Last week’s survey result shows that more than half of our readers believe flagship chipsets are an important consideration when choosing their next phone. However, not everyone cares if it’s the latest flagship chip. In fact, most prefer to get an older version as it tends to offer much better value for money.
It takes a while for mid-range chips to match the CPU, GPU, and ISP performance of a previous top-of-the-line chip. For example, a 2020 Snapdragon 855-powered phone still has a faster GPU than a Snapdragon 778G-powered phone. The 778G remains a popular choice powering mid-range devices in the $400 to $500 range. Meanwhile, a 2020 phone can be cheap on the used market.
Several people in the comments have mentioned the used route. But this is not the only option, Qualcomm has improved on some of its old successes and released Snapdragon 860 and 870. The latter has proved particularly popular and has been featured on no less than 11 devices this year alone.
One way or another, almost 40% of voters are happy to pick up a phone with an old flagship chipset. There are those who want the latest version, but they represent less than 25%.
Then there are those who think that mid-range chips have reached “pretty good” levels. They consider things like screen, cameras, battery and so on more important. And they point out that there is sometimes a huge gap between peak performance and sustained performance.
There are two things that cause this. The first is that some high-end chips run hot, this goes for desktop CPUs and GPUs as well. And while this is beyond the control of (most) smartphone manufacturers, the second problem is that some of them really skimp on cooling, which makes the problem worse. The benchmark sections in our reviews include tests for thermal throttling since benchmarks alone don’t tell the whole story.
Cooling is usually featured prominently in gaming phone marketing. And as the survey shows some, not many but some, see flagship chipsets as something that only matters for gaming phones. There the lackluster GPUs of some mid-range chips can really drag things down. 90Hz and 120Hz displays are quite common even in the lower price range, GPUs that can run games at 90fps or 120fps are rare even in the high end.
This week saw the introduction of the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 phone, and also the first Dimensity 9200 phones – coincidentally, they’re part of the same family (the vivo X90 series). So, new flagship chips are coming to raise the performance bar even higher. There are also new mid-range chips on the way, if those are your thing.
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