Samsung won't get a last-minute reprieve from Obama like Apple did. by Joe Mullin
Samsung will be barred from importing some of its older phones thanks to a limited exclusion order that Apple won at the International Trade Commission. The exclusion ordercame outtwo months ago and kicks in today. The Korean company's last hope was a veto of the order by President Barack Obama, who recently issued a similar veto to protect Apple from an exclusion order.
The news is part of a broad array of patent battles that continue between Apple and Samsung. In this case at the ITC, Samsung products were found to infringe two Apple patents, one related to multitouch technology and another on headphone-jack sensors.
In allowing the exclusion order to go forward, US Trade Representative Michael Froman noted that Samsung's newer-model phones had worked around the patents at issue, meaning that the effect of an import ban will be sharply limited.
"The order expressly states that these devices and any other Samsung electronic media devices incorporating the approved design-around technologies are not covered," Froman said in a statement provided toBloomberg News. "Thus, I do not believe that concerns with regard to enforcement related to the scope of the order, in this case, provide a policy basis for disapproving it."
There are big differences between the two dueling ITC cases—in particular, Samsung was attacking Apple with standard-essential patents, whereas Apple was using patents on specific non-standard-based features. Despite that, the fact that the Obama administration was willing to intervene in the Apple-Samsung battles in favor of the US company may smack of favoritism to some.
The exclusion order shows that two of the older Samsung phones affected in this case are the Transform SPH-M920 and the Continuum SCH-1400. The Galaxy S II and Galaxy Tab 7.0 were also in the case but were found not to infringe the headphone patent. The effect on Samsung's bottom line of excluding those two phones will be de minimis. But Apple has proven it can and will go to great lengths to force its competitors to eliminate popular features from their phones.
Even though only a few phones were affected, Samsung argued vociferously against an import ban. It saidthat ITC exclusions are overly broad and threaten legitimate trade.
Despite the earlier information available about the Transform and Continuum, it isn't clear from the information available this morning exactly what Samsung phones will be banned and which ones have acceptable design-arounds. The ITC website is closed down due to the US government shutdown, and no documents or case information can be retrieved from it. The US Trade Representative's website is operating but has not been updated since October 1.
The earliest tablets on offer from US carriers were sold without subsidies and with high plan costs. Sprint seems set to correct that mistake—somewhat. In an announcement yesterday, Sprint said that it wouldoffer Samsung's Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 with LTE for just $49.99 to new and eligible subscribers, along with a two-year contract. The addition of the tablet will cost just $5 per month on top of a subscriber's monthly plan fees, and the device will be supported by Sprint's One Up annual upgrade program. The Tab 3 will be available in white on October 11, with a "Midnight Black" option to follow in time for the holidays.
For those who need a refresher, the7" slateruns Samsung's flavor of Android 4.2 on Qualcomm silicon (a 1.6GHz Snapdragon 400) and pushes a 7" 1024×600 display. Not exactly top-shelf stuff. The Wi-Fi version is available for $199 from most major e-tailers, and AT&T earlier this year announced its plan to offer its own LTE variant.
Performance on the Tab 3 may not be groundbreaking, but if you've been looking to add some mobility to your tablet computing, it may be a solution for you.
They'll bend our concept of smartphone design a little—but not much more than that. by Jason Inofuentes
In a press release, LGannouncedthat its flexible AMOLED panels were entering mass production. The move comes asrumors mountabout Samsung soon releasing a Galaxy Note 3 variant with its own curved display, said to be called the Galaxy Round. In consumer electronics, new tech demos are often far more interesting than the products that will come from them—if they ever grow up to become real products at all. We've been covering flexible displays for averylongtime. In that span, the technology has matured from theory to prototypes, and it may soon be in products you and I can afford (unlikethis). So should we expect Samsung and LG's new bendy-curvy panels to usher in an era of radical phones we can fold into our pockets or roll up like a magazine?
Traditional AMOLED displays are made by applying a chemical substrate to a thin piece of glass and then layering the electronic components that control the display atop that. Flexible displays use a thin, bendable plastic instead of that glass, but they are awfully similar otherwise.
The plastic gives the screen some bendiness, but the electronic bits become the limiting factor in flexibility. Those bits are able to tolerate some deformation—within reason. If you saw "flexible displays" and had visions of folding up a phone like a high-tech square to stuff it in your breast pocket, this isn't the display innovation you've been looking for. At a radius of curvature of 400 mm, the Samsung display has a reported maximum deflection of just 18 degrees, or 5 mm. LG's own panel has an even more modest radius of curvature of 700 mm.
This means we'll be seeing very little other than wide, gentle curves, with a deflection not exceeding 18 degrees. That's far from right angles and even farther from smartphone pocket squares. LG's release also foreshadowed what is sure to be a major upcoming marketing point by describing its panel as "unbreakable." Be they curved or sloped or straight, without any glass to shatter, the flexible display phones ought to suffer fewer costly repairs if—OK, let's be honest,when—dropped. The displays may even end up much lighter and thinner than their glass-encumbered counterparts, so there should be more room for the battery.
LG and Samsung both have accomplished a lot so far, and phones are only one area where the technology has a lot of potential (think cars, wearables, and helmets). But instead of expecting a radical, bendable departure in phone design, take note instead of what Samsung previewed at a small press event at CES 2013. That prototype device, as reported byThe Verge, featured a flexible 5-inch display, one of whose long edges spilled over the side of the handset. The result was a standard smartphone experience with the exception that when the phone was turned off, that edge portion became a hub for glanceable information. It's a simple curve that begets added functionality.
It's not a revolution, but it's definitely a start.
It’s not clear yet whether customers want the smartwatch that Samsung has built. But there’s no doubt that Americans have long been fascinated with wrist-worn tech.
Samsung plays this up in one of its initialGalaxy Gearads, which traces the obsession through its TV roots. Indeed, the notion of wrist-based communications has played roles on everything from “Star Trek” and “The Jetsons” to “Dick Tracy” and “Inspector Gadget.”
Of course, how the Galaxy Gear lines up with science fiction and TV fantasy is another question. The device is a smartphone companion that, for now, is limited to working in conjunction with the Galaxy Note III. It displays texts and emails and can even mirror the phablet’s screen, but it is clearly being marketed as a phone accessory rather than something that the modern-day Dick Tracy can use for all his technology needs.
Samsung claims it boosts other apps, too, but the source code suggests otherwise. by Ron Amadeo
Samsung has responded to our report presenting evidence that it artificially inflates benchmark scores. Today, the electronics giant contacted CNET UK to deny specifically boosting benchmark scores, saying:
The Galaxy Note 3 maximises its CPU/GPU frequencies when running features that demand substantial performance. This was not an attempt to exaggerate particular benchmarking results. We remain committed to providing our customers with the best possible user experience.
We contacted Samsung for comment both before and after we published our findings, but the company never responded to us except to acknowledge via its PR group that it had received our questions. We would have liked to see the company address the specific evidence we provided, namely that its CPU throttling code contains a hardcoded list of popular benchmark apps. Samsung claims that it boosts other apps as well, but the list of apps in the throttling code we presented is exclusively benchmarks. Our report focused on Geekbench, a benchmark used in our reviews, and found that editing the APK and renaming the package name revealed that the optimizations boosted the score by 20 percent.
After our findings were published, Anandtech wrote its own pieceon the subject, saying the majority of manufacturers optimize for at least one benchmark. Anandtech's table shows that Samsung is the biggest offender, with the Note 3 being the first device to optimize for nearly every benchmark. Samsung's response here mirrorsits earlier responseto the Galaxy S 4 benchmarking controversy, where it also stated that other apps were boosted. This time, though, we have Samsung's actual code, and the list of boosted apps doesn't contain anythingbutbenchmarks.
Samsung appears to be artificially boosting the Note 3's performance in so-called benchmark tests, blog Ars Technica reports
Apple executive Phil Schiller took a jab at Samsung on Twitter Tuesday, highlighting what he called "shenanigans" by the company's arch rival in the booming smartphone market.
Samsung appears to be artificially boosting the Note 3's performance in so-called benchmark tests with a special, high-power mode for its central processing unit that kicks in when the device runs a lot of popular benchmarking apps, the blog reported.
Samsung has done this before outside the U.S., but Ars Technica said this was the first time it spotted the activity with a device for the U.S. market.
"Samsung does it again: rigs its Note phone to cheat when running benchmark apps. Deceptive and shameful,"New York Timesgadget reviewer David Pogue wrote on Twitter.
We noticed an odd thing whiletesting the Samsung Galaxy Note 3: it scores really,reallywell in benchmark tests—puzzlingly well, in fact. A quick comparison of its scores to the similarly-specced LG G2 makes it clear something fishy is going on, because Samsung's 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800 blows the doors off LG's 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800. What makes one Snapdragon so different from the other?
After a good bit of sleuthing, we can confidently say Samsung appears to be artificially boosting the US Note 3's benchmark scores with a special, high power CPU mode that kicks in when the device runs a large number of popular benchmarking apps. Samsung had donesomething similarwith the international Galaxy S 4's GPU, but this is the first time we've seen it hit US soil. We also found a way to disable the special CPU mode, so for the first time we can see just how much Samsung's benchmark optimizations are affecting the scores.
Left: The Note 3 idling normally, with 3 cores off, and one in a low-power mode. Right: The Note 3 in a benchmarking app, unable to idle.
Geekbench 3 running on the Nexus 4, which idles normally—only one core is active, and it's running at the lowest possible clock speed.
The smoking gun for all this was the CPU idle speeds, which can be viewed with a system monitor app while using the phone. The above picture shows how differently the CPU treats a benchmarking app from a normal app. Normally, while the Note 3 is idling, three of the four cores shut off to conserve power and the remaining core drops down to a low-power 300MHz mode. However, if you load up just about any popular CPU benchmarking app, the Note 3 CPU locks into 2.3GHz mode, the fastest speed possible, and none of the cores ever shut off. While stopping the CPU from idling shouldn't in and of itself effect the benchmark scores a whole lot, it was our first sign that something was wrong. Benchmarks exist to measure the performance of a phone during normal usage, and a device should never treat a benchmark app differently than a normal app.
While it's difficult to determine every bit of special programming that affects the CPU while a benchmark is running, one sure-fire way to see what was going on would be to trick the phone into not entering "benchmark mode" during a benchmark. If we could defeat the special benchmark behavior, we could have before and after benchmark numbers and see just how deep the rabbit hole goes. A bit of testing showed that the device's boosted benchmark mode when is triggered by the package names of the most popular benchmarking apps—loading Geekbench, for example, kicks it off. So, we slapped together "Stealthbench," a renamed version of Geekbench 3. By disassembling a benchmarking app, changing only the package name, and reassembling it, we could run a benchmark app without the CPUknowingwe are running a benchmark app. It would treat our benchmark like any other app, and give a true representation of the phone's performance relative to other devices.
Left: Geekbench, which triggers the benchmark booster. Right: A renamed version of Geekbench, which defeats the booster.
Above is a picture of Geekbench and Stealthbench, which is identical to Geekbench in every way, except for a different package name. In Geekbench, System Monitor shows the CPU is locked into 2.3 GHz mode, and all cores are active, but in Stealthbench, the CPU is allowed to idle, shut off cores, and switch power modes, the same way it does in any other app. We've disabled the special benchmark mode.
"Geekbench" is a popular benchmarking app, so the Note is programmed to give it special treatment. It has never heard of "Stealthbench" though, so despite being the exact same app, it does not get the special benchmark boost. The Note will runthisbenchmark like 99.99999% of the other apps on the device. The next step then, is to run the two benchmarks, and compare the CPU's benchmark mode with non-benchmark mode.
The difference is remarkable. In Geekbench's multicore test, the Note 3's benchmark mode gives it a 20% boost over its "natural" score. With the benchmark boosting logic stripped away, the Note 3 drops down to LG G2 levels, which is where we initially expected the score to be given the identical SoCs. This big of a boost means it's clearly not just messing with the CPU idle levels; significantly moreoomphis unlocked when the device is running a benchmark.
The next step is to figure out just which apps are affected by this. In Samsung's official statement about the international Galaxy S 4's GPU "benchmark booster" they said that the GPU frequency boost happened in a number of other apps, "such as the S Browser, Gallery, Camera, [and] Video Player." Their previously-given reasons for the speed variations seemed at least somewhat defensible, since it could help preserve battery life and generate less heat. If battery life preservation and heat reduction were the reasons behind what's going on here, then the "boosting" might be similarly defensible.
But thatdoesn'tappear to be the reason behind the Note's boosting at all. We found the file that triggers the boost behavior, and after a lotof extracting, disassembly, and file conversion, we have human-readable Java code for it:
The file we ended up with is called "DVFSHelper.java," and contains a hard-coded list of every package that is effected by the special CPU boosting mode. According to this file, the function is usedexclusively for benchmarks, and seems to hit all the popular ones. There's Geekbench, Quadrant, Antutu, Linpack, GFXBench, and even some of Samsung's own benchmarks. The two functions applied to this list seem to be "PACKAGES_FOR_BOOST_ALL_ADJUSTMENT" which is no doubt the CPU booster, and "PACKAGES_FOR_LCD_FRAME_RATE_ADJUSTMENT" which makes it sound like they are also changing the display frame rate.
The inclusion of GFXBench is surprising, given that it shows no unusual idling behavior in System Monitor. Between the inclusion of that and the suspicious "frame rate adjustment" string, it's clear they are doing something to the GPU as well, though those clock speeds are more difficult to access than the CPU speeds (a method used by AnandTech on the international S 4 no longer works on the Note 3).
The "DVFS" in "DVFSHelper" stands for "Dynamic frequency scaling," also known as CPU throttling, which has many legitimate uses to manage both heat and power draw. This file contains a few special settings for the camera, Gallery, and some other packed-in apps, but nothing like what is in the above section. Benchmarking apps are the only type of app that is systematically called out and boosted.
To see how some other benchmarks are affected, we made "stealth" versions of those, too — the exact same app, just with a different package name. These results back up the Geekbench findings: we're seeing artificial benchmark increases across the board of about 20%; Linpack showed a boosted variance of about50%.
The ironic thing is, even with the benchmark booster disabled, the Note 3 still comes out faster than the G2 in this test. If the intent behind the boosting was simply to ensure that the Note 3 came out ahead in the benchmark race, it doesn't appear to even have been necessary in the first place. While benchmarks are often a good way to get an idea of a phone or tablet's general performance, they only work if they're treated the same as any other app. Now that this artificial boosting has shown up in multiple Android devices, we'll be keeping a much closer eye on how phones and tablets behave while running these benchmarks in the future. We're also seeing some evidence that Samsung's new Galaxy Note 10 tablet is exhibiting the same behavior—we'll be posting that review later today.
