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Google Begins Android 4.4.3 Rollout
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Google Begins Android 4.4.3 Rollout

After initially posting factory images yesterday, Google has begun it’s OTA rollout of its latest iteration of Android 4.4 KitKat. Android 4.4 launched in October last year alongside Google’s newest smartphone, the Nexus 5. On the design front, Android 4.4 brought many refinements to the user interface by introducing the ability to enable translucency in areas such as the status bar and navigation buttons. In addition, the legacy blue parts of the interface like the status bar icons were replaced with more unified white elements. It also featured the new Google Experience Launcher which features much deeper Google Now integration with the ability to trigger voice search by saying “OK Google” on your homescreen.

Under the hood, Google brought about optimizations like ZRAM support which allows data for idle background applications to be stored in a compressed RAM partition to free up RAM for applications in use. A low-RAM API with more aggressive memory management to improve performance on devices with as little as 512MB of RAM was included as well. Google also introduced their new experimental Java runtime which they call ART. ART hopes to improve application performance over Android’s current Dalvik runtime, which uses just-in-time compilation, by using ahead-of-time compilation to compile Java bytecode into machine code at the time of install.

Shortly afterward, Google released version 4.4.1 and 4.4.2 which included substantial improvements to the Nexus 5 camera performance by focusing faster and having the camera software prefer faster shutter speeds. The algorithms for calculating white balance and color balance were also tweaked to address complaints about inaccurate color in captured images. Compatibility between the ART runtime and third party applications was also improved, along with many other bug fixes and security improvements.

Android 4.4.3 is mainly an update to fix outstanding bugs with Android Kitkat but there are a couple of tweaks to the user interface that come along with it as well.

One of the long awaited fixes of this release is for excessive battery drain that could occur when an application used a device’s camera as a result of a process called ‘mm-qcamera-daemon’ which controls the camera on Qualcomm-powered devices. After an app using the camera was closed the process would continue to run in the background and cause abnormally high CPU usage which resulted in increased battery drain and higher device temperatures than normal.

In terms of updates to the UI, Android 4.4.3 brings a new dialer application and changes to the people app. The new dialer features white keys with a different shade of blue that fits better with the overall design of KitKat itself. The black and turquoise of the dialer has seemed like a design outlier compared to Google’s new applications for quite some time now and it’s good to see Google continuing to unify the design of the Android OS. The new people application is mainly the same as its predecessor but it replaces the older grey contact photo icons for contacts you have not assigned a picture to with new colorful ones.

The update is currently known to be rolling out to Google’s 2013 Nexus 7 with LTE, and it should reach other Nexus devices that support Android KitKat which includes the Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Nexus 7 (2012/2013 WiFi), and Nexus 10 shortly. Google Experience devices should receive their updates to Android 4.4.3 in the near future. Google is yet to post a summary changelog for the update and all the various bug and security fixes it includes but when it becomes available it will be added here. As always, Google’s update rollouts are done in stages and it may take some time for your device to receive it.

Source: Google Nexus 7 OTA via Android Police

HTC Hits a Lower Price with the One (E8)
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HTC Hits a Lower Price with the One (E8)

Today, HTC announced the HTC One (E8), a phone that is effectively aimed at providing the One (M8) spec at a lower price point. While the phone doesn’t keep everything, all the key features are still present. The major changes are effectively a move from the Duocam 4MP+2MP camera module to a single 13MP module. Based upon the F/2.2 aperture of this module, it’s likely that this is the same module found in the One mini 2 with OmniVision’s OV13850 sensor. In addition, the materials are changed, with a new plastic unibody design. This is one of the more logical areas to cut costs, as while metal is good from an MD/ID perspective, the cost can easily be an order of magnitude greater than plastic designs.

HTC has also taken the right direction by making two colors with matte finish plastic (Maldives Blue and Misty Gray in the photo above), which can go a long way to improving in-hand feel of the phone. Realistically, matte finishes tend to look better in the long run as well, as glossy finishes have more obvious scratches and tend not to show oil streaks and similar patterns from use. Unfortunately, the one area where HTC cut too deep was the loss of 802.11ac WiFi capabilities, which means that this shares a WiFi module with the One mini 2. This is likely to be a Qualcomm WCN3660 part. I’ve put a table of the specs below to compare the E8 with the M8.

  HTC One (E8) HTC One (M8)
SoC MSM8974ABv3 2.3 GHz Snapdragon 801 MSM8974ABv3 2.3 GHz Snapdragon 801
RAM/NAND 2GB LPDDR3, 16GB NAND + microSD 2GB LPDDR3, 16/32GB NAND + microSD
Display 5” 1080p LCD 5” 1080p LCD
Network 2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Qualcomm MDM9x25 UE Category 4 LTE) 2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Qualcomm MDM9x25 UE Category 4 LTE)
Dimensions 146.42 x 70.67 x 9.85mm max, 145 grams 146.36 x 70.6 x 9.35mm max, 160 grams
Camera 13MP rear camera, 1.12 µm pixels, 1/3.06″ CMOS size, OV13850, F/2.2. 5MP f/2.8 FFC 4.0 MP (2688 × 1520) Rear Facing with 2.0 µm pixels, 1/3″ CMOS size, F/2.0, 28mm (35mm effective) and rear depth camera, 5MP f/2.0 FFC
Battery 2600 mAh (9.88 Whr) 2600 mAh (9.88 Whr)
OS Android 4.4.2 with Sense 6 Android 4.4.2 with Sense 6
Connectivity 802.11a/b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, MHL, DLNA, NFC 802.11a/b/g/n/ac + BT 4.0, USB2.0, GPS/GNSS, MHL, DLNA, NFC
SIM Size NanoSIM NanoSIM

There are some other changes, such as moving the power button to the top-center position rather than top-left or top-right, which is probably the best compromise for ergonomics. The phone also ends up lighter than the One (M8) by 15 grams, which is mostly due to the weight of an aluminum unibody. The headphone jack and USB port remain on the bottom, and the volume rocker is still on the right side of the phone. The same sensor hub and pedometer remains, which means motion launch gestures will be available along with FitBit integration. The barometer also stays for weather information and faster time to lock for GPS. HTC is emphasizing that this phone retains the hardware that makes up the One (M8) while moving it to a lower, more competitive price point for those that don’t care for the metal unibody. This may prove to be an effective strategy, as it would offer a great value for the money in places where the One (M8) is priced around the same as the Galaxy S5 and other high end flagships, and bring price parity to areas where the One (M8) is priced above most flagships.

HTC has stated that China will be the launch market for this phone, but to expect worldwide availability for this phone at a later date. Pricing is around $447 USD / £267 / €329 based upon the price in China but may vary based on other markets.

Intel Launches Devil’s Canyon and Overclockable Pentium: i7-4790K, i5-4690K and G3258
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Intel Launches Devil’s Canyon and Overclockable Pentium: i7-4790K, i5-4690K and G3258

After what seems like a eon or two since the original announcement, Intel’s Renée James is formally launching the new Devil’s Canyon and Anniversary Edition Pentium processors. In response to enthusiast feedback, and the recent release of the Z97 chipset motherboards, these new processors are designed to improve the overclocking experience for enthusiasts until the next platform enters production.

In the same way as certain other electronic market segments, where the announcement and launch occurs a few weeks before launch, today is actually a paper launch as part of the Computex experience. Review samples for sites like ours should be arriving sometime this week when we can test and dissect the new parts, with a full retailer release later in the month. At present the date is still uncertain: we were hoping to get samples before Computex in order to present results today, but delays have pushed testing and release later down the line. This is in part due to the restricted timescale for these new processors, whereby VP Lisa Graff in a recent press call stated that the Intel engineers had fewer than six months from idea-to-launch.

Devil’s Canyon, the codename for the upgraded Haswell overclocking ‘K’ series SKUs, launches as two parts: an i7 and an i5.

Both models are quad core parts, with the i7 featuring hyperthreading for a total of eight threads. The TDP has a small bump from 84W to 88W, while the official memory support stays at two channels of DDR3-1600. The i7-4790K represents Intel’s first ever consumer processor with a base frequency of 4 GHz (we have CPUs that turbo this high), but the turbo mode for this processor is actually 4-4-3-2, meaning that at single core loads the user will see 4.4 GHz and at full-core loads it will be 4.2 GHz. The i5 is more of a Haswell Refresh-like bump up from its predecessor, with the base frequency and turbo frequencies being moved up a notch.

Compatibility for these processors will be on all Z97 motherboards, and it should extend to Z87 if and only if the motherboard manufacturer has engineered the motherboard to cope with the increased power consumption and also release a relevant BIOS update. I would expect that all the major motherboard manufacturers should announce a full range of 9-series support and a most-of-the-range 8-series support, starting with the most popular products in the 8-series range first (as it all comes down to validation and rewriting BIOS code).

Aside from the base frequency increases, enthusiasts will want to know if the rumor regarding an upgraded package on the CPU is true. I can confirm that Intel has officially made the following changes:

The first upgrade is a new thermal interface material (TIM), which Intel is stating as a ‘next-generation polymer’. This would inevitably imply that the base material is silicone monomer, unless Intel has decided to do something fancy with a carbon-polymer based suspension. With this in mind, users looking to delid their CPUs might see a material the same color as the normal Haswell CPUs, but Intel is stating that this is a new material. One could estimate that another 5-15C shift might occur, allowing those CPUs that were temperature limited to get another 100-200 MHz than they would under the old system. However the issue regarding the height of the heatspreader above the die due to the binding agent has not been mentioned, which would lead me to suggest that it might not have been changed. Until we get a sample in house to test we will not know for sure, but I could perhaps hope that the amount of TIM under the heatspreader has also increased in order to facilitate heat transfer.

For the extreme overclockers using sub-zero cooling, Intel has reworked part of the power delivery around the FIVR to give a cleaner power delivery. Note that none of these changes suggest that any specific change to the underlying silicon die was made, however Intel will be examining the sales of these processors to determine their popularity and whether it is a feature to consider on future platform evolutions.

Also launched today is the new Pentium Processor Anniversary Edition, a fully unlocked 3.2 GHz dual core Pentium and 3MB of L3 cache.

I personally think Intel has missed a trick in not calling this new processor with a ‘K’ moniker, but the 8 on the end should point the CPU out against the myriad of other model names. At $72 for the bulk OEM pricing, this should allow the competitive overclockers to go almost crazy binning (testing to find the best ones) for competitions. The interesting point about the table above is the memory support, set at DDR3-1333. This means that Intel has used a lower bar of entry for the integrated memory controllers on the dies they produce, which might not end well for high memory clocking.

One point of contention for any user that has sought after a high overclocking Haswell CPU in the past is the silicon lottery, whereby CPUs are like chocolate chip cookies. Some cookies have many chips, others have fewer, but the ones made of pure chocolate are the best. Similar analogy to overclocking – some CPUs will hit higher frequencies at lower voltages than others. Haswell processors had a very large swing, with some of the lower performing CPUs (from 3.9 GHz Turbo) only managing 4.2 GHz on air/water cooling compared to the average (4.4-4.5 GHz) and the few awesome ones (5.0 GHz at 1.3 V). Many users tested a half-dozen or a dozen to get the best one of the bunch, and I fear that unless there has been a change at the silicon level, we may see the same with the Devil’s Canyon and Anniversary Pentium models.

CPU-Z screenshots of all three models have been released, confirming many of the details:

As I mentioned, the exact retail release date, as I am writing, is unknown. The embargo for this data is being released at the same time as the Intel Keynote at Computex which is where the official announcing of the new products is happening. Have a read of our live blog on the main page on the keynote to see if an exact date has been chosen!  This post will be updated if we get this information.

When we return from Computex we will begin testing the new CPUs, with a plan to show some delidding and see how the new Devil’s Canyon and new Pentium compares to the regular Haswell CPUs both at stock and overclocked. Let me know in the comments if there is anything specific you would like to see in the review.

AnandTech Participates in Roundtable Discussion with Intel and Supermicro about P3700 and NVMe
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AnandTech Participates in Roundtable Discussion with Intel and Supermicro about P3700 and NVMe

Earlier this evening, Intel announced a new family of NVMe based PCIe SSDs, including the P3700. I reviewed a 1.6TB version of the P3700 here. A few weeks ago I was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion with Intel and Supermicro about the P3700 and NVMe in general. Intel posted the video which I’ve embedded below:

The video is a bit higher level than what you’ll find in our review, but it’s short and we hit on a lot of the key points about the drive and NVMe in general. Check it out if you’re interested in the future of SSDs and what NVMe has to offer.

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Intel SSD DC P3700 Review: The PCIe SSD Transition Begins with NVMe

In 2008 Intel introduced its first SSD, the X25-M, and with it Intel ushered in a new era of primary storage based on non-volatile memory. Intel may have been there at the beginning, but it missed out on most of the evolution that followed. It wasn’t until late 2012, four years later, that Intel showed up with another major controller innovation. The Intel SSD DC S3700 added a focus on IO consistency, which had a remarkable impact on both enterprise and consumer workloads. Once again Intel found itself at the forefront of innovation in the SSD space, only to let others catch up in the coming years. Now, roughly two years later, Intel is back again with another significant evolution of its solid state storage architecture.