Lilbits (7-18-2013): Samsung Exynos 5 Octa update coming soon

Samsung’s Exynos 5410 processor sounded a bit crazy when the company announced it in January. It’s a smartphone chip with eight processor cores.

But now that the chip’s actually available in some Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphones, it turns out might not be all its cracked up to be. First, it turns out you’re only actually using 4 cores at a time. And second, the chip doesn’t seem to be much faster than a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core CPU, but Galaxy S4 phones with Qualcomm’s chip get much better battery life.

Now  a new Exynos 5 Octa is on the way. Samsung says it’s “more powerful,” and “enhanced,” but we’ll have to wait until next week to get details. Hopefully it’ll be designed to take advantage of more of ARM’s big.LITTLE technology to improve efficiency, which should lead to better battery life.

Here’s a roundup of tech news from around the web.

• Samsung Exynos 5 Octa update coming next week
  Details are scarce at the moment, but Samsung says it plans to announce a new version of its octa-core processor next week. Hopefully it’ll address some of the performance issues people have been seeing with the chip that powers some versions of the Galaxy S4 smartphone. [Samsung]
• Beta testing coming soon for MoDaCo.SWITCH: toggle Sense/Google Experience on the HTC One
  The HTC One Google Experience might look like it’s running an AOSP version of Android, but it actually uses the HTC Sense framework with the look, feel, and apps of a Google Nexus-like device. So developer Paul O’Brien has been able to figure out how to develop software that lets you toggle back and forth between Sense and Google Experience. He’s accepting signups from folks interested in beta testing. [MoDaCo]
• LG’s next flagship phone will be called the LG G2
  LG seems to be shedding syllables from its phone names. The successor to the LG Optimus G will just be called the LG G2. [Android Police]
• Verizon Edge early upgrade program launches August 25th
  Hot on the heels of T-Mobile and AT&T, Verizon has officially launched its program that lets customers upgrade to a new phone as often as once every six months. It’ll cost you though. [Verizon]
• Great Android games for a buck
  Addictive games don’t have to be expensive. Here’s a list of great games that cost a buck. [reddit]
• Ouya wants to encourage devs to bring games to their console, offers up $1m in matching funds
  One of the main criticisms of the Ouya $99 game console is that there aren’t enough good games for the platform yet. Ouya wants to change that, and is offering to provide matching funds to developers running Kickstarter projects to help provide a little more incentive for them to bring games to the platform. [TechCrunch]

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