[Galaxy S 4 General] BarryH_GEG:
"Broken" in what sense? The phone's working and performance wise Octa is equivalent to S-600. Based on ARM's claims Octa should be getting better battery life than S-600 and it's not. But it's by no means atrocious either.

Standby power usage turned out to be about equal for both versions of the Samsung Galaxy S4, but the extra endurance the Snapdragon-based I9505 had in the three tests give it a higher endurance rating. The I9500 and its Exynos 5 Octa chipset scored 65 hours, down from 69 hours for the I9505. The endurance rating shows how long a phone can last between charges if you do an hour each of calling, web browsing and watching videos. In practice, both versions will probably give you about the same time between charges as the battery of the I9505 will be very low over those last 4 extra hours. Unless you are a heavy talker that is – long calls on a 3G network will drain the I9500 battery noticeably quicker. Other than that, the Samsung I9500 Galaxy S4 is still one of the best performers in terms of battery life.​

http://blog.gsmarena.com/battery-te...9500-galaxy-s4-complete-here-are-the-results/

I keep mentioning "improvements" over time and here's what my assumption is based on. HTC was the first manufacturer to use Teg3 in a phone. As released (I had one of the first shipped), the s/w riddled with issues related to graphics, performance, and battery life. During the first few months it received updates that cleaned up most of them. Over time battery life improved by 1/3 and benchmarks improved by 25%. Considering the i9500 is the world's first implementation of big.LITTLE the fact that it's not riddled with issues is actually positive. As Samsung gets familiar with tuning it, or corrects any code issues due to it possibly being rushed, there should be upside.

As for the "code" meaning anything about how "done" or "imperfect" the i9500 is you need to put it in to perspective. The code the devs are looking at is to a degree dirty laundry. 99.99% of the world would never look at the code (or even have access to it) to judge it. Does it work? Yes, certainly better than HTC's first shot at tuning the Teg3 One X. Is it clean and perfect? Hell no, battery life is well below where ARM claims it should be. Should you care? I guess it depends. The devs can only work with what Samsung provides them. So if multiprocessing [MP] (using all eight cores at once) is h/w enabled but Samsung hasn't and won't code for it then it's never going to be available. But its absence doesn't mean Octa's "broken" it means Samsung's decided to only implement one of the two modes big.LITTLE is capable of running in. And again, the absence of MP is totally meaningless to 99.99% of SGS4 purchasers. As for “improvements” over time it seems logical based on how new Octa/big.LITTLE is.

But there’s no doubt that S-600 is the “safer” solution just based on its maturity, Qualcomm's openness in terms of code, and the fact that 2/3 of SGS4’s will be running it. Here's how I look at it. S-600 is just another great Qualcomm SoC out of a long line of great Qualcomm SoCs. Everyone who got S4 Pro was all high and mighty about the superiority of their SoC until S-600 was released. The same thing will happen to S-600 users when S-800 is released. 17 semiconductor manufacturers have licensed big.LITTLE from ARM and seven devices using it are supposed to be available this year. Not all those that signed-on have been publically revealed but I'd bet anyone here that Qualcomm's one of them. All of Qualcomm's chips through S-800 are based on five year old ARM designs. A lot has changed in five years. So while it's less "safe," I'd pick big.LITTLE over an existing Qualcomm chip solely because it represents the future. And in being the first to release it, Samsung's going to devote a lot of attention to perfecting it. As will the other 17 licensees. S-600 is what it is and its day in the sun will be brief. All just my humble opinion; YMMV.

ARM Cortex-A12 brings big.LITTLE to the mass market in 2014 - http://www.slashgear.com/arm-cortex-a12-brings-big-little-to-the-mass-market-in-2014-03284596/

Samsung tipped to bring big.LITTLE ARM power to Chromebook - http://www.slashgear.com/samsung-tipped-to-bring-big-little-arm-power-to-chromebook-31284419/

Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini may use big.LITTLE chip - Exynos 5210 with two Cortex A15 and two Cortex A7 cores - http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/31385-samsung-galaxy-s4-mini-may-use-biglittle-chip

Budget MediaTek big.LITTLE chip supposed to be available this year - http://www.androidauthority.com/mediatek-big-little-chip-203666/

LG eyes ARM big.LITTLE processors with license deal - http://www.electronicsweekly.com/ne...-little-processors-with-license-deal-2013-05/