The Samsung Galaxy Note7 (S820) Review
by Joshua Ho on August 16, 2016 9:00 AM ESTIC Design Wins
While we normally allude to the various things that we find in a phone in the interest of providing some extra depth for posterity I went ahead and dug through the software to find all the various peripherals that are present in the Galaxy Note7. For example, the Wacom digitizer identifies itself as the W9010 over i2c, which is interesting considering that this digitizer is the same one found in the Galaxy Note 3. In various briefings it was explicitly said that the digitizer supports double the number of pressure levels, so I’m not sure how this is achieved or if it really has any changes at all besides the smaller tip.
Moving past the Wacom digitizer we can see that there are a number of supporting ICs for power management and things like the battery charger. I’m not going to spend a ton of time talking about this but a huge number of these are Maxim Integrated ICs such as the MAX77838 switching regulator/PMIC, although I’m not clear on exactly what this PMIC supplies. There’s also the MAX77854 which functions as a PMIC, as well as a MAX98506 class D audio amplifier for the codec, which is likely used to drive things like the earpiece, speaker, and 3.5mm jack. This is shared with the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge and it looks like it uses the same WCD9335 audio codec so I wouldn’t get my hopes up about improved audio quality for the Snapdragon variants. If you want better audio you’re going to have to look towards the Exynos variant or the HTC 10.
Moving to slightly more boring but critical parts of the Note7 there are ICs like Cypress CapSense PSoC which enables the capacitive buttons and a TI BQ25898S battery charger IC which supports 9V and 12V charging voltages for adaptive fast charge. There’s also an NXP PN547 NFC controller and an NXP P61 secure microcontroller that seems to be for payments and similar applications. It should also probably surprise no one that there’s a Validity/Synaptics VFS7xxx fingerprint scanner here, although I found some mention of an Egis Technologies ET320 fingerprint scanner which makes me wonder whether Samsung is dual sourcing here.
The more esoteric ICs here include a Richwave RTC6213N FM radio tuner and a CEVA DBMD4 DSP which seems to be for always-on voice commands which are visible on i2c and SPI respectively. The only IC that I can’t identify at all is something called the SX9320 over i2c, which officially has zero mentions on the internet unless you count a Shacman trailer that is manufactured by Shaanxi Automobile Group in China or NGK spark plugs. At any rate, looking at these kinds of details it’s much more apparent just how critical economies of scale are as these are parts that seem to be shared across the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, which surely helps to drive down cost due to the sheer volume of these devices. There are also things like FM tuners which aren’t necessarily going to be a point of advertising for a phone but are neat to have anyways.
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KoolAidMan1 - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Apple is also responsible for Android's abysmal security and its impending botnet apocalypse.#illuminati
Bluetooth - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
iPhone is twice as fast with the Google Octane benchmark which is the closest to real world usage. I didn't know that Google was optimising their benchmark to make iOS phones leave Android in the dust.trparky - Wednesday, August 17, 2016 - link
Yeah, I was looking at some of the benchmark numbers and the first thing that came to my mind was "Apple is killing them here, they're just killing them!"This is supposed to be the latest and greatest CPU/GPU combination and yet Apple's year old CPU/GPU combination is wiping the floor with Samsung's new phone. Not only is Apple killing them in the browser benchmarks but also in Basemark tests as well. If I was a Samsung fan boy I would be asking why the hell a year old device (iPhone 6s) is seemingly faster than my latest and greatest flagship device.
Now, a number of users are saying that may be because of the CPU governor that Samsung chose to use as the default CPU governor so as to improve overall battery life but as we can see in some of the benchmarks, Apple is killing them yet the iPhone doesn't at all have issues with battery life. So again, why is Apple killing them with a year old device?
God, if the benchmarks look this ugly when compared to the year old iPhone 6s I can't imagine how bad it's going to be when compared to the new chip Apple is going to have in the new iPhone 7 (or whatever it's going to be called). If I had to hazard a guess, it's going to be an absolute bloodbath.
jospoortvliet - Thursday, August 18, 2016 - link
Everyone should know by now that in single threaded use apple is miles ahead of any android vendors, period. Same with storage performance. Multicore performance, which thankfully is a little more important on Android than on iOS, is better with exynos and friends but that is only a little consolation.Psyside - Sunday, August 21, 2016 - link
That is pure BS, i got the 8890 S7 and its utterly fantastic and uber fast.jlabelle2 - Monday, August 22, 2016 - link
Still, it is a little bit sad that, as an iPhone user myself (corporate phone as I am using a Windows phone as a private own), it is now the only thing Apple fans can really brag about. Especially considering that it does not offer any appreciable benefit as most modern flagships are anyway in all practical purpose quick enough for what we are using them.Apple can continue to push this CPU race, we just reached a point of diminish return and this is really not what mobile phone needs now.
People needs smaller phone for a given screen size (iPhone has huge bezel and the Note 7 is a marvel on this regard), they need more battery life and/or better or quicker way to charge (quick charging, wireless charging), they need screen readable outdoor with good contrast (iPhone is good outdoor but contrast is not up to OLED level), they need to be able to perform tasks quicker (camera hardware button, back button, NFC, ...), they need to be able to use their phone with one hand (not having the back link or all the buttons on top like on iOS), they need to be able to take the best pictures possible because this is the camera they are wearing (Apple is still really pushing the envelope with refusing to put a decent camera size sensor in their phone for whatever sake of thinness)...
Let's be frank, I do not know one single person with a big of brain and common sense that would choose an iPhone versus another Snapdragon 820 or Exynote xxx just for the sake of difference of single thread CPU speed. That is just NOT an argument that register in any meaningful way these days to normal people.
grayson_carr - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
How would that help? Even the Exynos S7 doesn't run as smooth as the Moto Z, which is pushing just as many pixels and has s Snapdragon 820. There are two issues, neither of which is the fault of the SD820. First, Samsung phones are bloated with a ridiculous number of features and background services running, which requires more processing power than something running a cleaner build of Android like the Moto Z or a Nexus. Second, because of the extra overhead caused by their software, Samsung has to limit the performance of their chips (both Exynos and Snapdragon) via kernel / governor configuration in order to get good battery life. Samsung could easily tweak the SD820 so that the Note 7 ran perfectly smooth and hardly ever dropped frames. The SD820 is easily capable of that. But if they did that, then the Note 7 would get below average battery life. It's all about priorities. Samsung is betting that their users will prefer good battery life and some minor stuttering here and there over below average battery life and a perfectly smooth UI. I mean, yes, the Exynos is more efficient than the SD820 so they didn't have to limit its performance quite as much to achieve good battery life, but even the Exynos is performing far below it's potential because of Samsung's heavy software and desire for good battery life. The fact that the Moto Z runs smoother than even the Exynos S7 is proof.mrochester - Wednesday, August 17, 2016 - link
Why can't we have both like the iPhone? Too many compromises.Psyside - Sunday, August 21, 2016 - link
NVMe storage, the A9 is far bellow 8890, the storage is the key.trparky - Wednesday, August 17, 2016 - link
But that doesn't explain why the iPhone 6s appears to be wiping the floor with this device and yet iPhone 6s users often enjoy some of the best battery life numbers in the industry.Again, as I said above... If I was a Samsung fan boy I would be asking why the hell a year old device (iPhone 6s) is seemingly faster than my latest and greatest flagship device.