Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Review
by Brian Klug on October 1, 2013 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Mobile
- Android 4.3
- galaxy note 3
Battery Life
Battery life remains probably the single largest differentiator for devices lately, and of huge concern to enthusiasts and normal shoppers alike. We’ve already caught a glimpse of how well 8974 fares from a power perspective inside the LG G2, a device that posted some seriously impressive battery numbers. The Note 3 we’re looking at is also 8974 based since it’s a T-Mobile model, and thus we expect the same kind of battery life.
With this generation of Note, battery gets even larger. The Note started with a then quite large 9.25 watt hour battery, then Note 2 moved to 11.78 watt hours, and Note 3 now moves to a very large 12.16 watt hour battery with of course the newest 3.8V chemistry and all that comes along with it. Display size goes up, but those power gains are offset in other places.
After we talked about the panel self refresh features in the G2 a few people reached out and let me know that this feature has been shipping for a while in some phones, and it’s easy to check for. If we look under the display subsystem we can see that the same MIPI_CMD_PANEL type 9 is used, which refers to this type of interface.
Qualcomm HWC state: MDPVersion=500 DisplayPanel=9
define MIPI_CMD_PANEL ‘9’
Our battery life tests are unchanged and consist of a set of popular webpages that are loaded on a schedule with the display set to exactly 200 nits and repeated until the battery runs out and the device dies on both WiFi and cellular data connections. In this case that means T-Mobile LTE which is 10 MHz FDD in my market, I haven’t had a chance to run the Note 3 on HSPA+ yet, or complete the call test (which is starting to get ridiculous, and probably breaks 24 hours in the case of the Note 3).
On LTE the Note 3 does very well, coming just shy of the pack of iPhones, at just over 8 hours. Interestingly enough it’s just north of the G2s as well, which do have a smaller battery but also smaller display. The Note 3 also is the first device to ship with Qualcomm’s QFE1100 envelope tracker solution from the RF360 front end portfolio, which lowers power consumption by up to 20 percent and heat dissipation by up to 30 percent by allowing the power amplifiers to follow the desired output waveform. There’s more on that later in the cellular section.
On WiFi the Note 3 does better by 22 percent, but not the kind of huge jump I’m used to seeing between cellular and WiFi testing. This tells me the Note 3 battery life is really gated by the display, which is almost always the largest consumer of power in a device. That said the Note 3 does very well all things considered, especially in comparison to the APQ8064 (Fusion 3) phones which came before it, like SGS4. New silicon and new process inside MSM8974 definitely helps move battery life forward here with the race to sleep game.
Charging is an interesting story on the Note 3, but primarily because of what doesn’t change. The Note 3 continues to use Samsung’s tablet charging specification and charger, which has 2 amps of maximum output. The Note 3 draws 2 amps over a considerable amount of the charging curve, like other Samsung devices (in the linear part of the charge curve). USB 3.0 doesn’t change things up here quite yet with the new supported charge voltages that are coming eventually with the power delivery specification.
The Note 3 does charge faster overall compared to the SGS4 however thanks in part to the new PMIC (PM8941) which is part of the overall 8974 platform story.
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jerry_carter - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Making a mockery of "The Most Trusted in Tech Since 1997"Anand:
I appreciate your site and reviews and have read religiously for several years now. That stated, the most recent Samsung review [1] falls significantly below your traditional journalistic standards. I use the word 'journalistic' because you've earned it -- working independently when possible and calling out limitations when forced to work within them. You've historically identified significant issues in several products and revised articles or reviewed products when these issues were corrected.
With the Samsung review, you have failed to meet these standards. I accept your comments that benchmarks from several products are suspicious. That is no reason to not take a harder line with each and every case that you encounter. I have no problem with posting the 'manufacture optimized' numbers provided that they are presented in parallel with numbers for with the optimizations are disabled (or believed to be disabled). I do appreciate that this is more work, but your site, Ars Technica, and others can expose corruption (or as least bad behavior) where it occurs and motivate manufactures to 'do the right thing. And really, isn't that what journalism is about?
Thanks for your work over the last several years. I trust that the review will be corrected soon and look forward to that and future work in the months and years ahead.
Best Wishes,
Jerry Carter
[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/7376/samsung-galaxy-...
ccd2 - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
The popularity of the new iPhone is really amazing. With the maturity of the phone market, the trend seems (to me at least) to be away from a one phone does all to a number of segments. The Note 3 represents one of those segments (I own the Note 2). If I were in the market for a phone, the Note 3 would be my phone. My guess is that, in time, phones like the S4 which I would consider a kitchen sink phone where everything is thrown in, will give way to more phones like the Note 3, which are designed for market segments. My guess is that most people who buy a phone like the Note 3 would not give the iPhone or Galaxy S4 a second look. That is no knock against Apple before the fanboys jump on me. It's just that with a bigger screen, S pen, etc., the Note has a different focus and appeal. You can already see other potential segments like where the phone is more camera than phone. To me, this seems where the phone market is headed as it continues to mature.SeriousTodd - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Brian, if you could comment on the subject of legitimacy of this website, it would be great.http://www.displaymate.com/OLED_Galaxy_S123_ShootO...
SeriousTodd - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Brian, it would be great if you could comment on the subject of legitimacy of this website.http://www.displaymate.com/OLED_Galaxy_S123_ShootO...
ChrisMars - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Great review, thanks!May I propose to adapt the CalMan results graph in a way it's more easy to grasp at a glance?
Just putting the best on top would be a improvement already.
Adding a line at 6505K for white-point deviation would also be good to improve readability,
SpacedCowboy - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Just one more voice added to the cacophony.I started reading anandtech a long time ago - so long that I don't remember exactly when. The nature of the reviews here caught my eye, and I became a fan. What I liked was how things were made bare, with intelligent guesses (always noted as such) and astute observations leading to conclusions that other sites just didn't provide. Over time, the track record was excellent and trending better.
Now, though, you've just taken a huge step back. Some points:
1) It's not an insignificant difference between the cheating and non-cheating modes as you suggest in the review. Perhaps there's something else going on rather than just locking the clock to fMax - perhaps they're relaxing the thermal envelope as well. Who knows ? It's all very dodgy.
2) It's all very well to say that benchmarks don't mean anything, but a lot of people who don't really know what they want, but just "want the best phone" are going to look up a review on the internet, see which phone is at the top of the graphs, and assume that's the best one, then go out and buy it. Tech-savvy customers are the exception, not the rule, and you've just given Samsung everything they wanted.
3) You say you're struggling with how to react. I'm struggling to see why you're struggling. If someone cheats, you call them on it; simple as that, and you make the cheating the major point of any review. Naming and shaming manufacturers, and the commensurate bad PR is the only way we'll stop them (and by 'we' I mean sites like your good selves).
The only reasons I can see why you wouldn't do this is that you're afraid that you'll lose access to new products in future, or you're being paid to shill their products. If it's the former, well, that's a story in its own right; if the latter (which FYI, I don't believe to be the case), then a sad day has dawned and I'll go somewhere else for my tech reviews.
4) I don't care who does it, be it Apple, Samsung, HTC, whatever - name them and shame them. Cheats should never prosper.
You're in a privileged position. You've gained that position because of your reputation and hard work, by doing the journalistic version of speaking truth to power. It just seems so ... sad ... that you didn't hold yourselves to your previous high standards this time, and I guess we're all just a bit shell-shocked and asking "why ?"
TL;DR: Such a shame.
cozmot - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
Very good points, and that sums my thoughts up perfectly.Arbie - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
"How is it cheating if everyone does it?" -- First off, it's cheating because it's intentionally misleading; and secondly because not everyone does it. The companies who are not cheating are being shown in a falsely bad light. And I wouldn't have known that from reading this Anandtech article.So Anandtech really needs to highlight the fact in the same chart that presents the results. Or better yet, omit Samsung scores on that parameter and say why.
Samwise - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Anandtech, please review the Droid MAXX.apljack80 - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
I think I have read enough of these posts to feel like many of your words are an unwarranted attack of the writers of Anandtech. Let me be perfectly clear, Samsung and other OEMs DID NOT CHEAT, and ANANDTECH DID NOT LET THESE COMPANIES OFF THE HOOK. Let me articulate why this is the case.1) First you must look at the device and it’s intended purpose. These are phones not laptops or desktops, that for the most part enjoy an unending stream of power. These phones are designed to sip power with extreme efficiency. As a result, they do this at the cost of unleashing the full potential of the hardware of the phone, in order to optimize the full potential of the battery. Consider all of the effort they have taken to make more powerful CPU’s, GPUs, and bright huge screens use so much less power than their predecessors, think about how much they have accomplished with all this AND make a phone last almost all day.
2) All of these phones are also very efficient crushing the full potential of the hardware, however, a benchmark is testing the efficiency of the hardware not the battery. And this causes benchmarks to become ARTIFICIALLY LOW. So when faced with this issue the OEM’s have made provisions, to allow the device to fully unleash it’s full potential in the code. Try thinking of it like this, Samsung did not improve its scores by adding that code, but let us see what the actual power of the processor is. Other implementations of the same hardware are lower, because the software and power saving devices are forcing it to be slower. That is why you are seeing these ‘special’ cases, because you could not see what the real ability of the phone is without the code.
3) I believe the writers of Anandtech understand this at some level, and lack the ability to truly communicate that message to the masses. If you read their articles, they do feel it is a form of cheating, but have not called it in any way a lie. They walk a fine line between being honest with themselves, and offending a company that sends them devices for review. So they have to be careful in how they word things, and in this case I felt their response was diplomatic to say the least. They did not ignore what is happening like other tech sites, they acknowledged it and reported their raw numbers. The raw numbers that the phone can actually do outside of it’s limitations.
I am embarrassed at what I have seen here today, and I am embarrassed by all of you who have failed to engage you minds on this topic. Think before you speak, you will find more doors will open to you that way. And be grateful they have even replied to any of us during this tirade.