No Surprise: Samsung Says Its Next Smartphones Will Be 64-bit

Well that didn’t take long at all.  Samsung has come out and said its next smartphones will be 64-bit, just like the iPhone 5s.  J.K. Shin, Samsung’s mobile chief, said Wednesday that his company also has 64-bit devices in the pipeline. “Not in the shortest time, but yes, our next smartphones will have 64-bit processing functionality,” Shin told The Korea Times.

Some may find this somewhat funny, Apple releases something and Samsung is quick to copy it.  And it is to a certain degree, but let’s not forget that Samsung also manufacturers Apple’s smartphone CPUs (including the latest 64-bit A7).  This means Samsung knew that Apple planned to release the next iPhone with a 64-bit processor a long time ago.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 runs a 32-bit chip, which is powerful enough for the tasks it performs. But like Apple, the company is also looking ahead to an era of more resource-intensive smartphone applications that will benefit from 64-bit chips that can address larger amounts of memory.  If you are at all familiar with hardware, you probably know that in order for a device to support more than 4GB of RAM it needs to run a 64-bit processor.  And let’s not forget the new Galaxy Note 3 has whopping 3GB of RAM.

Of course more RAM and processor power means better performance, but it also means the need for improved or bigger batteries to ensure battery life remains reasonable. Smartphones are now at the point where they literally can be comparable to desktops with regard to performance in certain areas.  In fact, Apple is saying that the iPhone 5s offers “desktop caliber” performance and in the words of John Gruber, “I don’t think they’re exaggerating.”