Topic: Some smartphones match the power of the Switch (and that's a good thing)

They will of course never make games of the same caliber for a smartphone since they rely on passive cooling, while the Switch has very good active cooling.

Here are some benchmarks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6y4atVl-mc

It's amazing to think that if you added a fan to a Samsung Galaxy S8 you could probably run a game like Super Mario Odyssey. This development in the world of technology is very good for the future of the Switch. Every year they are making smaller and more efficient mobile processors, which means future Switch iterations can get better battery life.

Next year the Snapdragon 845 will release and it will have a gpu that is 30 percent faster and 30 percent more power efficient than the Snapdragon 835’s gpu. Next year they'll also release a new Tegra chip called Xavier.

By the time a Switch 2, or a mid generation refresh Switch Pro gets released, they might even have caught up to the very old x64 computer architecture that both Sony and Microsoft are using.

The difference, mobile gaming sucks! Plagued by F2P and pay to win mechanisms. I downloaded GTA San Andreas for my iPhone 7 Plus... but it just doesn’t feel like the same game, it look pretty compared to the original release, but it doesn’t play as well and that ruins the experience. The Switch is more directly in competition with mobile devices than consoles, that’s why it’s successful. I for one, have not bothered playing mobile games as much now I have a Switch and with the way gaming is going, a Switch and a JTag 360/jailbroken PS3 is all I need. Add to that an old iPad with retroarch and I’m all set.

@Agriculture
Mobile games = BLAH !
Nintendo Switch games = Awesome !

And the number of people who got the point:

Not really a tech nerd but makes sense. The other stuff, you might as well have written that in Chinese. I wouldn‘t understand a bit more.

....>_>
I'm watching this thread...

Well, the jist of it is that most of technological development happens in areas that are beneficial to the Switch. The most amount of money in research and development is spend on mobile technology, such as batteries and smartphone processors. This means it's very likely that the hybrid console is the future.

@Agriculture Well, yeah, that much was clear from the headline alone. But start talking GPUs, CPUs, x64 computers and you'll lose me.

All you need to know is these facts:

1. The Playstation, Xbox & PC is using a type of processor called x86 (I wrote x64 by mistake before).

2. The Switch, all smartphones & all tablets are using a type of processor called ARM.

3. Most of research and development is focused on ARM, which means it get better at a faster rate.

I'd like to see some small spec bumps along with the battery. More internal storage number 1. It's insane that they have such small storage space. Especially since they want their online store to succeed. I will only play physical games though due to the small memory and wanting to have a copy that can go anywhere with me.

If you look at smartphones, the file size limits on their respective stores are very low. Apple only allow apps that are under 4 gb. Smartphones have thus far relied on very low storage. Because of this flash storage is expensive and has small capacity. Hopefully the good sales of the Switch will change that. I'm guessing there have been an increase in sd card sales since the Switch released.

The Switch 2/pro should wait until the PS5 mid gen update. And if it is the exact same design console with beefed up internals it will win the console war. If the Switch was as powerful as the PS4 pro right now, it would be game over.

@Agriculture Of course it's a good thing.

One big advantage is that it works both ways. Publishers will eventually want to publish their back catalogues on Google Play or the App Store. Which means porting to an ARM architecture. So porting games from a generation back to Switch first makes sense - especially since the average one off cost that a Switch game can command is much higher than it would be for a mobile game.

Long term having switched to an ARM architecture means that we could see backward compatible (but increasingly powerful and more battery efficient) iterations on the Switch hardware for decades. It's relatively low risk and with a low investment for Nintendo because they have made that move.

The PowerPC architecture in the Wii U was by contrast always a dead end. Switching to ARM is the reason why we don't/couldn't have backwards compatibility but it's such an essential and logical long term strategic decision.

But if you think about it, 10 years ago it would have been unthinkable to get the "last generation" to run on a phone. The Iphone came out then, and it would never run Halo. Now the gap is much smaller, and in the future it might be gone. In 2020, you could have an ARM soc that it equal to a good x86 desktop cpu+gpu, so you could get the latest home console games running well on a mobile device.

Technically true, to a point, but as you say, the phone relies on passive cooling. More specifically the format doesn't allow for an active cooling solution and doesn't have a useful surface area for thermal dissipation. The CPU, across its 8 cores is certainly a powerhouse, but the GPU performance is more limited on Exynos than on Snapdragon form factors and isn't all that impressive on Snapdragon either. The Tegra fits a unique role that hybridizes the tradeoff or pure mobile solutions and the requirements to run higher performance, higher energy draw, and handle an active cooling solution. It's fun to think of the "theory" but ultimately they're two different solutions with two different engineering approaches and targets and they really aren't both capable of the same output outside the "theory". There's already the more powerful Tegra X2, but the yeilds are very poor and the cost very high as a result. No question with both the automotive applications and the success of Switch, nVidia is well into trying to refine their approach into a powerful successor capable of fab in useful yields....but I think the Tegra approach will always sit on the edge between mobile and desktop form factors by design. Of course if a pure mobile solution becomes equal in performance with a lower cost per unit, Nintendo will be all over it, but for now, all eyes are on Xavier.

But right now that Note 8 is a $1k device against a $300 device, and manages to still have worse real world (rather than theoretical) GPU performance. It's fun geek speculation but in consumer electronics outside premium fringe devices, the price target is as critical if not more critical than the output. Tegra's still a miracle platform no matter what way you look at it.

The funny one is the x86 dependence in PS4. They caved to pressure of publishers that are used to PC and wanted to just have one architecture target tied to PC, despite x86 being antiquated and inefficient. XBox makes sense, the whole point of the platform was the hammer home the WINtel ecosystem and secure x86.....but Sony caving to that architecture is very sideways, even though it's working. x86 is never going anywhere due to the needs of leagacy business software....but it's scarcely efficient for consumer electronics.

But it wouldn't be a hybrid console. You are not getting the power of a PS4, PS4 pro, PS5 in a hybrid.

Also forget about seeing nintendo releasing a console which matches Sony or MS newest machines when they are released.

Nintendo gave up the power race long time ago and won't be back chasing that market.

@kobashi100 Very true, and I've got a feeling that this will eventually play them parts when it comes to multiplatform games. It all depends on whether or not portability remains as wanted as it is.

That's where you're wrong kiddo! By the time the PS5 gets released, if the current trend continues, it could very well be cheaper and more powerful to go with ARM, and then Nintendo will have a huge head start.

That was what happened with the Iphone 5s, it was the first 64 bit smartphone and people were saying it was an unnecessary change that would cost Apple a lot (because the Iphone 5 software would not run on an Iphone 5s). After a while everyone changed to 64 bit, and Apple had a huge head start.

This is even bigger, because console generations are longer, and the difference between ARM and x86 is way greater than the difference between 32 bit ARM and 64 bit ARM. It's not unthinkable that Nintendo wins the power race next generation. We can already see how expensive x86 high end consoles are by looking at the Xbox One X, so x86 might be a dead end when they release the next generation of consoles.

@Agriculture That is assuming it will even still be a hybrid by then. I doubt Nintendo will bother to put any effort in the home-console mode, since they can get away by cheaping out with the dock, and people eat it like candy anyway.

@Joeynator3000
You have the ban hammer at the ready? XD