Would You Take An S4 or Tegra 3 with all else the same?

[jacktesterson]

I have an HTC One X 16GB Unlocked S4/225 Version. Very happy with the phone.


I found an add locally for a "Like New" Tegra 3 32GB version of the phone. I've talked him down in price and can basically get it for same price as selling mine on ebay.

Would you do it? (Please keep the 16GB vs 32GB elsewhere, asking based simply on the S4 vs Tegra 3)


I have no real need for a quad, but with the way things are going this will probably be my phone for a couple years, so wondering what you feel will hold up the longest based on CPU/GPU.

 

[ITHURTSWHENIP]

S4 has better battery life. Tegra 3 has Tegra games

I think the Tegra 3 version had less problems with the multitasking though

 

[dguy6789]

S4

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

the one with better development support.

 

[vshah]

S4 for sure. A9 is 1.5 (2?) year old tech now

 

[jacktesterson]

The S4 is a stronger CPU (IPC) then Tegra 3, especially with single threaded apps. (Majority of Apps, even UI's) while running cooler with better battery life. (My One X is way better than my wifes Galaxy Nexus when it comes to battery life, but thats got a OMAP in it)

The Tegra 3 has a stronger GPU, but the 225 is no slouch.

I think I'll prob just stick with the S4, since it appears to be taking over the newest phones.

I think its one of those things where I just want to say "Its a Quad" without any real reason to have one.

I primarily use it for Web Browsing (Which the S4 seems to beat the Tegra 3 at), Music, Youtube and odd and end apps.

Yet here I am, still saying I want a Quad... Goes to show Marketing #'s does work sometimes, even when we know better.

Ill just stick with my S4 unless somebody has a real good reason to go Tegra 3 that I'm not aware of.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

S4 for me. I do not need 4 cores in a phone.

 

[Chrono]

I have a att one x as well... seems to me the roms vary between the international version and the att version. If I were you... I'd get a Galaxy Note 2 instead...

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I think I'll prob just stick with the S4, since it appears to be taking over the newest phones.

Well the US phones maybe, but the GS3 and One X international are not S4. Samsung's going to stick with Exynos for a long time. And of course Google picks random SoC manufacturers all the time, though it's pointing to S4 this time.

 

[kaerflog]

The S4 is probably the most impressive soc Qualcomm has ever come up with.
I see all kind of high end and mid tier phones using various speed of the S4.
Its not just about pure speed. The S4 is fast and versatile.

 

[NightFox]

S4. Tegra is all closed source and is bad for development.

 

[lothar]

S4.
I don't give a crap about "Tegra" games.

 

[Raduque]

S4. I refuse to support nVidia's "Tegra Games" bullshit.

 

[Mopetar]

Does this even need to be asked? S4 wins in pretty much any category that you'd care to name.

 

[runawayprisoner]

I'm going against the flow and saying Tegra 3 here.

My HTC One X with Tegra 3 outperforms my Galaxy S3 with S4 in everything I do. And that's out of box non-custom ROM experience.

 

[BenSkywalker]

If you want to run benchmarks all day, the S4 has a slight edge.

For everything else, Tegra 3.

Ill just stick with my S4 unless somebody has a real good reason to go Tegra 3 that I'm not aware of.

Horn?

I know you didn't mention gaming, but Tegra is *by far* the best solution for gaming on Android. A lot of people bash nVidia for paying devs to port games, but I rather like getting the games that used to be iOS exclusive- if nV wants to pay to make that happen, I'm fine with it.

Back to back use, I haven't been remotely impressed with the S4 compared to the T3- nor has anyone else that I can think of that owns devices using both. I haven't used the OneX with the different SoCs so it could be different, but the GS3(CM10) certainly doesn't stand out against the Transformer or N7 for anything(all of them running the same resolution display) performance related.

 

[Eug]

I'd take the one that was in a Nexus, cuz I likely wouldn't be buying any Android device unless it was a Nexus.

 

[ponyo]

S4 for the better battery life. I'm not a gamer so Tegra 3 does nothing for me.

 

[vshah]

to clarify, i meant s4 pro since that's the quad core version which is a better comparison to tegra 3. adreno 320 is also much faster than the tegra 3 gpu.

 

[runawayprisoner]

to clarify, i meant s4 pro since that's the quad core version which is a better comparison to tegra 3. adreno 320 is also much faster than the tegra 3 gpu.

That one is only available on one phone as far as I know.

----

Plus Android does make use of quad-core for multitasking and for managing widgets + live wallpapers... so naturally, a quad-core chip has its own advantage. That's why the S4 Pro performs so much better compared to all other SoCs.

I still don't see the draw of S4 (dual-core) when the only thing it does better is at single-threaded benchmarks. Everything else, I still see my HTC One X on Tegra 3 being faster, smoother, more responsive than my Galaxy S3 with S4, and yeah, that's with the "Power Saving" switch set to "Off".

And plus Tegra 3 is on a Nexus device (N7), so I'd think it should be better optimized than S4.

 

[Red Storm]

S4

 

[Oyeve]

It doesn't matter to me as they all perform the same in the real world and benchmarks do not impress me.

 

[soccerballtux]

I'm going against the flow and saying Tegra 3 here.

My HTC One X with Tegra 3 outperforms my Galaxy S3 with S4 in everything I do. And that's out of box non-custom ROM experience.

HTC has always worked on user experience. They are the Apple of the android world IMO.
It's entirely likely that you're experiencing better performance due to optimization and lack thereof on the Samsung.

 

[dagamer34]

That one is only available on one phone as far as I know.

----

Plus Android does make use of quad-core for multitasking and for managing widgets + live wallpapers... so naturally, a quad-core chip has its own advantage. That's why the S4 Pro performs so much better compared to all other SoCs.

I still don't see the draw of S4 (dual-core) when the only thing it does better is at single-threaded benchmarks. Everything else, I still see my HTC One X on Tegra 3 being faster, smoother, more responsive than my Galaxy S3 with S4, and yeah, that's with the "Power Saving" switch set to "Off".

And plus Tegra 3 is on a Nexus device (N7), so I'd think it should be better optimized than S4.

I'd rather just turn off widgets and live wallpapers, they just drain battery for no apparent reason other than to look cool (there's a reason they were removed from Windows Vista).

 

[runawayprisoner]

HTC has always worked on user experience. They are the Apple of the android world IMO.
It's entirely likely that you're experiencing better performance due to optimization and lack thereof on the Samsung.

Just to note... both HTC and Samsung are equally guilty for... obscuring stability in favor of performance.

For instance, the garbage collector is overly aggressive on the HTC One X (more aggressive prior to the update), and its general goal is to keep pushing stuffs out of memory... leaving gobs of free memory that aren't used for anything at all. It looks good to the user because it leaves the illusion that they actually "optimized" Sense UI for low memory usage, but... it interferes with multitasking on the device. In some extreme cases (though rare), it may even cause apps and widgets to crash. Also funny is the fact that it also kills Sense UI more often than not.

Samsung? Worse. They make it so that on the GS3, the garbage collector does not fire that often, thus it increases performance as things stay in memory for longer. But they also limit pool size, so in reality, an app would run out of memory faster and crash more often. This looks good on both benchmarks and to the user because it gives the illusion that they optimized TouchWiz + improved performance, but it causes apps to crash more often and force developers to think very carefully about what they can cache and shouldn't cache. Coupled with Android's total lack of any memory management technique other than reliance on the GC, and we have a recipe for disaster.

Their older devices aren't like this. In fact, even with 2GB of RAM, I dare say the GS3 is more crash-prone than the HTC One X with 1GB, and the HTC One X is worse than the Nexus S, which has only 512MB...

I don't think they need to do this at all. Android since 4.x has had many tweaks to the garbage collector that make it more... friendly. It seems to me like they are taking criticisms to their custom UIs (Sense and TouchWiz) very personally...

I'd rather just turn off widgets and live wallpapers, they just drain battery for no apparent reason other than to look cool (there's a reason they were removed from Windows Vista).

It's funny you should say this... some people swear by widgets and live wallpapers as a way to differentiate from Apple users.

And in general, well-written widgets and live wallpapers should not drain your battery when they are not visible. That's a misconception IMO. Your cell radio and other background services run by Tasker and the likes are much more of a strain on your battery than widgets and live wallpapers.