Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
@Leo - Just a quick note about the Samsung chipsets and the Samsung Galaxy S23. Two things here:
- The S23 was launched well into the 90 day window after Goolge had tested the devices on the market and reported them to Samsung, so Google probably didn’t test those devices, so they wouldn’t know, whether they are affected. They would need to get hold of the current devices and test them. Hopefully, Samsung has done that in the meantime and knows whether they are affected or not.
- Secondly, Exynos was not used in the US (and I think, one other market), devices in the US had Qualcomm chipsets. As the Snapdragons include the Qualcomm modems, I suspect that they are not affected. For the S23, this is now worldwide, so they probably don’t even have the Exynos modems.
Question: Is it possible that Samsung changed/sped up their plans to switch to manufacturing phones with Qualcomm chips worldwide, after they were informed by Google, that there were serious design flaws in Exynos? I don’t keep as close a tabs on Android in the last few years, but it seemed a bit of a surprise that they dropped Exynos completely.
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Yes, the S23 range is Qualcomm globally, so not impacted by the zero-day.
Samsung talked about not using Exynos back in summer 2022, so predates the Project Zero stuff I think.
Poor performance of the Exynos in the S22 was maybe a reason? It has thermal issues, so poor performance, battery life worse etc, and with the strategy of shipping with both their own and Qualcomm, you could directly compare, which wasn’t a good look.
So the official line is they’re refocussing their design and fab teams, expectation was Exynos in flagships might be back in 2025.
Where this leaves Google/Tensor for the next couple of Pixels, I’m not sure.
I’ll take Steve’s advice and not worry too much as I’m not a target. Samsung are reported to have completed the patches now, should be released soon.
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Excellent show, as always!
My point is, the actual security model of the world’s most pervasive operating system is utterly
broken. It’s a complete joke. It’s smoke and mirrors. We don’t want that to be true. It’s quite
uncomfortable for it to be true. But pretending that it isn’t true doesn’t change the reality
And this is why I’m done with Windows! Makes me wonder if Steve is finally going to hit a breaking point one day and stop using it too…