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This Is Why Android Processors Increasingly Look Like Apple's

Hadlee Simons / Android Authority

The close of another year brings us closer to the next-gen leap in smartphone processing capabilities, accelerating the latest and greatest phones to another level. The next few months are shaping up to be one of the more exciting periods in mobile chip design for a few years. We already know what Google's AI-focused Tensor G3 and Apple's powerhouse A17 Pro bring to the table, but the more unusual multi-core CPU designs in the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Dimensity 9300 have caught my eye for today's discussion.

It's been over a decade since Arm debuted big.LITTLE, mixing power-efficient small CPU cores with larger, more powerful cores in a single cluster. It's easy to take that development for granted in the modern age of Arm DynamIQ, which allows for the mixing and matching of a greater number and variety of cores. The original aim was to balance power efficiency and push peak performance. However, the first point seems less pressing with the latest CPU cores if Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and MediaTek's Dimensity 9300 are anything to go by.

The 8 Gen 3 is a middle-heavy setup, with a single powerhouse Arm Cortex-X4 core, five A720 cores (split into two clock domains), and just two little A520 cores. Little cores have been on a downward trajectory at Snapdaragon; the 8 Gen 1 had four, then three in the 8 Gen 2. MediaTek's Dimensity 9300 eschews little cores entirely and ups the ante with four Cortex-X4s paired with four A720s. Again, there's a single highly clocked X4 for single-threaded performance, but the heavy use of lower-clocked yet wide and powerful CPU cores is by far the more interesting thing about the design.

Snapdragon has gone from four to three and now two little cores in the last three generations, replacing them with mid-tier cores.

Despite their differences, both SoCs insinuate that the bulk of your workloads will be run in these middle groups of processor cores. Powerhouse cores help out with burst and heavily single-threaded workloads, but it isn't easy to push clock speeds much higher within the thermal limits of a smartphone, and too many huge cores would be underutilized. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be as much of a need for low-power cores as in previous years (Qualcomm is perhaps less convinced of this than MediaTek). Instead, Arm's latest middle cores seem to scale well across a range of workloads, sleeping quickly for low-power tasks and clocking up for today's multi-threaded workloads and games.

A look at Arm's power/performance slide from its 2023 presentation helps demonstrate just how scalable the A720 is. It also points out just how much more powerful the X4 is if you need it, but remember that the X4 can scale up to PC applications, so that peak is not realized in the smartphone form factor. The A520, while clearly efficient, doesn't cover nearly as wide a range of performance points. With major power improvements found in the latest bigger cores and the constant trickle of manufacturing efficiency gains, some chipset vendors clearly view small cores as less important.

Arm

Taking a bite out of Apple's playbook

If this feels a bit familiar, you've probably cast your eye over the fence to Apple's walled garden. The iPhone's Bionic and new A17 Pro chips have used a seemingly common big and little core setup. However, Apple's smaller cores have historically flown much closer in capabilities to older-generation Arm Cortex-A7 series core than the A5 range. In other words, Apple's architecture offers two powerhouse cores for burst workloads, with four mid-range cores to handle background tasks, multi-threaded workloads, and gaming.

The latest A17 Pro epitomizes this approach. Its bleeding edge 3nm manufacturing process allows the two large cores to hit a staggering 3.78GHz when needed, while the four smaller cores are clocked much more modestly at 2.11GHz. MediaTek has a similar approach, with its conservative 2.0GHz A720s to target lower power workloads. Qualcomm's current design is a little different, aiming for higher 3.2GHz middle-core clock speeds, but it still has the A520 cores for very low-power use cases.

Manufacturing gains and more efficient Arm CPUs are driving down the need for tiny cores.

Still, Qualcomm appears to be converging on the idea that tiny cores aren't needed with 2024's Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. While still almost a year away, early rumors point to two big Phoenix cores and six smaller Phoenix M cores inside the 8 Gen 4. Phoenix will be Qualcomm's return to custom Arm-based CPUs (like Apple), enabling its engineers to tailor performance and efficiency even more to its liking (again, just like Apple). At least in theory. It's possible Qualcomm simply doesn't have three tiers of cores developed just yet.

With that in mind, we don't know the makeup of Qualcomm's future custom cores. But looking at the direction of travel, it seems highly likely that the six middle cores will target mid-tier performance, rather than ultra-low power, to keep the setup competitive with Apple and Arm Cortex offerings. If that's the case, the 8 Gen 4 will look pretty Apple-eqsue, albeit with a higher core count that could lend it a multi-core performance win for the first time.

… but why?

Robert Triggs / Android Authority

This all leads us to the question: why is the Android SoC market pivoting yet again, and does any of this really matter for our smartphones?

As we mentioned, the why can likely be explained by the ever-improving efficiency of Arm CPU cores combined with smaller (but more expensive) manufacturing processes that have lessened the need for low-power CPU cores that almost exclusively handle background tasks. For example, MediaTek claims its bulkier-looking architecture saves 10-15% on power for typical workloads over the previous generation, mostly by being faster to return to sleep.

Speaking of workloads, engineers at Arm have keenly explained to us the importance of the middle core in recent years. Big cores are great for loading your applications, but you want a better balance of responsiveness versus efficiency when scrolling through Facebook and replying to messages. Most of our daily mobile workloads sit somewhere between peak and minimum power states. Even the latest mobile games, which you might think require powerhouse CPUs, actually run predominantly on those middle cores. Chipsets like the 8 Gen 3, A17 Pro, and Dimensity 9300 are just designers optimizing their SoCs for the most common mobile workloads.

Emerging use cases continue to demand more performance from our limited phone batteries.

For consumers, these changes should result in better performance without sacrificing battery life for the above reasons. While we might view today's smartphones as already more than sufficient for our day-to-day, emerging use cases require yet more performance from a form factor with very limited battery life. AI is 2023's tech buzzword, but running on-device AI models is a daunting task that requires more memory and processing power. Hence Qualcomm, Google, and others are keen to play up their NPU number-crunching capabilities that augment typical CPU power. The lure of AAA gaming is another area that requires better graphics capabilities and performant yet efficient CPU cores to handle physics, logic, and to feed the GPU. Apple raised the bar with console games on the iPhone 15 Pro, and Android won't want to be left behind in the coming years.

The trusty CPU is the glue that binds these capabilities together. With performance demands on the rise yet no more battery life or thermal headroom to be found, it's perhaps not surprising that the finely balanced middle core is playing an increasingly important role in modern smartphone SoC development.

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Lawmakers Express Concern Over Apple's 'Anticompetitive Treatment' Of IMessage For Android App

Apple's well-publicized decision to shut down iMessage for Android app Beeper Mini has attracted attention from U.S. Lawmakers concerned that the Cupertino company is suppressing competition.

Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee along with Representatives Jerry Nadler and Ken Buck on Sunday penned a letter to Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter calling for an investigation into the Beeper Mini dispute. The letter suggests that Beeper Mini reduced Apple's iMessage "leverage" over iPhone users, leading Apple to shut it down.

As you know, interoperability and interconnection have long been key drivers of competition and consumer choice in communications services, from telephones to email. Startups and small businesses drive innovation, create jobs, and can disrupt entrenched incumbents when allowed to compete. But consumers will never benefit from competition if dominant firms are allowed to snuff out that competition at its incipiency.

We are therefore concerned that Apple's recent actions to disable Beeper Mini harm competition, eliminate choices for consumers, and will discourage future innovation and investment in interoperable messaging services. We also fear these types of tactics may more broadly chill future investment and innovation from those that seek to compete with existing digital gatekeepers. Thus, we refer this matter to the Antitrust Division to investigate whether this potentially anticompetitive conduct by Apple violated the antitrust laws.

Though Beeper Mini's developers have tried to push the privacy angle by pointing out the encryption its app offered for Android to ‌iPhone‌ communications, Beeper Mini launched using a reverse engineered version of iMessage that surreptitiously registered Android phone numbers as Apple device owners. It took advantage of Apple's own iMessage servers with fake credentials, so it is not surprising that Apple viewed Beeper Mini as a security risk.

Apple said that it shut Beeper Mini down because the app "posed significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling unwanted messages, spam, and phishing attacks."

Apple put a stop to Beeper Mini's full functionality just days after it launched, but the Beeper Mini team was able to come up with a workaround shortly after. The updated version of the app requires an Apple ID unlike the first version, and it only works with email addresses, not phone numbers.

In a CBS News interview, Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky said that he is simply trying to provide a secure service for Android users, and he decried Apple's iMessage monopoly.

As of now, Beeper Mini continues to experience outages as Apple tweaks the iMessage service. Beeper Mini engineers are aiming to keep the app up and running, and for now, it is free to use.

Apple may be facing scrutiny over Beeper Mini, but the pressure may ease after the company adopts Rich Communication Services, or RCS in 2024. ‌RCS‌ will be used for chats between ‌‌iPhone‌‌ and Android users, and it includes support for high quality video and images, emoji reactions, typing indicators, read receipts, and more, providing Android users with many of the same features available to iMessage users.

Encryption for ‌iPhone‌ to Android chats will be missing until Apple is able to work with the GSM Association that developed the ‌RCS‌ protocol to add end-to-end encryption. Google's version of ‌RCS‌, Google Messages, supports end-to-end encryption on Android devices, but Apple is adopting the ‌RCS‌ Universal Profile and not the version of ‌RCS‌ that was modified by Google.

It is worth noting that there are many cross-platform apps that ‌iPhone‌ and Android users can download to communicate privately, including WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, and more.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

IMessage For Android Should Be A Priority For Apple – Here's How I'd Do It

It's almost 2024, which means iMessage will soon be 13 years old. IMessage is easily one of Apple's best products, a secure and private mobile chat app that everyone in the industry wants to emulate and outdo. IMessage is such a good product that Google has been running RCS ads based on it for years.

It's so good that some of the people who want to use it the most are diehard Android users who wouldn't buy an iPhone. But they need iMessage in their lives to get over the blue vs. Green chat bubble issues. That continues to be a problem in the US for some reason, but not in Europe.

The whole Beeper Mini saga proves how grudgingly beloved iMessage is over on Android. Apple has patched a big workaround that Beeper found to render the app useless. The latest fix is Beeper asking Android users to have access to a Mac for iMessage to work. Pretty soon, Beeper will ask them to get an iPhone.

Also, Beeper Mini could get Apple in hot waters with lawmakers, who might start antitrust probes into Apple's handling of iMessage. I already explained why that's such a bad idea and how lawmakers are wrong on this one.

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As good as iMessage might be, these developments are just bad PR for Apple. After 13 years of iMessage supremacy, Apple should go ahead and release an iMessage app. That's what I would do, and I'd make Android users who want access to one of the best chat apps in the world pay for it.

iMessage might no longer be such a competitive advantage Apple has been reluctant to bring iMessage to Android in the early years of the app, and rightfully so. IMessage was a big advantage over Android. And a good reason to switch over to iPhone for some people. That was years ago. I don't think that applies anymore, and I'm talking as a longtime iPhone user. I always ask people I chat with what apps they prefer using, with SMS being the only option that's out of the question. Most people in Europe go for WhatsApp, even iPhone users. I have a multi-app chat experience with some of them, and that works too. The point is that nobody cares about the color of the bubbles. And iMessage is definitely not holding anyone back. On that note, that's why iMessage isn't a gatekeeper service in the region. Thanks to Google's relentless campaign and the renewed attention from events like Beeper Mini, iMessage is getting bad press, not the kind it deserves. Releasing an iMessage app for Android would fix all those problems. And Apple would probably have little reason to worry about losing iPhone sales because of that. The current market has reached a certain maturity. The iPhone has a leading market share in the US, and Android is the leader worldwide. The iPhone is a highly coveted device among key demographics. And the iPhone has been selling tremendously well during economic uncertainties. Also, Apple should have a good idea of why people switch to iPhones, considering it makes an app for that. The iMessage Android app should be identical to iPhone That's why, if I were Apple, I would dedicate massive resources to making iMessage for Android happen. I would ensure the Android version of the app gets the same features as the iPhone one and that the updates drop right on time. IMessage for Android would follow the same principles as the iOS version. It would be end-to-end encrypted and, therefore, private. It would support rich communication like the iPhone app, all the latest emoji and integration with various built-in apps. Also, since you can choose the default messaging app on Android, I'd advise Android users to do just that. Making iMessage the default chat app on Android would mean the app would also support the green bubbles: SMS chats. Soon, RCS chats would be part of the deal but built atop the GSMA standard, not Google's RCS version. Just like that, I'd change the conversation. Because critics right now are going after Apple, and calling the company out for making it impossible for Android users to securely chat to iPhone users. Those critics forget that apps like iMessage cost money. I would make Android users pay for iMessage One of the most annoying things about the whole iMessage on Android saga is this belief that iMessage should be available on Android for free. People forget iMessage is not a standard of communication. It's not a God-given right. It's a proprietary app that costs money to develop and operate. The way I pay for iMessage is by buying an iPhone. Beeper Mini stole iMessage access and then charged Android users for it. It turns out that operating iMessage on Android is either expensive or Beeper Mini wanted to turn a profit on Apple's work. But it's Apple keeping the lights on when it comes to smooth, uninterrupted iMessage access. Bringing iMessage to Android wouldn't be free, and I would make Android users pay for it. You don't want to buy an iPhone to get access to iMessage? Not a problem. Here's iMessage for Android. It costs this much per month to access your chats. It could be anywhere from $1 to $10 per month after a free trial of a month. Early WhatsApp users will remember that the service was not free. That was before Meta bought it for $19 billion. And I did pay for access at the time. Remember, with iMessage on Android, you get your Apple account. It might come with some cloud storage tied to iMessage. It will surely come with security and privacy, including end-to-end encryption and ways to back up your iMessage chats and recover your data in case of password loss. In time, I'd bring FaceTime integration to iMessage. In addition to a monthly subscription, I'd also promote Apple services within iMessage. I'd focus on things that Android users can get from Apple without buying an iPhone. That's an Apple TV Plus or Apple Music subscription. I'd make a big deal about entertainment, especially new original Apple TV Plus content. I'd also promote Apple events where the new iPhone and other products are launched, with a focus on the latter. Diehard Android users might not want iPhones but could go for iPads, Macs, and AirPods. These would not be targeted ads, and I would not use any sort of advertising inside iMessage for Android, except for news about Apple products. I'd also remind Android users that iMessage will always be free on iPhones. That Apple also makes an app that lets them switch over if they want to. Some people will still be unhappy Just like that, I'd change the perception of iMessage. And sure, not everyone will be happy. Google would hate the prospect of iMessage becoming the default chat app on Android. Meta would also hate the extra competition WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger would get. All of a sudden, iMessage would be a cross-platform app that could get hundreds of millions of users. Some Android users would balk at the idea of paying for iMessage. Regulators would likely come after Apple, especially in Europe, where iMessage would almost certainly grow to be a gatekeeper service. But, overall, iMessage could become another money-making service for Apple, one that doesn't involve the purchase of new hardware. And who knows, maybe such a plan is already underway. Maybe that's what the RCS support in iMessage is all about, a stepping stone toward an Android app.

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