The video below shows a speed test, comparing the brand new Galaxy Note 5 against the just about a year old iPhone 6.
The test takes both phones through a series of app launches and shutdowns, then repeats the series. First time around the track, the Galaxy Note 5 has a slight edge, but the second time through, the iPhone 6 smokes the competition. To save battery life, the Note 5 completely closes each app, so when you return to that app, you have to go through the launch process again, from scratch. Not so sure that’ll end up being a battery saver, Samsung.
Combine this poor design choice with the stylus debacle, and it’s no wonder Samsung is hurting.
Either Samsung is trying to work around battery life issues by closing frozen background tasks to save powering on the extra RAM, or Samsung is hopelessly incompetent. Since there is an exact same comparison between the Note and one of the Nexus’s on one of the android sites and the nexus doesn’t seem to have battery life issues, I’m going for the latter..
I think it’d be interesting to see how much churn Samsung’s dev staff goes through, as they try to keep up with their management’s lack of focus.
Since Google controls the OS, shouldn’t they be the ones optimizing battery life and performance targets?