All About Symbian - Symbian, Nokia and S60 unwrapped.
Mass memory: a balancing act that Nokia can learn from?
Published by Ewan Spence at 15:39 UTC, May 14th 2010
With Steve borrowing an X6 for a few weeks (expect his thoughts on Nokia’s first capacitive screened smartphone next week) one thing we wanted to look at was the relatively slow speed of the music player on my X6. While we’re comparing over Skype and not side by side, there’s still a marked difference between Steve’s 16GB X6 and my 32GB X6. And we have a theory....
And we think that it comes down to the speed of the chips used in the mass memory of the device, or at least seems the most likely explanation.
The simple answer is that Nokia are “using slow chips because they are cheaper”, but that doesn’t tell the full story, or the thinking behind that decision.
Let’s start with impact on the bottom line – the chips themselves might be cheaper on a per unit cost, and that does have an impact on the bill of materials, but the cost of these chips impacts right through the life of the device.
On lower priced smartphones, such as the 5230, this isn’t a decision in the hands of Nokia at all – the phones can all take a microSD card, supplied either by the networks or the retailers as a promotion to buy a certain phone, or by the end user as an additional purchase. Any problems with the cards and it’s a simple matter to exchange or buy another card.
That’s not something easily done with a phone with a mass memory chip inside it, such as the X6 – that’s going to need a return to a service centre and some serious work. Add in the cost of the repair bill to a carriage full of devices, and the need for a reliable chip inside the unit should be clear. And one way to increase the reliability of any computer chip? Slow it down a little bit. A slower chip means less stress, and a longer life.
So as well as the balance of the price on the bill of the materials, there’s also a balance to made in how high a specification chip you should go for compared to the failure rate, all magnified by the cost of the repair.
This isn’t an article to make excuses and somehow justify Nokia’s decision on the X6 32GB (that’s one for Nokia to address), but to highlight just some of the factors involved. It’s not a case of buying the chip that’s the fastest, or with the biggest data bus or cache – nor is it case of going for the bottom line. It’s about getting a good balance between everything that is affected by the decision.
And then there’s the other pesky factor. The end user.
My experience with the X6 32GB is tricky at best (think of the tensions in a coalition government in about two years time). The speed of navigating the music player and my media collection is still one of the biggest issues. When I compare it to the speed and smoothness of my iPhone, the X6 just feels slow and clunky - like it is struggling to do the same job.
Heck, I keep looking over at the 5800 and wonder if I should switch back, because it feels instantaneous and reactive, compared to the X6. Yet I stick with the X6 – partly because it has 32GB of music and I like carrying that on long trips, but also because I love the look and feel of the rest of the device.
The speed of any disk operations isn't a deal breaker - but it’s very close to it. Another example: try to take a lot of pictures in close succession and the slower write speed is apparent as well. Doing a side by side test, the X6 16GB saved a 5 megapixel image to the mass memory roughly twice as fast as the X6 32GB. The different speeds are also evident when editing the images and saving the results. While the music player is the area most obvious to me, there are a number of areas where the mass memory is obviously working at its 'full' speed and I want warp speed.
Here’s something that I hope Nokia are taking into consideration. Something has been tweaked since the 32GB Comes with Music version of the X6 and the newer 16GB version of the X6 to get the general operation back up to an acceptable level. Is it simply a case of using a faster chip? Or a certain sector size? Or something else. Either way, find out what happened, because there’s a certain product coming up that needs to be spot on when it comes out the box – and a slow 32GB mass memory chip could bring the whole experience crashing down in the eyes of the reviewers, tech heads and industry watchers.
Because the last thing needed is for the N8 to suffer the PR failure that the X6 went through at my hands. Put simply, don’t make the N8 feel slow.
-- Ewan Spence, May 2010.
News Discussion
Unregistered
This would certainly explain the atrocious speeds of the mass memory in an N95 8GB!
Unregistered
Couldn't agree more. I really do feel my X6 photos storing speed and music player is at the almost unacceptable pace, compared to my friend's 5800. Heck, my unit even have the disk error problem similar to 5800, and has been sent to Care Centre for a motherboard change, thus I would think besides they slow them down, the chip wasn't an expensive chip either. I feel this phone have a lot of potential being a cap screen phone, but current version of Symbian spoiled it. And I don't particularly understand why the OS in N97 cannot be used in X6. All in all, disappointed.
Unregistered
This is not a surprise to anyone involved with Nokia devices, they internal memory chips are slow as hell and the SD cards they provide with low-cost devices are crap too.
Of course this is done for economical reasons , faster chips cost more, fast and reliable chips cost even more.
In order to provide adequate performance for OS and core apps Nokia uses main memory - a separate partition which lives on more faster chip.
Read/Write speed does matter-at least for for high-performance apps (like heavy games and Skype). Installation to main memory is usually the only way to get the most out of it . Installing to different location may have strange results on app.
And there are no excuses to it - maintenance costs and "making it slower so it lives longer and does not break"
P.S.
Obligatory Nokia bashing: Iphone has 1 storage space, so does Android. They managed to solve this problem. why Nokia can't ?
Suggested answer: Keeping the profit margin with huge amount of middle-low class devices released results in usage of cheap sub-par components.
Of course this is done for economical reasons , faster chips cost more, fast and reliable chips cost even more.
In order to provide adequate performance for OS and core apps Nokia uses main memory - a separate partition which lives on more faster chip.
Read/Write speed does matter-at least for for high-performance apps (like heavy games and Skype). Installation to main memory is usually the only way to get the most out of it . Installing to different location may have strange results on app.
And there are no excuses to it - maintenance costs and "making it slower so it lives longer and does not break"
P.S.
Obligatory Nokia bashing: Iphone has 1 storage space, so does Android. They managed to solve this problem. why Nokia can't ?
Suggested answer: Keeping the profit margin with huge amount of middle-low class devices released results in usage of cheap sub-par components.
teknolog
Anecdotal evidence from myself: My 5800 was acting up badly, crashing almost every day.
I tried to backup my device to do a reset, but some files could not be read. So I figured the problem might be a defective SD card, went on Amazon and bought a new 8 GB card for £10 or so.
Lo and behold, it fixed literally every problem I had with my device.
Moral of the story: memory card quality not only affects storage, has an effect on device stability.
I tried to backup my device to do a reset, but some files could not be read. So I figured the problem might be a defective SD card, went on Amazon and bought a new 8 GB card for £10 or so.
Lo and behold, it fixed literally every problem I had with my device.
Moral of the story: memory card quality not only affects storage, has an effect on device stability.
stuclark
Interestingly, this is a problem Samsung also had / have with the i8910. The internal 8 or 16GB memory is *much* slower than using a reasonable memory card.
DKlaus
This seems like a good place to vent my frustration with my N86. It is SLOOOOOOW! Slower than my N95 classic. I was hoping for the opposite when I bought it.
I install everything to mass memory and use my 32Gb microSD mainly for media. Waking up from idle (not powersave) takes about 5 secs and is the most conspicuous example. (FW v21 and still can't upgrade.)
Since this bothers me each and every day, I'd gladly pay the extra cost of faster (and stable) hardware. Money paid for something one is happy with is not an issue. Something that is a daily annoyance is simply not worth saving a few pounds (or is it pennies?) on.
But what a great phone this is, otherwise! :-)
Looking interested to the N8. Please, Nokia, DO NOT make it SLOW!
Thanks for providing space for my grumpy hiccups...
I install everything to mass memory and use my 32Gb microSD mainly for media. Waking up from idle (not powersave) takes about 5 secs and is the most conspicuous example. (FW v21 and still can't upgrade.)
Since this bothers me each and every day, I'd gladly pay the extra cost of faster (and stable) hardware. Money paid for something one is happy with is not an issue. Something that is a daily annoyance is simply not worth saving a few pounds (or is it pennies?) on.
But what a great phone this is, otherwise! :-)
Looking interested to the N8. Please, Nokia, DO NOT make it SLOW!
Thanks for providing space for my grumpy hiccups...
andynugent
I'm not sure whether this is still an issue, but there used to be major issues with Symbian's implementation of the FAT filesystem, in that it didn't scale very well at all. The more files you had, the slower it got.
My memory is fairly vague, and I can't remember whether the problem was with the total number of files on disk or the number of files in a folder (I think it's the latter).
But that could possibly be another explanation; you have more files on the 32GB disk.
It might be worth making sure all your music is organised into sub-folders, or doing some tests when both devices are empty.
It also shouldn't be too hard to knock together some sort of simple performance benchmark, generating some random data and writing/reading it to/from disk with some timing output.
My memory is fairly vague, and I can't remember whether the problem was with the total number of files on disk or the number of files in a folder (I think it's the latter).
But that could possibly be another explanation; you have more files on the 32GB disk.
It might be worth making sure all your music is organised into sub-folders, or doing some tests when both devices are empty.
It also shouldn't be too hard to knock together some sort of simple performance benchmark, generating some random data and writing/reading it to/from disk with some timing output.
xinjii
I find this to be a common problem with flash storage. When I upgraded my 4gb C6 microsdhc to an 8gb C6 there was a considerable difference in access speeds from my phone. The same thing again when I went to 16gb C6. Noticeably slower than the 8gb. Darla Mack did a write up a while back about the disparity between speed and capacity with disks of the same class rating.
flexluthor
ahah, make it slow to make it work longer. Very clever. It's so slow that you use it less, so it works longer.. Very simple...
malbry
I think at least some of the speed issue in the music player is software-related, not hardware-related. I say this because I recently upgraded my trusty 5800 to the latest v50 firmware which I think is similar to the current X6 firmware. The music player is noticably slower than it was with the v40 firmware. For example, going into Playlists now takes several seconds - enough to be irritating - whereas before it was around one second. I am guessing that the OS is now reading all the playlists into a memory buffer so that it can implement kinetic scrolling. All the playlists have to be immediately available in memory for fast scrolling. Before kinetic scrolling, the OS could read the playlists a screenful at a time as the user tapped the screen. Just a hunch, maybe wrong.
Best regards,
Malcolm
www.freepoc.org
Best regards,
Malcolm
www.freepoc.org
daos
Access times very much depend on the allocation unit size. Usually, after device's hard reset or standard win\mac format procedure the size is 16kb of 1 unit. Which allows to use a storage more efficiently, but very slow access times. Using conditioned format - the size of allocation unit is 4096 or even 8192 - improves access times twice the original speed. This worked for me on WM devices as well.
Unregistered
I shall just say that the folks at Nokia are bastards.
That, or those at Maemo are smug asshats.
The N900 can consistently attain 16mb/s constant write, why the fuck are they giving us subpar products?
That, or those at Maemo are smug asshats.
The N900 can consistently attain 16mb/s constant write, why the fuck are they giving us subpar products?
xerxes
The reason they are giving you subpar products is that they have to save every penny they can because their profit margins are so thin.
When a company (like Nokia, or Dell) decides to compete mainly on price they have to accept a low margin per product and hope to make their overall profit target by shipping high volumes of product.
Typically, after some months or years of doing this the company comes under pressure from shareholders to increase its profit margin. How can it do this? The only ways are to generate higher margin revenue on different products (Nokia's attempt to do this with Ovi has failed to the point where these products have had to be repositioned as free value adds), increase the average selling price per unit sold, or decrease the cost per unit.
Nokia is not in a position to increase its selling price. It has only managed to hold its marketshare by greatly <<reducing>> its selling price over the last three years and, particularly after the N97 debacle, it doesn't have enough mind-share left to be able to bring out new products at top-of-market prices (hence the low announced price of the N8).
The only way Nokia has left to make money is to reduce its cost of manufacturing and servicing the products it sells.
All we consumers who like Symbian and don't want to see it die can hope is that Nokia is prepared to take a hit on profit generated by the N8 in order to rebuild the company's consumer mindshare. Otherwise, if the N8 under performs we are likely to see a long slow decline of Symbian into an exclusively low end platform or even its complete disappearance from an over crowded mobile OS market
When a company (like Nokia, or Dell) decides to compete mainly on price they have to accept a low margin per product and hope to make their overall profit target by shipping high volumes of product.
Typically, after some months or years of doing this the company comes under pressure from shareholders to increase its profit margin. How can it do this? The only ways are to generate higher margin revenue on different products (Nokia's attempt to do this with Ovi has failed to the point where these products have had to be repositioned as free value adds), increase the average selling price per unit sold, or decrease the cost per unit.
Nokia is not in a position to increase its selling price. It has only managed to hold its marketshare by greatly <<reducing>> its selling price over the last three years and, particularly after the N97 debacle, it doesn't have enough mind-share left to be able to bring out new products at top-of-market prices (hence the low announced price of the N8).
The only way Nokia has left to make money is to reduce its cost of manufacturing and servicing the products it sells.
All we consumers who like Symbian and don't want to see it die can hope is that Nokia is prepared to take a hit on profit generated by the N8 in order to rebuild the company's consumer mindshare. Otherwise, if the N8 under performs we are likely to see a long slow decline of Symbian into an exclusively low end platform or even its complete disappearance from an over crowded mobile OS market
Unregistered
This is another example of bloggers and commenters having no idea what they're talking about.
If you're planning to run factories and make millions of devices you can only buy parts available in sufficient guaranteed quantities. To do otherwise means you are likely to have problems getting hold of parts for production. We've all seen devices over the years where some component or other becomes unavailable leading to delays while alternatives are sourced. No manufacturer will tell you about this, but it happens in lots of cases.
Further, as memory parts are being built on smaller processes they are becoming slower and less reliable. It's unavoidable if NAND technology continues to be used and is a physical attribute of the smaller process size. The underlying switching does become faster, and smaller amounts of charge are required but at the same time larger storage size comes with increased block sizes. You can only write to 'erased' NAND and the larger the addressable block is, the more likely that you will need to erase something in order to write. Similarly, since smaller processes result in higher leakage, you need to move data around more often when reading it to ensure that the contents are not lost.
You can't even just buy the older parts because they're no longer being manufactured in sufficient quantities to base a product line on.
Mass memories are also not necessarily designed to have the performance attributes you would wish to see on a phone - typically manufacturers concentrate on improving large sequential read/write performance (as this is highly valued in benchmarks).
My point is that there are a million reasons why some parts perform better than others and cost is at most a very small part of it.
If you're planning to run factories and make millions of devices you can only buy parts available in sufficient guaranteed quantities. To do otherwise means you are likely to have problems getting hold of parts for production. We've all seen devices over the years where some component or other becomes unavailable leading to delays while alternatives are sourced. No manufacturer will tell you about this, but it happens in lots of cases.
Further, as memory parts are being built on smaller processes they are becoming slower and less reliable. It's unavoidable if NAND technology continues to be used and is a physical attribute of the smaller process size. The underlying switching does become faster, and smaller amounts of charge are required but at the same time larger storage size comes with increased block sizes. You can only write to 'erased' NAND and the larger the addressable block is, the more likely that you will need to erase something in order to write. Similarly, since smaller processes result in higher leakage, you need to move data around more often when reading it to ensure that the contents are not lost.
You can't even just buy the older parts because they're no longer being manufactured in sufficient quantities to base a product line on.
Mass memories are also not necessarily designed to have the performance attributes you would wish to see on a phone - typically manufacturers concentrate on improving large sequential read/write performance (as this is highly valued in benchmarks).
My point is that there are a million reasons why some parts perform better than others and cost is at most a very small part of it.
Unregistered
In another thread somebody pointed out the term "eco-system" as being a meaningless idiot word.
I would like to add another: "mindshare".
I would like to add another: "mindshare".
Unregistered
Always hated Nokia for not giving s60 the proper hardware. And when other companies provide good hardware(Satio, Vivaz, i8910) some software disadvantage is there.
Nokia should provide Symbian users with decent hardware, hope the N8 gives us a decent or deserving experience. It's been a long long wait (since N95 days) that we were able to hold some Nokia symbian hardware with pride.
Nokia should provide Symbian users with decent hardware, hope the N8 gives us a decent or deserving experience. It's been a long long wait (since N95 days) that we were able to hold some Nokia symbian hardware with pride.
xerxes
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Unregistered
" This is another example of bloggers and commenters having no idea what they're talking about.
If you're planning to run factories and make millions of devices you can only buy parts available in sufficient guaranteed quantities. To do otherwise means you are likely to have problems getting hold of parts for production. We've all seen devices over the years where some component or other becomes unavailable leading to delays while alternatives are sourced. No manufacturer will tell you about this, but it happens in lots of cases. Further, as memory parts are being built on smaller processes they are becoming slower and less reliable. It's unavoidable if NAND technology continues to be used and is a physical attribute of the smaller process size. The underlying switching does become faster, and smaller amounts of charge are required but at the same time larger storage size comes with increased block sizes. You can only write to 'erased' NAND and the larger the addressable block is, the more likely that you will need to erase something in order to write. Similarly, since smaller processes result in higher leakage, you need to move data around more often when reading it to ensure that the contents are not lost. You can't even just buy the older parts because they're no longer being manufactured in sufficient quantities to base a product line on. Mass memories are also not necessarily designed to have the performance attributes you would wish to see on a phone - typically manufacturers concentrate on improving large sequential read/write performance (as this is highly valued in benchmarks). My point is that there are a million reasons why some parts perform better than others and cost is at most a very small part of it." |
So perhaps you would like to venture an opinion on why Nokia's phones have consistently under performed in comparison to those from other manufacturers?
I give you every touch screen phone released by Nokia to date. All have been pretty much universally reviewed as having insufficient RAM and processors that are too slow. Are you saying that 256mb ram chips and faster processors are not available in sufficient quantities?
Of course Nokia could have retooled to include these higher specs but they chose not to. Do you really think that cost and profit margin are not major factors in these types of decisions?
Returning to the mass memory example, I hate to bring the A word into this but I've never heard of anyone complaining about the transfer speed of an iPhone or iPod Touch and they have sold 70M of those so far. Do you not think they have a sustainable supply of flash memory chips that operate at the desired speed? Of course they do. The difference is that they probably pay a little more for them (and the difference is probably a few pence per chip) because they can afford to pay more because their profit margin is so high on these devices.
By the way, I never said that margin was the <<only>> factor that drives these decisions but it certainly is a <<major>> factor. If you can't see that then I'm afraid you are the one that doesn't know what you are talking about.
xerxes
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Unregistered
In another thread somebody pointed out the term "eco-system" as being a meaningless idiot word.
I would like to add another: "mindshare". |
Unregistered
Quote:
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Originally Posted by xerxes
if you think either "eco-system" or "mindshare" has no meaning as a word you should consider investing in a dictionary.
|
http://www.urbandictionary.com/defin...rm=wank%20word
"In the UK and the Commonwealth, a strongly derogatory and deliberately vulgar term for a buzzword, signifying that it is worthless and meaningless jargon. Wank words may be short phrases as well as single words. The word is most often used of corporate, official, or academic language. "
Unregistered
Quote:
|
I give you every touch screen phone released by Nokia to date. All have been pretty much universally reviewed as having insufficient RAM and processors that are too slow. Are you saying that 256mb ram chips and faster processors are not available in sufficient quantities? Of course Nokia could have retooled to include these higher specs but they chose not to. Do you really think that cost and profit margin are not major factors in these types of decisions? |
Perhaps the numbers just don't work out? Maybe they don't believe they could increase the price to cover whatever the extra cost would be? Maybe there's a technical issue preventing more memory or faster clock speeds?
If it were as easy to get up to speed as all of us enthusiasts seem to think, then why have they not done it? There simply has to be more to it.
Quote:
| Returning to the mass memory example, I hate to bring the A word into this but I've never heard of anyone complaining about the transfer speed of an iPhone or iPod Touch and they have sold 70M of those so far. Do you not think they have a sustainable supply of flash memory chips that operate at the desired speed? Of course they do. The difference is that they probably pay a little more for them (and the difference is probably a few pence per chip) because they can afford to pay more because their profit margin is so high on these devices. |
The raw NAND used in both MMC and iPhone products is pretty much the same and although it's raw performance at the root of the issue, it's not the entire story. In terms of what speed you see as an end user, the stack of variables is NAND -> controller -> filesystem -> application.
Buying raw NAND is probably even cheaper than buying MMCs because it won't have a bit of SDRAM and a controller in there, but writing good software to control it is hard and most companies don't have the expertise. You typically need years of battle-hardened development to have sufficiently reliable controller SW. Perhaps Apple have bought some SW from Samsung, or maybe licensed it.
Back to iPod - it's also the case that there isn't that much stuff written on the device, largely data is shovelled on and off during an iTunes sync. Older iPods aren't usable while Syncing. I expect that a fairly large amount of memory is used while syncing to ensure that writes to the NAND can be matched as well as possible to the underlying structure. I suspect that one of the reasons that you can't remove tracks on the device is that it only has read access to the databases - the master copies are held in iTunes on the PC. This all points to a design where the filesystem requirements can be controlled ahead of time and restricts the necessary functionality envelope very nicely. Suddenly what looks like a pain in the ass (requiring iTunes to get stuff on and off) allows the developers to concentrate on excelling at a few things resulting in a nice product. Apple all over!
You can't do any of that on a device which supports USB mass storage.
Actually, for an iPod the picture is even more rosy. Since you are captive to a power source during a sync, you can afford to buffer data in RAM while it dribbles out to the flash. Large writes such as music tracks or movies can go straight to flash while metadata updates can be performed all in one go at the end. I think they must be doing something like this because of the dire warnings about unplugging without a dismount. If they were using the storage in a reliable mode, then it wouldn't matter if you unplugged it or pulled the battery or whatever. At most you'd lose some of the tracks but the device itself would work fine however it would be a lot slower.
I know that I think my iPod is terribly slow at syncing, and installing apps takes an age. I expected it to be much better, but it's just about the same as everything else. I see no magic yet.
It was very smart of apple not to support mass storage while everyone else did, it has allowed them a huge amount of design flexibility. If you have had it though, would your customers be happy if it were no longer available? Would better performance justify it's loss? How much better would it have to be?
I know people who use mass storage mode on their phone for putting music on despite the fact that if you use MTP then your phone doesn't need to index it all afterwards. Hell, I do it myself sometimes for convenience.
Unregistered
crapple got a good deal on nand by screwing over the flash market.
Joyslan
"This isn’t an article to make excuses and somehow justify Nokia’s decision on the X6 32GB..." you said. But you almost did it, do you know?! I´m very sorry for my rudeness, but I´m too tired of Nokia making so many mistakes (some unthinkably fool) since the all successful N95 (in his time).
testman
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by andynugent
I'm not sure whether this is still an issue, but there used to be major issues with Symbian's implementation of the FAT filesystem, in that it didn't scale very well at all. The more files you had, the slower it got.
My memory is fairly vague, and I can't remember whether the problem was with the total number of files on disk or the number of files in a folder (I think it's the latter). But that could possibly be another explanation; you have more files on the 32GB disk. |
testman
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
No need to invest when they are free on the internet:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/defin...rm=wank%20word "In the UK and the Commonwealth, a strongly derogatory and deliberately vulgar term for a buzzword, signifying that it is worthless and meaningless jargon. Wank words may be short phrases as well as single words. The word is most often used of corporate, official, or academic language. " |
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