Utilized, but not at the same time. Only four cores will ever be active at once.
We don't have our panties in a wad. Some of us are trying to get it through some thick heads that this particular processor/phone will not be a true 8-core phone and shouldn't be thought of or marketed as one.
Secondly, the "possibility of an 8-core phone" in the sense of a true 8-core phone, won't happen for years. You don't need the extra cores right now and you'll never use them.
And this is the part that most people don't quite get. Adding more cores to a processor does not make it faster. If you added a 56-bagillion-gazillion-core processor clocked at 1.6 GHz to our Note 2's, our Note 2's would got exactly the same speed and you wouldn't notice any difference in speed at all.
More cores just means more multitasking, not more speed.
If this were a true 8-core phone/processor, then it would be the latter: no added benefit to the user due to Android not being able to multitask enough to use 8 cores for many years to come.
In the case of the Octa, it's just a dual quad-core and it will add more benefit to the user than a true 8-core processor would.
It's really bugging me that some of you can't understand or distinguish the difference between a true 8-core processor, and the dual quad-core processor that is the Octa.
In the case of a true 8-core, it wouldn't be adding innovation, it would just be adding extra cores that would never be used, therefore there would be zero positive benefits of a true 8-core device being brought to the market.
In the case of the Octa, it could be bringing innovation and positive benefits by using the slow quad-core side when the phone isn't being used very much, and then switch to the fast quad-core side when the phone needs to do demanding things. Thus, the Octa could bring positive benefits to the market.
The Octa is a dual quad-core. It will only ever operate as a quad core. People calling the Octa an 8-core are confusing and/or misleading the not-so tech savvy.
