Samsung and Oppo Seek to Rival iPhone A-Series Chips With Custom Designs and TSMC Fabrication

[kc9hzn]

Where does it say Samsung is partnering with Oppo?

I didn’t read the linked article, but browsing the comments got me to take another look at the MacRumors article, and it looked like it was supposed to be some sort of partnership. If it’s not a partnership between Samsung and Oppo, then Oppo is even more out of its league. Where is it planning on getting any chip design expertise from, let alone sufficient to challenge Apple’s performance?

 

[EugW]

I didn’t read the linked article, but browsing the comments got me to take another look at the MacRumors article, and it looked like it was supposed to be some sort of partnership. If it’s not a partnership between Samsung and Oppo, then Oppo is even more out of its league. Where is it planning on getting any chip design expertise from, let alone sufficient to challenge Apple’s performance?

Oppo will likely get design help from within China. Plus, it's not as if they're like K-Mart or something. They're a big electronics and telecommunications company with real world clout, lots of money, and design expertise.

Furthermore, they don't actually need to challenge Apple for performance, despite what press and PR and some geek forums might claim. They need something that's decent and cheap to be successful.

Remember, these companies' bread and butter isn't the bleeding edge. They operate on volume, with much of that volume at the mid and lower ranges.

 

[mngdew]

They do. Except Apple doesn't mock their competitors publicly for doing something, and then shamelessly copy it weeks/months later.

Also, is Samsung really entering a partnership with Oppo? Isn’t that basically suicide for Samsung? For years, they’ve been fending off attacks from Xiaomi, Oppo, and Huahwei (or however you spell it) for the low end and increasingly the high end high margin markets. Basically, Samsung is saying that they can’t compete with Apple on the high end but can’t compete with Oppo and the like on price at their high end. I think this partnership isn’t going to help Samsung much, unless maybe they’re looking for cover to get out of the consumer smartphone business entirely and become just a supplier.

If you can't beat them, join them.

 

[ackmondual]

I switched to Android in late-2017 after 10 years of iOS. Thought it was just a temporary experiment to change it up. Turns out, it’s pretty great, I have yet to go back and have little desire to do so. Have had about 4 Android phones since then to try out all varieties and these weren’t low-end devices. I test drove an 13 Pro last September for a month and it was… fine. Then I promptly returned when the time came and ordered a Pixel 6 Pro a couple weeks later.

“Awful experience” is purely subjective but my experience is that the rhetoric your trying to push is completely false in most cases. I will not tolerate using junk or compromise my personal technological experiences.

Privacy is a personal decision that I just won’t get into, I’ll just say this: I’ll gladly give some up for a phone as smart and convenient as the one I have now. Maybe one day if Apple ever does something to spice up their utterly stagnant OS, I may give it a shot again. Until then, I’m good.

+1 in this regard for Android over iOS. My first Android phone was over a decade back. I was going to get an iPhone, but with an iPod Touch 3, I'd figured it'd be "more of the same thing", but with vibration. Tried out the Samsung Galaxy s2 and was a fan. Since then, I've also tried another Samsung phone, an LG, and now have the Pixel 4A. Android is such a nice experience that I don't want to give it up. Akin to how iOS users are aware they're entering a walled garden, Android users deal with the cons on their end.

That said, when I was in the market for a new tablet, I could've gotten an Android one. However, a new, 9th gen iPad for $300 was nice. No regrets getting that! (nice to try iOS, again)

 

[ackmondual]

To their credit they said “not rushed for pure profit”.

Heh.. even this is debatable

 

[kc9hzn]

Oppo will likely get design help from within China. Plus, it's not as if they're like K-Mart or something. They're a big electronics and telecommunications company with real world clout, lots of money, and design expertise.

Furthermore, they don't actually need to challenge Apple for performance, despite what press and PR and some geek forums might claim. They need something that's decent and cheap to be successful.

Remember, these companies' bread and butter isn't the bleeding edge. They operate on volume, with much of that volume at the mid and lower ranges.

Yes, but they need Snapdragon (or better than Snapdragon) performance at MediaTek prices, which might not be possible, especially if they’re aiming for volume. Too expensive, and it’ll hurt their ability to put out phones in large volume (by cutting into already fairly thin profit margins). Too weak, and they might as well be using off the shelf processors.

And stock Android is a lot like x86 Windows, vs iOS, which is more like an Intel Mac. Keeping close to stock Android makes it difficult to optimize for your custom processor. X86 Windows generally is expected to run reasonably well on any x86 chip, from Intel (including Atom), AMD, but even Via (and several others formerly), while Apple was able to optimize macOS performance for specific Intel microarchitectures. Likewise, Android is generally expected to work well across most, if not all, ARM microarchitectures, while iOS is able to influence Apple Silicon design, and iOS can be tweaked specifically to run the best it can on Apple Silicon. You could probably do that with a custom Android fork, but it would be nearly impossible to get into stock Android. (What happens if your patch for optimized performance on your custom SoC causes slower performance on other ARM SoCs?)

Besides, Android is a little like one of the truck chassis you can purchase from Ford. The chassis can be used to make a van, a full sized bus, or any number of vehicle types, it’s a flexible platform for building multiple large commercial vehicle types on. While iOS is more like a finely tuned supercar (or maybe more like a performant luxury car series, like BMW’s 5 series), since it doesn’t need (as much*) to be a generalized basis for other vehicles, while Android (and Linux itself, for that matter) is a framework for building different types of OSes on a multitude of hardware types (not even limited to ARM).

* Sure, Apple has some bare minimum of what is iOS that it can use as firmware in devices running A series chips (such as the new Studio Display) or as the basis for new OSes (such as tvOS or watchOS, both of which have a bare minimum version suitable for use in other devices, such as how the HomePod software is built on tvOS and the TouchBar was built on watchOS). But that bare minimum likely just consists of a customized version of Darwin that targets specific environments (macOS Darwin - full powered environments, iOS Darwin - general purpose environments, tvOS Darwin - minor resource constraints and older A series chips, watchOS Darwin - major resource constraints and very low power drain environments) and some basic userland that’s suitable for whatever custom UI the device needs (Obj-C/Swift, minimalist versions of Quartz**, Cocoa, etc.). And these bare minimums are still able to be optimized for specific pieces of Apple Silicon hardware.

** Devices without a screen may even be able to forego Quartz. It would be interesting to see how the internal architecture of the HomePod works.