Techie Ramblings

Category: Tech

  • Boycott the Exynos!

    With the launch of the original Samsung Galaxy S Samsung began plaguing worldwide markets with their Exynos chipsets in the S series.

    Any market outside of Canada, China, Japan, Korea and the US will get an Exynos chipset in their S series (apart from a couple of exception years) where the others will get a Qualcomm Snapdragon.

    What is the reason for this? There are varying theories on this but from what I can gather (please do your own research too) it boils down to two things.

    1. Maximising profits. In markets where Samsung have less competition and more market saturation (read where they can get away with it) they will use their in house chip, keeping production in house maximises profits and minimises external licensing fees.
    2. A bargaining chip. By continuing to develop and apply the Exynos chipsets to devices Samsung keep the pressure on Qualcomm. They have a “special relationship” with Qualcomm. This agreement prevents Samsung from selling their Exynos chipsets to other manufacturers (big win!) while giving Samsung guaranteed access to Qualcomm chipset supply and in some cases even slightly tweaked versions that no-one else has access to.

    Why is this a problem? After all monopolies are never a good thing. Competition is what spurs innovation, and keeps prices in check.

    The problem is cost and lack of choice.

    Without exception every Exynos chipset has performed worse than it’s Snapdragon counterpart (again, please do your own research to confirm this, don’t take my word). Not once has the Exynos managed to best the Snapdragon in benchmarks although some years it has come close. In day to day usage the gap widens, with Exynos chipsets being notorious for overheating, having excessive battery drain and worse modem performance.

    Despite this the markets that drew the short straw and received an Exynos variant get no price concession, costing the same or even more in some cases than the Snapdragon versions. Had the user been given the choice to buy the Exynos for a slightly lower price I would be more accepting of this.

    Samsung clearly know they aren’t up to par too. We thought the dark days were over when the S23 series was released. There was no Exynos version, all markets worldwide got the Snapdragon 8gen 2 chipset. Sadly it didn’t last, when the S24 series launched we were back to Exynos. Strangely though the S24 Ultra got the Snapdragon 8gen 3 regardless of market, seemingly an acknowledgement from Samsung that their Exynos chipset wasn’t worthy of the “Ultra” name.

    With the launch of the S25 series we’re back to the whole world getting Snapdragon 8 Elite chipsets. While nothing much has changed from the S24 series the base model S25 and S25+ will benefit massively from this. Coupled with the supposed 7 years of updates and this becomes a fairly lucrative deal. In comparison I highly doubt that the Exynos bound S24 series will last through their 7 years of updates.

    Even though I stated that Samsung are bound by Qualcomm to not sell their chipsets to other manufacturers, it has still technically happened. Google’s “Tensor” line up are developed in the Samsung foundry and are actually modified versions of the Exynos chipsets. Read a little into user reviews of these phones from the Pixel 6 upwards and you’ll see swathes of reports of overheating, poor performance and modem issues. Thankfully it is reported that Google are moving their chipset development over to the TSMC foundry (responsible for Mediatek), which have come on leaps and bounds in recent years and are now a true competitor to Qualcomm. Fingers crossed they see good results.

    Unfortunately the average consumer knows nothing of this, and sales data backs that up. Despite worse performance and a higher price the S24 series sold more in Exynos markets than the S23 did. I highly doubt this will be the last we see of the infamous Exynos, and unless Samsung see a hit to sales when they try their luck they’ll carry on doing it.

    If you’re reading this blog you are most likely not an average consumer. When Samsung release a phone with an Exynos variant I urge you not to buy it. Hold on to your current device and await a Snapdragon release. Big reviewers will always downplay the issue because they’re paid to do so. It’s only a few months down the line when honest opinions start to pop up and they’re always the same. If the whole world gets Exynos as the only option then we’ll need to rethink Samsung as a whole, but for now protest this with your wallet.

  • HMD Pulse

    Image credits hmd.com

    This is perhaps the most basic device relative to the year purchased, and it is a stark contrast to the Oppo Find x8 Pro that came before it.

    It has been a tool to reset my expectations and a realization of my actual requirements.

    It turns out I don’t need a £2000 flagship, what a surprise! What I need from a phone is fairly simple:

    • A device that is comfortable to hold and pocketable.
    • NFC for contactless payments
    • Android operating system for flexibility, RCS chats and Quick share.
    • A reasonable camera for photo taking when I don’t have my DSLR handy.
    • Quality video camera, the DSLR is unable to take video.
    • Long battery life. I am at the point now where I don’t even want to see the battery percentage. It just needs to last the full day and go on charge overnight.

    This phone manages all but the last 2 points. The camera is not up to the task. However in every other area it performs admirably. It’s never slow to the point of being annoying, it’s very stable in that apps do not crash and it doesn’t need rebooting, the screen is decent and it’s never not lasted a full day on a single charge.

    For the £60 I paid for it this phone is hard to fault. I have written a full review of the phone here, but this post isn’t a review it’s more how the phone has fit into my life. Will it be my daily driver for the long term? Probably not. With a young son I regularly want to capture quick photos and videos and this phone really isn’t up to that. In anything less than optimal lighting this produces very noisy and blurry results.

    The way I’m choosing to think about this is in 10 years time will I be happy with the 2025 version of me choosing to use this phone, and take pretty poor photos/videos? I’m going to guess I won’t. I am fortunate enough to have disposable income, and making a conscious choice now to make a purchase for a long term handy camera that’s always in my pocket might be a good call.

  • Oppo Find x8 Pro (Global)

    After getting bored of the lack of innovation from the conventional brands available to western markets I decided to look to the east. I’d seen devices from Xiaomi, Honor, Vivo, Oppo and Oneplus and they all looked to be making leaps where our more well known brands have been making calculated baby steps.

    I settled on this Oppo Find x8 Pro, global edition. UK brands could learn a thing or two from these brands. This flagship arrived with an 80W charging block, a quality protective case AND a screen protector pre-applied.

    Undoubtedly this was the most capable and premium smartphone I’d ever owned and it cost me £400 less than an S24 Ultra. The cameras were the best I’ve ever seen on a smartphone. The battery life was immense and the phone was so speedy in day to day use. This truly was an enthusiasts phone that made no compromises.

    The operating system is very different to the likes of “Pixel Experience” or “One UI”. It has a lot of features crammed in and is quite unfamiliar at first. It feels more like iOS in it’s layout and theme.

    For me though it was the external design that lead me to not keeping it. It feels like a very hard device to protect. The camera array protrudes a lot, and is essentially a big circle of exposed glass. The screen is curved, not majorly so but enough that screen protectors are difficult to get right. Adding on to that the phone is very heavy to start with, so throwing either a bulky case that covers the camera or a regular case with a glass camera protector and the phone becomes unwieldly.

    I did try for a short time to use the phone without any protection, just trying to enjoy it and it’s design but I couldn’t. The anxiety caused by knowing how easily it could break got the better of me. This is an enthusiasts phone that makes no compromises to offer the ultimate specifications and performance. Unfortunately it turns out that I do need some compromises!

  • Samsung A55

    The Samsung A55 was what I purchased after the S24. I actually don’t have much if anything bad to say about this one. Even it’s Exynos chipset didn’t cause me any issues (shock!).

    It’s the Flagship of Samsung’s A series devices. Compared to the rest of the A series I’d say it’s more of a budget S series device. After all it has an Aluminium and glass body, a big OLED panel, 8GB of RAM and a main camera with OIS. It even has a Micro SD slot, something that the S series don’t.

    It has some cuts though from the flagship range, as would be expected. There’s no wireless charging. The bezels are bigger. It has a shorter update promise (still 4 years of OS upgrades). Other than that there’s not much downgrade.

    For the average person this would probably be the Samsung to get. They’ll still feel like they’re getting a premium device, but with a much smaller price tag. Being honest, even to me this device felt premium.

    At launch this phone was arguably a tough sell with it’s pricing. The 128GB model was £439 and the 256GB was £489 (I can’t imagine they sold many 256GB models with expandable storage!). Quite quickly though this phone started popping up for much lower prices where it became almost irresistible. I picked mine up for just £225 new, unboxed.

    For once with Samsung using Exynos chipsets this device performed well, and the battery life was good. I’m not sure what they had done differently with this one but I’m assuming it was a fluke as they made a complete disaster with the Exynos 2400 in the S24. The camera was very good too, it could produce decent photos and videos even in low light. This is a phone I do regret selling on, and I can’t even remember the reasons I did so at this point.

    On the plus side I sold the device for the exact same value I’d purchased it for, so nothing was lost! This seems to echo a lot in these turbulent few years of excessive phone ownership. Thankfully I’ve never lost a considerable amount of money. Because I was always careful with my devices, and generally never purchased them brand new (if buying outright) they always sold for either the same or only slightly less than I’d purchased them for. Looking back over the last 4 years I’d guess I’ve only lost a couple of hundred on reselling these devices in total, something that most people would blow on a couple of nights out on the drink! (If you hadn’t guessed I don’t drink, I don’t like the unpredictability of drunk people and don’t like the after effects the next day)

  • Samsung S24 + S24 Ultra

    These were two devices I owned one after the other, The S24 Ultra first followed by the S24 base model. Both times these were bought as part of a SIM contract, and both times when I had to go through the returns process I had an absolute nightmare.

    The S24 Ultra was the most uncomfortable phone I’ve ever held. It’s tablet sized and has really sharp corners. This was a 2 handed phone every time, and it had some serious weight too. The camera was a noticeable downgrade from the S23 Ultra’s which disappointed me. Coupled with strangely poor battery life it and went back within my 14 day returns window. The network completely messed up my cancellation and left me without my number that I’d ported in. It took me over a month to get this back.

    After the dust had settled I saw a really good Black Friday deal on the base model S24, with the same network. I placed the order. Initially it got cancelled because I’d previously had issues with the S24 Ultra. I wish I’d let them cancel the order completely as this one was even more disappointing. The company initially shipped it to the wrong address. I then had to drive 20 miles to the nearest Curry’s store, and wait an hour there to take delivery. The phone was a much more manageable size, but having a smaller battery coupled with the Exynos chipset was just a recipe for disaster. For the 3 days I used this phone I had to charge it 2 or 3 times a day. It was a permanently hot, stuttering mess. Again I returned it in the 14 day window and went through exactly the same problems with trying to reclaim my phone number. After about another month of back and forth, and them sending me cheques and credits as apologies I finally had my number back and I was free to go.

    There are two things I learnt from these experiences. Never buy a phone with an Exynos chipset, and never buy a phone through iD mobile.

  • Unihertz Jelly Star

    Image credits desertcart.in

    Very much in keeping with the weird and wonderful theme I’d started with the AGM M7, the Unihertz Jelly Star was my next phone.

    The idea behind this one being it’s a fully fledged Android smartphone in a miniscule package. The display is 3 inches diagonally and it weighs just 116 grams. You can do everything you would ever do on any other smartphone you just don’t have much screen to play with.

    Day to day usage of this phone wasn’t bad. The battery lasted fine. I could do what I needed to, even have things like banking apps and contactless payments.

    The problems came whenever I had to use the keyboard. I have quite large hands, and wide thumbs so trying to poke a letter on the keyboard was more a game of luck and chance than it was one of accuracy. Swipe to text worked to a degree, but I still struggled as I couldn’t see where the swipe pattern actually was on the phone.

    While this phone serves some people very well, and actually seems to be the answer for people lowering their screen time without making too many sacrifices for me it was just a fun gimmick. It was fun to show people who were generally amazed a phone could be that small, the illuminated rear was novel (but still a shameless Nothing rip off) and it really was full featured.

    In the end though it didn’t really matter. I was unable to use the phone. Thankfully this marked the last device in my peculiar device spree.

  • AGM M7

    Image credits agmmobile.com

    This is one of the more bizarre mobile phones I’ve owned. It’s made by a company who specialize in rugged phones and is really designed for people in lines of work where having to use a touch screen wouldn’t be ideal.

    However this phone is more than what it first appears. It does have a touch screen, a capacitive glass screen in fact. It also has probably the loudest speaker I’ve ever heard of a phone and a very bright flashlight. It’s unsung party trick though, is that it runs Android.

    This means that while it doesn’t have the play store or any Google services inbuilt you can install Android applications on it in the form of .APK files. In theory as long as the app doesn’t have any requirements like safetynet and GMS then you can run it (banking etc is unlikely to work).

    It’s not an easy device to work with, partly due to it being a form factor that android was never designed to work with, and partly because this is not a normal implementation of Android. However with a bit of technological knowhow it is possible to make yourself a smartphone/dumbphone hybrid.

    I spent a lot more time tinkering with this device than I actually spent using it. Once developer mode was on and USB debugging was enabled I could do a lot with this device. I spent quite a long time configuring the T9 keyboard as by default it doesn’t have predictive text. Eventually I had something that was a semi smartphone with enough friction in it’s use that you wouldn’t want to spend too long on it.

    In the end this device was a bit too “out there” even for me. For one it’s big. It takes up a lot more room in your pocket than an average smartphone, it’s heavy too. Mainly though I was actually embarrassed to pull this out in public. It draws attention and generally not the good kind. I prefer to be a bit more subtle. This was resold online where it went to a farmer, where I’m sure it will have it’s ruggedness put to the test daily!

  • iPhone 15 Pro

    As I said in my previous post there were still hiccups along the way to get to where I am now. The iPhone 15 Pro was one of them. I fell right into the marketing trap with this one. The natural titanium frame, the new action button and the sleek design lured me in.

    The phone was a very premium device. The magsafe range of accessories are great and at the time I used this with a car dash mount and a wireless charger. The device was seamlessly fast, had a great camera array and was very efficient on power.

    Getting the phone (thankfully used) actually lured me right back in to the Apple ecosystem. Over the course of my ownership I ended up with an M1 Macbook Pro, an iPad, a watch and Airpod Pro 2nd gen earphones.

    The strange thing was that this time rather than feeling like I’d spent too much, it was the ecosystem that drove me to get rid of this phone. The iPhone was the centre of the ecosystem, and in being that it basically became unused. At home I’d use the iPad, at work I’d use the Macbook and when I was out I’d generally leave the phone at home and use the Apple watch and Airpods over cellular. With an ecosystem so comprehensive the iPhone in the equation basically just becomes a hub to relay calls and iMessage to the other devices.

    This phone was resold, for basically the same money I purchased it for and for a while I used a more basic iPhone (can’t remember exactly which model) as the “hub” for the ecosystem. However cracks were showing, there are programs I rely on that need a Windows operating system and I was having to use a VM on the Macbook more often than I was using MacOS. In the Apple world one a part of the ecosystem goes the rest crumbles around it. In the end I got out, sold all of the Apple products and decided I’d not be going back to it again.

    Around this time I’d been struggling with screen time, and wanted to be more present. I decided to go down the route of a “dumbphone”, something I’d tried on and off for a while. Using it more as a tool for a digital detox, or a system reset to break habits seems to be the best option but I hadn’t worked this out at this point. So next I got an AGM M7, was this the answer to my problems? No, but it was certainly an experience!

  • Where are all of the replaceable batteries?

    Image credits gearzap.com

    Back on the 10th July 2023 a new law was passed by the European Union regarding the recycling of rechargeable batteries. Part of these law changes stipulated that “portable batteries  incorporated into appliances should be removable and replaceable by the end-user”. These laws come into effect in 2027, the logic being that this give the manufacturers plenty of time to incorporate this into their designs.

    Well 2027 is still 2 years away, the manufacturers still have time, you might say. That’s true however if we look at the other notable regulation the EU made targeting Apple you’ll see the difference. When USB-C was mandated companies were given time to implement the change, however Apple immediately implemented it before the due date.

    I think as 2027 rolls around we will see one of three things. Either mass non compliance with this law, with smartphone and laptop manufacturers claiming they offer replacement services, or that the battery is already easy enough to repair. Second, they will hold out till the last possible moment to implement the change. Third, they will only offer these replaceable batteries in EU markets.

    The reasons for this are simple. The main reason the majority of users upgrade is that the battery life of their device is no longer satisfactory. If you take that problem away with a simple pop out battery you take away the sole reason for an upgrade. These companies have grown complacent and reliant on our regular upgrades. Their profits will fall and share values will go down as a knock on effect.

    I can’t see the first option being the most likely, the fines from the EU are too harsh to risk non compliance. The second option is probably the most likely, and I wouldn’t be surprised if release cycles are changed just so they can release a device late in 2026 just to avoid the change. You wouldn’t think the third option would happen but I wouldn’t rule it out. Already we are seeing different versions of devices for different markets. US iPhones don’t have a SIM slot. EU iPhones allow third party app stores whilst others don’t. It will all come down to the potential loss of profits to these companies. If they can develop a regional variant for the EU with a replacement battery for less than the profits they calculate they’d use through less device renewals you can bet they’ll do it.

    That leaves us in the UK in a sticky predicament. Would we get the EU variant or would we get the rest of world one with a sealed battery? If so I would without a doubt be importing one from Europe!

    There is a night and day difference between the longevity of a device with and without a replaceable battery. The obvious point being that replacements are more readily available, cheaper and easy to swap out. The other side of this is that if the device is being stored the battery can be removed. This stops the battery slowly draining past the point of no return.

    As a footnote; anyone shilling for these manufacturers claiming that devices are only water resistant because of their sealed batteries only need look at the Samsung XCover series. This phone, from one of the big 3 has a user replaceable battery and an IP68 dust and water rating. I rest my case.

  • Samsung A14 4G

    Coming from the S23 Ultra this was a big downgrade on paper. However with the Samsung credits accumulated from the S23 Ultra purchase I was able to purchase this device entirely with no money leaving my hands.

    At the time we were providing these devices as entry level business devices, so I knew them well. They have their limitations but for the price point they excel as a full package. For starters the 4G variant utilises a Mediatek Helio G80 chipset, rather than an Exynos option (Avoid the 5g model for this reason!), so whilst performance isn’t ground-breaking the efficiency is. With light usage this phone can make it through a week on a single charge. The phone is also a great all rounder. It has 2 SIM slots, a Micro SD slot and a 3.5mm audio jack (something the majority of the more expensive phones on the market can’t match!). It has NFC and a surprisingly high quality LCD display (Excellent colours and 400PPI!).

    This phone was the one that reset my expectations and got me questioning everything I’d come to believe about Smartphones. Back in 2012 the user experience was very different between a budget phone and a flagship, you needed a flagship just to have a fully functional device. If a phone with the functionality of a 2012 budget phone today I genuinely think people would return them as faulty, they were that bad. You can read my full thoughts on this here. Don’t get me wrong, I still think there is a substantial gap in performance and quality between the upper and lower ends of the market but our usage requirements of phones haven’t scaled at the same rate performance has. Everything we need is available in most of the budget phones on the market. The only difference being instead of using maybe 5-10% of the power of a flagship we would use 75-100% of a budget phone, but at the end of the day the task is still accomplished.

    There were many more mistakes I made with impulsive purchases after this one, FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and impulse buying driving most of them, but this phone put the thought in my head that lead me to where I currently stand today.

    The one thing that would really make this phone a complete package would be Optical Image Stabilization on the main lens, but that’s nit-picking and would most likely drive the price up too high.

    I kept the A14 around for a long time, when it wasn’t my main phone it was a secondary device. Through the time of finding balance with my screen time this was the backup phone I would keep apps on while I used a “Dumbphone”. Some of these devices are still in daily use at my work today, and they’re still working fantastically. They are durable, easy to repair and are proving themselves to have longevity on their side too. I do believe a lot of manufacturers put out more consistent offerings in their budget line-up’s than their premium ranges. Generally they use a proven chipset, with technology a generation or two old, so there’s less to go wrong that hasn’t already been solved. We also don’t have as high expectations when we’ve spend a 10th of the money!