[jotm]

If the Note 9 is any indication, it's not the hardware, it's the bloody software - Samsung is seemingly terrible at it!

The North American Note 9 used a Snapdragon 845 SoC while the European version used Samsung's own Exynos 9810. The Exynos consistently benched lower, had worse battery life and ran hotter. The upside was that the Exynos version has an unlocked bootloader, which is huge imo.

With a custom kernel made by hobbyists in their spare time, you can have the 9810 on par with the SD845 or even better. It has great undervolting and overclocking potential on both the CPU and GPU. The difference between the stock Samsung kernel and Zeus for example, is mind boggling.

Sadly, flashing a custom ROM on it involves tripping an eFuse and losing some Samsung functionality, but if you don't care about Samsung Pay and whatever other "secure" garbage they offer, it's worth it.

[mschuster91]

> Sadly, flashing a custom ROM on it involves tripping an eFuse and losing some Samsung functionality, but if you don't care about Samsung Pay and whatever other "secure" garbage they offer, it's worth it.

It's not just Samsung Pay you'll lose. Blow the eFuse and you'll play constant cat-and-mouse with Google Pay, Netflix and a shitload of banking apps.

It's really sad that we have to choose between rooting our devices (and giving us the same amount of control that we have on desktop PCs and laptops) or participating in digital life.

[soylentcola]

Yep. I can install software and manage my laptop and desktop computers. I can grant superuser/admin permission when needed. And yet somehow I'm able to pay my mortgage, transfer funds between checking and savings accounts, buy and sell stocks, and stream movies without the whole thing crashing and burning.

The idea that it's just unthinkable to have the ability to grant superuser rights on my stupid pocket computer is ridiculous. I can't help but think it's because it's another chance for said services to avoid the "mistake" that was (relatively) open computing and the choice it offers.

[jotm]

Oh, the other stuff is just because of root access. Tbh, the only inconvenience for me is banking apps, but fortunately no one canceled the browser + websites yet.

As for Netflix and others, I don't understand why they accept Widevine (the daft DRM on phones, unlocking Samsungs leads to 720p max resolution or something instead of 4K). It's not like it curbs piracy lol

[skavi]

Definitely not the software. Samsung consistently ships very well tuned flagships. Compare their performance and efficiency to other devices using the same SoC, and that much is clear.

Of course, we can only say this about their Qualcomm devices, since there aren’t other Exynos devices to compare against Samsung’s.

[Jweb_Guru]

Qualcomm makes all their own firmware, drivers, etc. and my impression is that it's considered to have much better software quality than Samsung's stuff. Take this with a grain of salt though since I'm hearing this second-hand.

[skavi]

Devices using the exact same Qualcomm SoC can have significantly different performance and efficiency [0]. Samsung devices tend to do very well, even though they are typically among the first to ship the chips.

In the article I've linked, you'll see the Samsung S10 gets the longest battery life of any device using the Snapdragon 855, while still placing at or near the top in the performance charts.

[0]: https://www.anandtech.com/show/14794/snapdragon-855-phone-ro...