Happy weekend!
There has been a lot of news related to benchmarking lately, including an admission by Google that they blocked Play Store downloads of benchmarking apps during the Pixel 8 review embargo, as well as fresh chips coming down the pipeline by Qualcomm and MediaTek.
Discussion questions:
- Do smartphone benchmarks matter?
- Are they still a useful reference and do you consider them when shopping for an upgrade?
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Do smartphone benchmarks matter?
Probably, but not for me.
Are they still a useful reference and do you consider them when shopping for an upgrade?
No.
Camera, battery life, size, screen, software features/bloat (in no particular order)
Battery life and screen quality first and foremost. They’re often related to each-other. Battery life because I feel it’s the one aspect that hasn’t improved very much at all over the past 10 years, and if I don’t have enough battery, I literally can’t use my phone. Screen quality because I look at the screen whatever I do with the phone, so if the screen is bad, everything else cannot make it a better phone.
If anything, battery life is a bigger issue now because you can't just swap batteries like you could 10 years ago. You could have a backup battery fully charged and ready to go, or if you were like me you could just buy a triple capacity aftermarket replacement battery and have an extra chonky phone.
All those options are gone now. When the battery dies, you either pay $80 for someone to replace it or (more commonly) trade it in for a new phone that's marginally better.
Storage space, support cycle, type of screen, third party OS support, aftermarket accessories, camera quality. Size.
Also kinda part of the SoC, but the frequencies supported since I travel a lot.
I think phones have been fast enough for a while now. There's more to a SoC than speed. When I came back to Android, I went from the fastest iPhone to a SD480 with only 6GB of RAM and it was...fine for daily use. But the camera was a big letdown on that device so I got something a little bit better a year later.
Do smartphone benchmarks matter?
Benchmarks matter inasmuch as it reflects the user experience, which is to say, benchmark numbers taken alone are meaningless. However, if you tell me a game runs with specific characteristics of user experience such as quality settings and frame rate, that data describe what I can experience playing that game.
Maybe I don't play that game. Perhaps, I'm not a mobile gamer at all. Even then, benchmarks can provide value by describing what real world performance is attainable provided that benchmarks reflect real user experiences.
I would say that benchmarks matter but only within the context of how benchmark numbers relate to a tangible thing you could experience with the phone. A CPU score? I think the value is questionable until you talk about how an app runs.
Are they still a useful reference and do you consider them when shopping for an upgrade?
I think benchmarks are more useful for enthusiasts to understand relative performance but are usually detached from the user experience that I really care about when making a purchase.
I want to know the benchmarks, but these would not drive my purchasing decision. I want to hear from reviewers who actually used the phone... because I plan to use the phone to do phone things, not to run benchmarks.
These are good points. Storage and wifi speeds are two important ones for real world user experience but they're overlooked by many reviewers.
As long as the phone works well I don't worry too much about the bechmarks. I would rather use my phone for some years and enjoy the ride. I think at some point I just tired of chasing the latest shiny Pokemon and just try to enjoy what I have.
We shall see in a few years if I feel the same.
They only matter when considering efficiency, throttling, and battery life. If the next SoC has throttling, efficiency issues, i would not consider buying it. Smartphone SoCs have become plenty fast for regular everyday tasks (even midrange ones). It's not a matter of "If it can?" Anymore as much as, how long? If you don't get the fastest flagship, it will still do whatever tasks you throw at it (barring heavy gaming/emulation) just that much slower.
I have a smartphone with 6gb of ram and 6GB of virtual ram powered by dimensity 700. It's still plenty fast for most tasks and light to medium gaming and does multitask well. It slows down, but only when throttling. The performance is sufficient. I will get another year out of this smartphone but will need to upgrade for security updates and increased ram(some LLMs need that much ram)
Edit: typo
They only matter if you are big into smartphone gaming and emulation ig
