? There seem to be some GPS/GSM HAT's out there. Not sure if I can hook up both that and a GPIO-based display to the GPIO rail tough 🤔
  • 1
    @RantSomeWhere that's a major pain in the ass.. even Crapple isn't that bad! So, no Samsuck then 😅
  • -1
    @Root

    Yes, of course, every benchmark on the internet conspires against Ruby.

    RoR brings a huge overhead, so that makes the application even slower than it would be without the framework.

    Make the same optimizations in a Symfony application and it will still be twice as fast.

    There's no point of arguing, since by now it is clear to me that nothing can change your mind. Even If I provide you with a hundred benchmarks, you'll keep repeating that none of them are optimized.

    The benchmark repo I sent you has 500 commits, don't you think that if the benchmarks could be further optimized someone would have done that already? It's in the interest of every Ruby developer to make them perform as good as possible. Or maybe no Ruby developer is as good as you? /sarcasm
  • 2
    @feroza @root Please take this conversation to somewhere else.. this post is about smartphone recommendations, not whether this or that language is better than the other. I have no idea about either of the languages anyway - I'm not a developer, so for me these comments are pretty much useless and only threadjack this post.
  • 1
    @Condor duno if u already bought or choose ure phone but try ebay used ones. There are a ton of Samsung galaxy s7 on ebay and usually "used" ones are perfect. Check for companies with good descriptions of how the phone looks. I got an s7 edge for 300 euro 1.5 years back. It claimed to have minor scratches on the back and rims. Cant find them to this day. Plus i installed lineage OS on this one. Apart from very weird perf issues in some games its quite nice, also unlike what others claim it didnt take me more than an hour to flash the twrp + lineageos rom onto it the tut on the lineage os site is pretty good. I think used ones go for even less and if u want a normal s7 u sill probably be able to get one for 250 to 200. Looks for german sellers and hope they have an english version below. Hope this helps :)
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