Samsung Launches the Galaxy S5 Broadband LTE-A: First Snapdragon 805 Phone, First 20nm Modem
by Joshua Ho on June 19, 2014 10:47 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Mobile
- Galaxy S5
While this launch is Korea-only, Samsung recently announced a new version of their Galaxy S5 smartphone, dubbed the Galaxy S5 Broadband LTE-A. Naming aside, this makes this phone the first to launch with APQ8084 and MDM9x35. For those unfamiliar with Snapdragon 805 and MDM9x35, this means that the CPUs are now Krait 450 instead of Krait 400, and the GPU is now Adreno 420 instead of Adreno 330. While the CPU revisions are minor, the GPU is fast enough to have the same level of performance at 1440p as an Adreno 330 at 1080p. The MDM9x35 modem also means that category 6 LTE is supported for speeds of up to 300 Mbps. The MDM9x35 is also the first 20nm SOC part shipping from TSMC, which bodes well for 20nm SoCs in the near future.
Qualcomm also notes that this phone integrates the WTR3925 transceiver, so carrier aggregation is done on a single chip instead of the WTR1625L/WFR1620 dual-chip solution that was previously needed. Samsung also integrated a QHD (2560x1440) OLED display into this model at the same 5.1" display size. The only other difference is that the phone now has 3GB RAM instead of the 2GB present in the international model. Otherwise, the rest of the phone is identical to the international Galaxy S5. It's curious to note that Samsung has chosen to use the 2.5 GHz bin of the APQ8084 line rather than the highest 2.7 GHz bin, although the reasons behind this decision aren't quite clear yet.
Source: Samsung Tomorrow
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heffeque - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
AFAIK, there are a lot of people in tech sites that claim to have a better sight than what's scientifically proven to be impossible for a human being to have.Science creates these amazing phones, but science has no clue about something as simple as to know how much pixel density human eyes/brain can distinguish at a certain distance!
People on tech sites know a lot more about this than scientists, that's for sure.
UpSpin - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
It's less about the urgent desire to have QHD on phones, and more about the progress in general.Whatever you develop must result in profit in some way. Because smartphone sales are gigantic, you can be sure, that something implemented in smartphones is profitable, can get mas produced which results in a lower price per part.
Just look at the price for MEMS sensors (accelerometer/gyrometer). Prior to the smartphone era they were priced at >$50 a piece. Thanks to the huge mass production required for smartphones, they are cheap and can get used in tons of less successful products with low quantities (quadrocopter, Oculus, watch, ...)
A smartphone might not need a QHD, but the Oculus for example needs it. The quantity of produced Oculus is too small to justify the research and production of such high density displays. Thanks to QHD smartphones however, those displays will become affordable.
So you should be happy if the latest and greatest tech gets integrated in smartphones, even if it looks like overkill or you don't have a huse for it right now. Smartphones make this technology affordable and thus a lot of other great products possible.
akdj - Saturday, June 21, 2014 - link
More PPI, equals better character recognition as well. Asian countries not using our alpha (26 easily formed letters or variations of; Spanish, French, German et al) numeric system we're using in the west. Cantonese, Chinese traditional and Japanese 'letters' and words are significantly easier to read (& write) at HiDPI. They're coming. It's all the rage. Weird that Amazon missed the CES '13 3D craze transition to the '14's HiDPI 'fad' ...that'll 'keep' it's tractiontuxRoller - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
That's wrong. They even had an article on this site that spoke of the theoretical benefits of increasing DPI up to, iirc, around 600. After that, there is then no more advantage to going higher.Klug4Pres - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
"While the CPU revisions are minor, the GPU is fast enough to have the same level of performance at 1440p as an Adreno 330 at 1080p"What are you, a mouthpiece for the mobile phone industry?
You might just as well have said: "In spite of a significant increase in potential graphics performance from Adreno 330, the move to a 1440p screen resolution (from 1080p) completely negates that. On top of that, almost nobody will be able to discern any improvement in the screen from the increased resolution, maximum brightness is lower than it could have been at 1080p, and the screen uses x% more power."
jlabelle - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
I hope that the MacLaren Lumia-Microsoft flagship will not have a QHD screen as I am waiting to upgrade my Lumia 1020 and I find those screen reader with PPI above 400-500 utterly silly.jlabelle - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
Screen race I meant.maroon1 - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
Why you are assuming that all android games will run on native resolution.Some games like Record of Agarest War only support 720p max resolution. Not all games run on native resolution
akdj - Saturday, June 21, 2014 - link
Hmmm. Reading comprehension. You said almost EXACTLY what the author did in different terms. He could've also said WTF's up with the LG3? 1440p and the 330? Now we've got a GPU that can handle that many pixels without evident stuttering and possible consistent UI refresh rates @60hz? I'm not following you, other than your attempt at some sort of 'journalism criticism'. Can you link HS to your blog? Site? Contributions to technology?Klug4Pres - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Is this a reply to me? I don't follow you either.