

Anand Chandrasekher
A spokesperson said the statements were "inaccurate"











Source: TechHive

Comments     Threshold


Incorrect Pricing
By esandrs on 10/9/2013 10:03:38 AM , Rating: 5

Please add "with contract subsidies" or some such text. The REAL price of the phone, unlocked, is $649/$749/$849.

Journalists need to stop hiding the true hardware costs -- then maybe we'll get more options in the US for non-subsidized plans that actually, you know, save consumers money. It will also at least slightly improve the chances of more informed consumers. [/dream]

RE: Incorrect Pricing
By Motoman on 10/9/2013 11:19:14 AM , Rating: 5
What we *actually* need is to get rid of all subsidized plans, period.

There should be *no* contracted cell phone services. The entirety of the industry (not just a part of it) should operate *exactly* like the landline industry.

1. Go to Kmart.
2. Buy whatever cell phone you want.
3. Contact whatever service provider you want and start service.

Cell phone subsidies in contracts do nothing but obfuscate the true cost of the phone...and then continue to rip off the consumer once the phone's subsidy is actually paid off. The *vast* majority of cell phone users really have little to no idea what they're paying for their phones.

If all phones had to be paid for in full at the time of purchase, people would be forced to understand what they're actually paying. Then service providers would have to actually *compete* - on price and quality of service - to attract and retain customers.

Oh, and for the seemingly limitless number of retards in the world who say something like "but I can't afford to buy the latest gayPhone at full price - I NEED THE SUBSIDY!" you don't. Use a credit card. Or, *gasp*, buy a phone you can actually afford.

RE: Incorrect Pricing


Nice dream anyhow.

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They don't always get it their way though.


RE: Incorrect Pricing
By Nortel on 10/9/13, Rating: 0
RE: Incorrect Pricing
By Reclaimer77 on 10/10/2013 12:46:13 AM , Rating: 3
What we *actually* need is to get rid of all subsidized plans, period. There should be *no* contracted cell phone services. The entirety of the industry (not just a part of it) should operate *exactly* like the landline industry.
1. Go to Kmart.
2. Buy whatever cell phone you want.
3. Contact whatever service provider you want and start service.

People can do this now for all intents and purposes.

Or they can just go to T-Mobile, which is now a complete non-contract provider with very competitive plans, 2 upgrades per year, etc etc.

Smartphones are still a pretty new technology. I'm fine with sitting back, voting with my wallet, and watching the free market decide.

RE: Incorrect Pricing
By Cargan Ricman on 10/11/2013 2:13:58 AM , Rating: 2
F T-Mobile, just go with Ting.

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RE: Incorrect Pricing
By dgingerich on 10/9/2013 1:44:57 PM , Rating: 2
T-mobile has already made the transition to non-subsidized phones, and Verizon has an option for it. Both are far, far better than the subsidized rate plans.

RE: Incorrect Pricing
By Motoman on 10/9/2013 3:10:31 PM , Rating: 2
Here's a big funny for you...

We had been on T-Mobile for quite some time, since they were the carrier with the best coverage in our area. We dumped them a while ago and went to Straight Talk though...where we could use the same phones, on the same network, with unlimited everything, with no contracts and for less money.

So out of curiosity I just went to the T-Mo website and looked at a phone...doesn't matter what phone, the point is to get to their little "calculator" thing where they show you how much money you can save.

It has a little thing you fill out, where you say who your carrier is ("Other" in my case), how many phones you have, what your data limit is, and what you're paying per-month. The idea being that then they'll show you how much cheaper it would be on T-Mo.

Except that in my case, when I enter the relevant info for Straight Talk (unlimited everything for $45 per month), this is what I get:

Okay, looks like you’re already getting a good deal. But does your current wireless carrier give you all this?

Unlimited talk, text and web on our nationwide network
No overage fees
No annual service contracts

Ummm...yes, yes, and yes. And literally on *your* nationwide network.

And then I giggled.

RE: Incorrect Pricing
By tate1293 on 10/9/2013 5:26:13 PM , Rating: 2
Well, there's still an advantage for straight up tmobile that makes straight talk a no go for me. Straight talk has recently confirmed that after 2.5gb they will throttle the speed down to 2G speeds, while my current Sprint account does not throttle and neither does tmobile as far as I know when you get their unlimited plan. Not needed for everyone, but as I use around 10-15gb a month usually, straight talk wouldn't work for me.

RE: Incorrect Pricing
By Motoman on 10/9/2013 9:53:09 PM , Rating: 2
I think you have to be pretty egregious for them to start paying attention to you. I've downloaded way over 2.5Gb in a given month, and have never seen any throttling on my account.

Oh...also, if you do get into a situation where T-Mo is throttling you, you can basically kiss it goodbye. We were buying their 10Gb plans, which were the biggest they'd sell you, and once you hit that cap you'd drop to like 20k speeds. Which is to say, half of dial-up.

RE: Incorrect Pricing
By sprockkets on 10/9/2013 11:26:34 PM , Rating: 2
You might think you are getting a great deal, except:

TMOb prepaid gets lower priority than post paid for bandwidth. I know this in my very area when at peak times my DL speeds slow to a crawl.

Also, TMob's own prepaid carrier go smart, is also around the same price as straight talk, but you have NO VOICE ROAMING. That can lower your coverage fairly much. I doubt straight talk is much different.

Lastly, you don't get any data roaming either with prepaid.

Also, the 2G speeds you get throttled to are 128kbps, not 20k. That's 2x dialup, or old ISDN speeds.

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RE: Incorrect Pricing
By Reclaimer77 on 10/10/2013 12:54:11 AM , Rating: 2
Cool story, that totally applies to most people. Comparing T-Mobile to Straight Talk, a prepaid bargain basement solution, is so not comparing apples to oranges.

And I'm totally not being sarcastic.

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Again, soooo not using sarcasm...

Apple has earned some respect for arch transitions








intel x64 = intel IA64 = intel Itanium

AMD x86-64 = AMD64
intel x86-64 = intel EM64t





I know, these abbreviations are confusing at times.







Flogging a dead horse
By AngelOfTheAbyss on 10/9/2013 9:45:42 AM , Rating: 5
ARMv8 is not an instruction set, it's an architecture.
According to ARM, "The ARMv8 architecture introduces 64-bit support to the ARM architecture with a focus on power-efficient implementation while maintaining compatibility with existing 32-bit software."
ARMv8 includes a number of improvements over ARMv7 that indeed improves performance, e.g. more registers.
What Apple has done is simply preparing for the future, while at the same time having improved performance of existing 32bit code.
It's called being ahead of the curve.
Samsung and Qualcomm will soon follow suit.

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RE: Flogging a dead horse
By Monkey's Uncle on 10/9/2013 11:16:12 AM , Rating: 2
ARM is an architecture that includes both 32 and 64-bit instruction sets.

It is the blueprint that allows multiple processor vendors (i.e. Qualcomm, nVidia, Motorola) to create processor cores that can execute the same applications without requiring system-specific binaries.

Here is a white paper from ARM themselves (the best source) on the topic of ARMv8.

Think of ARMv8 as a hardware version of the .NET or java virtual machine. In the case of Java, it is a strict specification. There are 2 companies I know of that implement that specification - Oracle and IBM. Both are designed to run the same binaries (bytecode) without recompiling, because they are both designed to operate the same way. They only do it using slightly different underlying internal implementations.

In ARM, Instead of being a system-specific software-based runtime interpreter, hardware chip makers implement the ARM virtual machine specification in silicon - registers, instructions and all.

RE: Flogging a dead horse
By dgingerich on 10/9/2013 1:38:13 PM , Rating: 2
Also included in that architecture are certain mandated specs for processors, including the number of registers of each type it must have and how it behaves with external devices, such as modem chips. It can't be called ARMv8 compatible without meeting those, no matter if the instruction set is followed.

So, it is far more than just an instruction set.

RE: Flogging a dead horse



A7 is their chip that is 64bit capable running ARMV8 ISA.



By laweijfmvo on 10/9/2013 11:42:04 AM , Rating: 2
32bit ARM can address 1TB of memory. this should be in bold type in every article. 32bit processes can only address a 4gb virtual address space, but no single process running on a phone needs it. apple has a soft limit (256mb, i think?) on their processes, it's no where near 4gb.

enterprise use of ARM may require more than 1tb of ram and 4gb of address space, but not phones. 64bit is just one of the many architectural enchancements to ARMv8, which together are necessary for the future.

RE: please
By Argon18 on 10/9/2013 2:36:21 PM , Rating: 3
Sure, most 32 bit architectures have a mechanism to allow them to address more than 4 GB of RAM. MIPS, SPARC, x86, etc. Heck I was running an intel PIII @ 600 Mhz with 8 GB of RAM, and that was a decade ago.

On x86 that mechanism is called PAE. Physical Address Extension. Linux has had PAE support since the 1990's, which is how I used 8 GB on a Pentium 3 so long ago.

Windows on the other hand, has been artifically crippled by Microsoft. Only the server versions have PAE support. Microsoft crippled all 32 bit desktop versions of Windows by stripping away the PAE support. This is the reason for the "4 GB barrier" on 32 bit Windows peecees.

RE: please
By superstition on 10/10/2013 11:31:28 PM , Rating: 2
Interesting blast from the past about this:

One developer we consulted about the issue noted, "consumers are being scammed by [PC] OEMs on a large scale. OEMs will encourage customers to upgrade a 2GB machine to 4GB, even though the usable RAM might be limited to 2.3GB.

This is especially a problem on high-end gaming machines that have huge graphics cards as well as lots of RAM." "Microsoft even changed the way the OS reports the amount of RAM available; rumor is, due to pressure from OEMs," the developer told us. "In Vista and prior, it reported usable RAM, while in SP1 they changed it to report installed RAM ignoring the fact that much of the RAM was unusable due to overlap with video memory." And so many PC users are installing 4GB of RAM in their PCs and thinking that it is being used by the system, when in fact it is no more beneficial than if the RAM were simply poked halfway into the CD slot.

For example, Dell's top of the line $5799 Alienware gamer PC comes standard with a 1GB video card, 2GB of RAM, and 32-bit Windows Home Premium. That means the system can only possibly use 2.3GB of RAM, but Dell "recommends" users spend $250 (or $8 per month with financing) to buy a 4GB upgrade (below) that will offer them little more than bragging rights, as the 1GB video card and the roughly 750MB of other MMIO will make the extra 2GB unusable. Dell says "Upgrading your memory allows you to take full advantage of system capabilities as well as increasing system efficiency," but that's simply not true on this page.

RE: please
By Guspaz on 10/9/2013 6:11:58 PM , Rating: 2
There is a difference between usable address space and actually consumed memory. Try using mmap on a 5GB file on a 32-bit architecture. This consumes only as much ram as you actually read (in other words, none at first), but requires as much virtual address space as the file's size.

There are other examples, of course, but the point is that the virtual address space is in many instances more important than the total amount of addressable RAM.

Everyone should read this article...
By Jeff7181 on 10/9/2013 2:58:16 PM , Rating: 3
It's the best explanation of why and how 64-bit computing is beneficial to anybody.

(sorry Anand, I haven't seen a write-up on this site that's nearly as thorough as this one on ARS: )

In short, for most applications, it's not a processors "64-bitness" that makes it faster than the 32-bit equivalent. It's other features that were changed/improved/added to the processor.

Yes, today's 64-bit processors are faster than yesterday's 32-bit processors, but it's not because they're 64-bit. That's like saying "blue cars are faster than red cars" because you bought a blue Mustang GT to replace a red Prius.

By Wazza1234 on 10/12/2013 3:39:06 AM , Rating: 2

Except no, no it isn't. That's absolutely and entirely incorrect.

64-bit, of ITSELF, fundamentally increases performance of numerous operations - as you would know if you'd read the Anandtech piece on it:

And it so happens that the apps which most need additional performance (encryption / gaming / advanced 3D) are those which benefit the most from 64-bit.

Now, the move to the 64-bit architecture ALSO gave Apple massive performance gains, but that doesn't mean that 64-bit of itself isn't responsible for performance gain.

Thus your 'colour' example is totally wide of the mark.

It's simple intimidation
By ack on 10/10/2013 10:29:42 AM , Rating: 2
I can't believe people don't grasp that it's simple intimidation by Apple. Money and power buys silence. Every major company, governments and power brokers do this on a daily basis.

And the way the American websites reported on this reflects again how biased they are in favour of Apple. No one would retract a statement if he/she did not fear reprisal.

RE: It's simple intimidation
By Wazza1234 on 10/12/2013 3:41:13 AM , Rating: 1
I can't believe people don't grasp that it's simple hypocrisy by him. The reason he's had to retract his statement is that Qualcomm themselves are about to release 64-bit processors and will have a much harder time selling them if they had previously described 64-bit as a 'gimmick'.

Take off that tin-foil hat.

Here is him shooting from his mouth.



Well Done QualComm Management!
By WhatKaniSay on 10/9/2013 11:45:47 AM , Rating: 1
I am glad Qualcomm management wasted no time in publicly and unequivocal rebuking Anand Chandrasekher's "marketing gimmick" statement.

My original post on the issue was ... "I hope Qualcomm has other executives that are brighter than this guy".
Apparently, they have shown that they do. I highly commend them for not mincing words on their total repudiation of such myopic statement from a supposed leader of a reputable company.

RE: Well Done QualComm Management!
By Argon18 on 10/9/13, Rating: -1
Bla, bla
By bug77 on 10/9/13, Rating: -1
RE: Bla, bla
By Wolfpup on 10/9/2013 9:38:49 AM , Rating: 2
That's probably more or less true, although it does apparently have other advantages, and does allow Apple to work out bugs, start their 64-bit version of the OS and programs now.

Also it's *possible* they may release some iOS device running this or a similar SOC with 4GB. There's a rumored 13" iOS device, which I could see possibly having a keyboard of some sort and 4GB.

RE: Bla, bla
By lelias2k on 10/9/2013 9:42:13 AM , Rating: 2
You can't wait until the new technology is needed to deploy it into the market.

The same way that 64-bit wasn't, and for many still isn't, necessary on the desktop, the future eventually will require it. By then, because it has been on the market for a while, companies will know how the hardware and software works, how to optimize it, what mistakes to avoid, etc.

You have to be really short-sighted to think that 64-bit on mobile is JUST a "marketing gimmick."

RE: Bla, bla
By retrospooty on 10/9/2013 10:15:45 AM , Rating: 2
Not a "Gimmick" more of a future proof move. Not much benefit today in this iPhone, but better to be ready than playing catch up later when the benefits might matter.

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By bug77 on 10/9/2013 10:58:37 AM , Rating: 1

And I agree with that 100%.
I only argued that the guy said 64bit is a gimmick for 5s. Which it is.

RE: Bla, bla
By Flunk on 10/9/2013 10:19:56 AM , Rating: 2
64-bit ARM has more registers than 32-bit ARM, that alone is enough to warrant the change. There are some more subtle advantages as well. Sure it's not revolutionary, but it does improve performance.

RE: Bla, bla
By Monkey's Uncle on 10/9/2013 11:43:46 AM , Rating: 2
AArch64 (the ARMv8 64-bit personality) has 31 general purpose registers.

AArch32 (the ARMv8 32-bit personality) has 13 general purpose registers and appears to software almost exactly like an ARMv7 processor.

AArch32 is mapped on top of the AArch64 physical hardware and ignores the upper 32-bits of all registers. This is necessary to maintain compatibility with older applications compiled under ARMv7 or earlier specifications.

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High-level architecture:

This one gets into deeper detail:

Both links point at ARM's PDFs,

RE: Bla, bla
By Tony Swash on 10/9/13, Rating: 0
RE: Bla, bla
By Monkey's Uncle on 10/9/2013 11:01:31 AM , Rating: 2
There are only a few places where ARMv8 based processors get a significant increase in speed. Most of these places are due to the new instructions added to the ARMv8 spec rather than bitness.

One place that can 64-bit can improve is data movement operations where data is placed in a register while being transitioned from source to destination. This is a direct result of 64-bit wide general purpose data, instruction pointer, stack pointer and index pointer registers being able to move double the data in the same amount of time in comparison to a 32-bit architecture.

Note also that the majority of this improvement will only be seen under AArch64 applications. If you are running 32-bit AARch32 applications on this platform (the vast majority of applications offered in the Apple store), you will see NO significant performance improvements at all.

RE: Bla, bla
By bug77 on 10/9/2013 11:04:37 AM , Rating: 3
"the huge leap in speed it achieved" also don't have anything to do with 64bit. Those tricks don't work on me.

RE: Bla, bla
By Monkey's Uncle on 10/9/2013 11:22:35 AM , Rating: 2
There are places where 64-bitness of the ARMv8 data and pointer registers of ARMv8 that can provide up to a double speed increase, and there also are new instructions in AArch64 that make a big difference in specific operations such as encoding/decoding (though these really are not tied to the bit-ness of the processor).

But that is where it stops. AND you won't get those benefits without applications that are compiled to use AArch64. The vast majority of applications in both Apple and Google Play stores are and will be 32-bit (AArch32) applications for the foreseeable future. AArch32 is relatively unchanged to prevent anomalies from creeping into running those existing 32-bit applications.

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By ProtonBadger on 10/9/2013 2:50:01 PM , Rating: 3
I usually ignore kids using the words "wintards", "fandroids", "isheep", etc. because tech religion is silly and they all make good products, but anyway: Microsoft have been doing very badly in the smartphone market for more than ten years and never stopped putting resources into further development nonetheless. They are astonishingly stubborn. Let's see what a new CEO will do...

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