Samsung Announces New Exynos 7870 Mid-Range 14nm SoC

Today Samsung announced a new mid-range SoC called the Exynos 7870. The new SKU sports 8x Cortex A53s running at up to 1.6GHz. The GPU should be an ARM Mali T830 although we have no information on core-count or frequencies used. The part extends Samsung’s ModAP lineup of SoCs with integrated modems as we see an integrated UE Category 6 modem integrated, delivering up to 300Mbps with FDD-TDD joint carrier aggregation.

More interestingly, is that the new SoC is manufactured on a 14nm FinFET process which promises to reduce power consumption by over 30% over similar SoCs such as the Exynos 7580. Only a few days ago we were discussing our surprise with the introduction of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 625 which is also manufactured in a 14nm LPP process, a great sign for the manufacturing process given that these mid-range parts are very price-sensitive. Samsung discloses that the Exynos 7870 will be in mass production in the first quarter of 2016 so we’re essentially very close to device availability in the following months.

MWC 2016: LG to Launch new ‘X Series’ Mid-Range Smartphones, each with a Singular Premium Feature

No sooner had I finished writing the news on the LG Stylus 2 announcement had another email landed in my inbox. On the back of the mid-range model with a stylus, LG is to launch a whole new series of smartphones called the ‘X’ series. These are essentially mid-range devices, but with one premium component more akin to a high-end device. In this instance, LG is initially going to offer an ‘X cam’ and ‘X screen’, each with obvious high-end upgrades.

The X cam (there’s no capital C in the name) will be using dual cameras on the rear to allow for better depth-of-field effects, color accuracy and image quality.  That being said, the second dual camera is only a 5MP implementation and I imagine we will find our more at the LG press conference at Mobile World Congress next week. Unfortunately LG doesn’t seem to want to share a photograph of the rear to show the camera as of yet. The front of the X cam will also feature ‘3D Bending Glass’, providing a curved finish on the front and designed to sit more comfortably in the hand. The X cam fits into the mid-range specifications in the other areas – a 5.2-inch 1080p screen, an octa-core 1.14 GHz SoC (presumably dual quad ARM Cortex A53s), a 2520 mAh battery and a 16GB/2GB storage plus memory combination.

 
X cam on left, X screen on right

The X screen brings a feature from LG’s high end V10 model down to the mid-range: instead of dual cameras this time we get dual screens. The main screen is a 4.93-inch 720×1280 screen, which is fairly common in smartphones of this segment, but this is enhanced through a 1.76-inch 520×80 secondary screen above it and off to the right. This screen is always-on, and runs almost separately to the main phone software allowing users to check status and adjust calls without disrupting the software on the main screen. The rest of the specifications run similar to the X cam, except the 1.2 GHz quad core SoC which looks similar to the Snapdragon 410 in the Stylus 2.

Again, similar to the Stylus 2, specifications may be adjusted depending on region, although Asia, Europe and Latin America will be the first markets. One thing to note is that both units do not advertise microSD slots as of yet, which may or may not just be a PR oversight which we are trying to confirm. We will most likely hear more information, pricing and release dates during LG’s press conference at Mobile World Congress next week. The concept of a mid-range product with a single high-end component is actually rather intriguing, and opens up the possibility of a high-end SoC in a device, or 128 GB of storage in a mid-range, or 5000 mAh as that key component.

Microsoft Launches The Business Focused Lumia 650

Today Microsoft launched their fourth phone in the x50 series, with the Lumia 650 being the latest Lumia to roll out of what used to be Nokia’s smartphone business. In July of 2015, Microsoft wrote down the majority of their acquisition of Nokia, laying off a large portion of the former Nokia employees. CEO Satya Nadella changed strategy on phones, and his new strategy has now been brought to fruition. Rather than the numerous handsets that Nokia was releasing to cover every single part of the market, Microsoft would step back on phone hardware, and focus on three areas instead. The first was the high end enthusiast phones, with are covered by the Lumia 950 and 950 XL announced last October. The low end is served by the $139 original asking price for the Lumia 550. That left just the third market that Nadella wanted to provide for, and that is the business market. Today’s Lumia 650 is being pushed as an affordable business phone. Let’s go over it and see how they did.

The first part is pretty easy. It is an affordable phone, with a suggested MSRP of just $199. It’s not the most affordable phone, but that’s not the goal here. The business phone is much more nuanced than price, and needs a bit more investigation.

What is going to make a phone successful in the business and enterprise markets is a lot bigger question than whether something is affordable. You need security, manageability, integration with company networks and applications, and more. Windows 10 put a lot of focus into endpoint security, with features like Data Loss Prevention, and integration with VPN functions as a start. Manageability would be handled through MDM solutions such as Microsoft System Center, or In-Tune, and Windows 10 has expanded the manageability of devices running this OS. Application integration can be handled through the Windows Store for Business and enterprises can leverage in-house developers with C# experience to write their own apps. I think on that note it can be successful, but if your company or enterprise leverages third-party mobile apps, it is certainly not a guarantee that there will be an app for Windows 10 Mobile.

But what I just described applies to any Windows 10 Mobile handset, and not specifically the Lumia 650. Biometric authentication is supported in Windows 10 Mobile, but not leveraged here. Continuum on Windows 10 Mobile allows you to use your phone as a PC by connecting it to a monitor and keyboard, but that functionality requires USB-C and a more powerful GPU than the Lumia 650 has, so it’s absent.

So despite being targeted towards business users, it lacks some of the most exciting functions for a business handset. So let’s stop looking at it as a business phone, and just look at it as a Windows 10 Mobile smartphone.

Windows 10 Mobile is of course the latest iteration of Microsoft’s phone operating system, but the new codebase is available for small tablets as well. It officially was released with the Lumia 950 and 950 XL’s launch in November, and many existing Windows Phone 8.1 handsets will be offered this as a no-charge update. It runs all of the apps from Windows Phone 8.1, as well as the new Universal Windows Platform apps designed for Windows 10, assuming the developer targets the app towards the phone screen size.

The Lumia 650 is a 5-inch smartphone with a 1280×720 resolution AMOLED display. Luckily, it does support Glance, which is a low power mode where the time and some other information is on the display even when the phone is off (this is all configurable) which is one of my favorite Windows Phone features. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 212, which is a quad-core Cortex A7 at 1.3 GHz. This should in theory be a small increase in performance over most of the previous Lumia phones powered by Snapdragon 400, since both used A7 cores but the 212 is clocked a bit faster. The A7 is the older 32-bit chip, but at the moment that’s not an issue anyway since Windows 10 Mobile is currently a 32-bit operating system. The GPU is Adreno 304 in the Snapdragon 212. The Lumia 650 comes with 1 GB of RAM, and 16 GB of storage, with microSD card expansion for up to another 200 GB. Windows 10 Mobile supports moving data to the SD card very easily, and you can set your default save location for apps, music, and more, to the internal or SD storage individually. The camera is an 8 MP sensor, but only 1/4” in size and it lacks the OIS of the higher end Lumia phones. The front camera is becoming more important, and the Lumia 650 has a 5 MP FFC with f/2.2 aperture and a wider field of view.

The Lumia 650 features a very thin and light design, coming in at just 6.9 mm in thickness and weighing in at only 122 grams. The removable back can be had in either black or white, and unlike the more expensive Lumia 950 and 950 XL, the 650 features a diamond cut anodized aluminum metal frame around the phone, which should give it a much better in-hand feel.

Despite the naming, the Lumia 650, to me, feels like a successor to the Lumia 830 with its metal frame and similar display size. The camera is likely not going to be quite as good, but my one big criticism of the Lumia 830 was the price, and the Lumia 650 comes in under half of what the 830 was sold for when it first launched. They certainly fixed that. I’m not sure where Windows 10 Mobile is headed, and maybe we’ll learn more at Microsoft’s Build developer conference at the end of March. The Lumia 650 will be available in the EU starting today and wider distribution later on.

Source: Microsoft