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?

Reminder: If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to [email protected]!

  • unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    19·
    1 year ago

    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.

      • I need NOS@lemm.eeEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          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.

      • unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.