Phone Talk / Anyone getting the new S10 phone this week?

I downloaded a couple benchmarks, on one my S9+ scored 16,000, this S21 Ultra scores 47,000................yeesh. I don't think that is accurate.

So I tried Geekbench 5. The S9+ is 510 single core 2087 multicore, S21 Ultra is 1124 single core 3514 multicore, that is much more realistic then the other bench.

That is the best score of any Android device but for whatever reason no variant of the S21 shows up in the global rankings, the Asus phone which scores 9XX is the top ranked. It also just shows my phone as an "Android device" but not the name tho the S9+ it shows the name.

Either way its just for fun much like 3Dmark on the PC and doesn't really mean anything.

Naw I would never say 30 fps was enough tho I am debating leaving this phone at 60 hz just to make the battery last longer. I have fast charging turned off.

I got the silicon case with the SPen but its out of stock and supposed to ship by March 15th. We shall see.

No issues with the phone, only issue I had is I was supposed to get 4 months of YouTube premium. I use YouTube Vanced on my phone so I don't see ads to begin with but hey free is free.

For some reason I didn't get the 4 free months, I reached out to Samsung support twice and they were no help at all. Broken English in their replies and I followed all the steps and still no 4 free months. Again not a big deal, I don't have much use for YouTube Premium.

The S-Pen just got/is getting some interesting new features. Samsung is really pushing the handwriting recognition ability of its devices, and you can now write into fields, and have the device convert it into text. I've got two tablets, the Galaxy Tab S4 and S7+, and I like them. I use the S4 now mostly to binge watch Netflix in bed. Though I also transferred some videos from my PC to it. The Samsung video player, and the VLC player, both are good at playing back x264 content. Haven't tested x265 yet.

Getting my oil changed just noticed the 5G icon is on for the first time. Only 100 m/s

A lot of our fellow Ultra owners are going to wait for the S25 series. 3 nanometer, plus it will be the second generation of this newfangled AI on device system.

Sort of similar to videocards, where the raw throughput of the new SoC is just an OK bump over that of the current Snapdragon flagship, probably be because it's on the same 4 nanometer process. The AI is where the new transistors are going, so somewhat analogous to nVidia using their transistor budget for ray tracing. Very cool, but only if you will use it.

But the new seven years of OS updates, to compete with Google, is a very nice move. Though arguably more reason to wait for the S25 Ultra, as that could be a device that you'd not want to update for a very long time. Then again God only knows what pricing will be with that node, supply and demand.

Here's my pre order deal (which I might cancel)

*S24 Ultra 512GB $1419.99
*Galaxy Buds2 Pro $229.99
*Anti-Reflecting Screen Protector $29.99
*Leather case $59.99

=$1,739.96

My early pre-order incentives:
-$120 on phone (aka free double memory upgrade from the 256GB version)
-$229.99 on Buds2 pro (free)
-$29.99 on Screen Protector (free)
-$26.76 on Leather Case
-$650.00 for S22 Ultra Trade In (Keeping my S23U for backup)
+$44.18 NJ Sales Tax
-$16.35 Leftover Samsung Reward Points

=$711.05 Out the door (free shipping) for a total of $1,056.74 off full retail.

My state tax return will cover it so it's not like it will even touch my savings or even my federal tax return but my bank account has already been debited for the full amount so I have already paid for it in full.

I still have the cancel button on the Samsung site so I can still cancel it before it ships and get refunded (doubt they will pack it tomorrow on Sunday). I've been upgrading every year through Samsung's early trade in deals since the S10 but I'm really not feeling it this year. The loss of the 10mp 10x optical sensor for a 50mp 5x optical zoom is kinda meh to me because however on paper the higher megapixel should maintain quality when digital zooming compared to the 10mp 10x optical zoom, the problem is higher megapixels on small phone sensors really crap out in lower light conditions because the smaller pixels collect less light in low light situations so high zooming is going to suffer in low light (already confirmed this by Youtube tests). In bright daylight it should be nearly a wash with zooming 30x to 100x of the 5x 50mp sensor on the S24U vs the 10x 10mp on the S23U but in low light the larger pixels on the 10mp 10x sensor of the S23 will collect more light and give a better result. This is why when the main 1x sensors are used in 200mp mode they really suffer in low light and dynamic range and only work well in bright sunny days with minimal shadows - with these small phone camera sensors typically you'll get better photo results in the standard 12mp mode since the pixel binning making the pixels larger which collects more light and dynamic range.

Why they did this is because of somewhat of another flaw on the S23U where the 3x optical has to jump all the way to a 10x optical where the 3x loses a lot of quality digital zooming up to the point the 10x takes over. But IMO it would of been wiser to loose the 3x optical on the S23U for a 5x and keep the 10x on the new S24U instead of a 1x to 3x to 5x optical I think 1x to 5x to 10x would of been more optimal but I think they chose 3x specially for optimal quality for portrait photos.

The new AI features I don't care about and will be said to turn into a subscription post 2025 and also come to the S23 in a later update anyway.

What do I really gain in the upgrade for my $700?
*Better camera zoom quality from 3x to 10x with minimal loss to full 100x in well lit daylight
*Brighter Screen for use in daylight
*Better Antiglare
*Flat screen
*Upgraded Earbuds from my original Buds Pro to the Bud2 Pro
*Slightly faster chip but I doubt that it will be noticeable in day-to-day usage
*Slightly better battery life, but like above, not going to be noticeable unless I had both side-by-side benching

What do I lose?
*$711.05
*My S22 Ultra
*Worse max camera zoom quality in lower light

Hmmm.... The S23U is really a beast of a phone and some of the camera upgrades seem to make it lose performance in other ways. Basically most of my daily uses will seem the exact same (music streaming, browsing social media, etc.)

Just really not feeling it this year... It won't bother be financially to do the upgrade but why throw money away if there's no real gain? I typically only use the Buds at work and use high quality headphones at home so....really...what am I gaining this year that I'll notice in the way I use my smartphone? Easier to see screen in bright sunlight and better camera zoom quality in the 5x to 10x range. Maybe less accidental touches with a flat screen instead of curved. Yea....not really feeling it this year....

The S23U might be a good choice for you if battery performance is your main concern if you can get a better deal on it because the S23 was a good jump in battery life over even the S22 due to the much more efficient Snapdragon chipset. Not only that but the system storage and chip is so much faster that updating apps say if I was updating 20 apps on both the S22 and S23 I could let the S22 get down to only 5 apps waiting to be updated and start the updates on the S23 and the S23 would not only catch up to the S22 but finish quicker! Take it from someone who has upgraded every year since the S10, the S23 is a super beast! It was a good jump even over the year before but I'm feeling the S24 is only some minor polish this year. I would get the S23U if you can get a much better deal than the S24 but both will put the S21 to absolute shame in every category and you wont need benchmarks to see/feel it.

Uh .... check out Reddit and the reviews, and while very shortly you won't notice it, there is a tradeoff for having a screen that acts as a deflector shield for unwanted light reflections, bouncing the rays away. At least indoors anyway, used outside its benefits should make it superior across the board. More than one reviewer stressed that only in a side by side is it noticed, in real life usage a person who hadn't done the comparison would only be thinking how great the screen was.

Gotta love technology companies.

So my S21 Ultra got the OneUI 6.1 update yesterday. The 6.0 update was completely smooth so I didn't even think of it.

Ever use something so much you forgot you are using it or how to explain it because its muscle memory? While using my phone I tried to go back to a previous app but when I did that it just brough up a search window. I actually struggled to use my phone for a minute and had to figure out how to navigate without that gesture, I forgot what it was officially called.

Before gestures everything was hardware buttons, I actually liked those, but technology marches on and somewhere around 2019 or something I got used to just using gestures for everything.

Turns out Samsung made their own custom gestures that are different from stock Android. One of them is going to the Recent App menu, in that menu you can see all running apps, how long they have been running, and swipe to close or Close All apps.

One of the things Samsung did with OneUI 6.1 is do away with their custom Samsung only gestures and only use the stock Android ones. Shit.

Turns out there is a workaround, there is an app in the Samsung store called GoodLock and it has a subapp called NavStar. With a combination of those two apps and changing some settings I got the swipe up from the left Recent Apps gesture back.

Wonder if that will keep working with next years model....