Can a CHEAP 2022 Smartphone beat a 2020 Flagship?

[Retro]

Well, can it? The results are surprising.

 

[Arantor]

Without watching the video yet, the answer is going to be “depends on your criteria” followed by “well, if you’re asking, the answer is probably ’Moore’s Law still intact, somehow’”.

😂

 

[Retro]

Then you defo have to watch it.

 

[Arantor]

I was writing before breakfast

Having watched it, I find myself... suitably whelmed by his conclusions. I am not at all convinced I agree with a lot of his arguments, which boil down to trying to argue that for any given phone cycle, it's not 2 years between a tech landing in the flagship and then appearing in the mid-range a generation later.

I'd also describe some of his commentary as misleading, on any of those devices, the single biggest blocker to loading a webpage is the network in almost any case, not any of the things being cited except in pretty extreme cases.

Will agree with the comments about battery longevity for the most part, build quality (which is also somewhat subjective, I for example enjoy not havng a device that is glass and thus quite breakable on *both* sides)

But I haven't changed my central observation: it depends what your criteria are If you care about wireless charging and such nice-to-haves, you're going to be less likely to look at the mid-range because these technologies are not yet cheap enough to produce at the mid-range scale.

 

[Retro]

Some of that was subjective for sure and he had to justify the differences between them to make the video.

As for the web page loading, while the network is indeed the biggest factor, I do see slight differences between computers in rendering speed, other factors like the software being equal. For example, the Brave browser is touted by its makers as being very fast, even compared to Chrome which it's based on and indeed it does feel that little bit snappier. It could be due to the content filtering that it does, perhaps, but it's true that out of the box it feels snappier on my PC. Not a huge difference, but noticeable.

And yes, it depends on what you want out of a product in the end, as he said.

For me, I would still get the new mid range phone, because it's, err, new. That means no wear and tear on it, especially the sodding sealed battery that fades with time and use, a full warranty and much longer support with software updates. It's that last reason that I went with an iPhone a while back, nothing else. I still like Android very much otherwise. Now, Apple jump on security updates pretty quickly. Can the same be said for Samsung or any other Android brand? I don't know, but I have my doubts.

I thought that it was quite telling that Apple wasn't in that lineup and didn't even get a mention. Why leave out the other biggest player in the smartphone market? I find that a little suspicious.

 

[Arantor]

It could be due to the content filtering that it does

You'd be surprised how much faster browsers get when you block all the advertising etc. at the source.

Fully agree on the battery/warranty/updates situation.

Why leave out the other biggest player in the smartphone market? I find that a little suspicious.

Two reasons:

1. It would mess up his argument to do so, e.g. the unboxing experience of a current iPhone is a lot like the unboxing experience he describes for the mid-range phones. The phone is front and centre, I don't even think you get a charger these days with an iPhone? You certainly don't get a case or much in the way of extras, because the box is just big enough to hold the phone and so on.

2. Price points and ranges. Apple don't really have a 'mid range'. They only really have their flagship model each year plus sizing variations, which is eventually downpriced over time - you could possibly make the argument that the iPhone 11 starting at £489 is the current mid-range vs the current iPhone 13 (no Max/Pro) starting at £779.

 

[Retro]

You'd be surprised how much faster browsers get when you block all the advertising etc. at the source.

Yes indeed. Some websites push out so much unnecessary crap. For example, the MSN feed on my Windows 10 PC is like that. When closing an Edge tab, it actually takes a few seconds for it to close what with all the background processing it's doing (like what?!) View normal pages, such as NZ, and it closes immediately.

And...

Point 1 - I guess it would, as there's almost no difference in presentation. And yes, one barely gets a Lightning cable nowadays, too. It's "greener" don'tcha know?

Point 2 - Well, they do have the SE models that are cut down and based on the iPhone 8 design, so he could compare those. I've seen the CPUs from the high end phones go into later SE models, so there is that trickle down capability happening there. And yes, they keep selling one or two older ranges too as you point out, which could sort of be considered "midrange" compared to the current models.

 

[live627]

Yes indeed. Some websites push out so much unnecessary crap. For example, the MSN feed on my Windows 10 PC is like that. When closing an Edge tab, it actually takes a few seconds for it to close what with all the background processing it's doing (like what?!) View normal pages, such as NZ, and it closes immediately.

too much JavaScript—it even uses JS to load the article! Confirmed by noscript

Twitter does the same garbage.

 

[Retro]

too much JavaScript—it even uses JS to load the article! Confirmed by noscript

Twitter does the same garbage.

Yeah, complete overload. Clearly the developers of that website don't care about the impact on their users. This stuff is even worse on a mobile where it heats up the CPU and sucks the life out of the battery. The Independent website is like that, so I stopped going there even though I like that newspaper. Oh, they've got an increasing amount of articles behind a (free for now) login, too. I've refused to sign up.

 

[Arantor]

I continue to have a similar level of disdain for Vue and React, where the entire UI is JavaScript-driven when frankly there is no business doing exactly that.