Why comparing smartphone specs is a waste of time

CPU

If a few years ago the flagships on Android could have very different processors, today the comparison by this criterion has practically lost its validity. Top smartphones get the same or nearly identical chips. We no longer look at specs to see how fast the new flagship is.

Of course, benchmarks like AnTuTu allow us to single out the most powerful of the flagships, but such tests may not reflect the real picture and the speed of the device when performing everyday tasks. The largest chipmaker Qualcomm compared choosing a smartphone based on processor performance with choosing a car based on its tires. And this comparison perfectly describes the fact that installing a powerful CPU is not enough for the gadget to work quickly.

In 2018, it is much more important to get acquainted not with the number of cores and the results in benchmarks, but with the capabilities offered by the chip. It can be support for high-speed LTE networks, the fastest charging, and high-quality 4K video recording.

RAM

Some modern flagships are equipped with 8 GB of RAM, which allows them to store much more data in memory. However, it is not at all necessary that such a smartphone will provide faster access to games and programs in the background than, for example, the iPhone X with 3 GB of RAM. An important role is played by the efficiency of RAM management.

In Apple's case, laughing at 2 or 3 GB of RAM is pretty silly. While Android applications have to be developed for a huge number of devices with completely different equipment, then iOS software is sharpened only for several iPhone models, which differ slightly in the amount of RAM. Developers always know exactly the only possible hardware configurations, which allows better code optimization and reduce the load on RAM.

Camera

Over the past few years, with the constant race for megapixels, smartphone manufacturers have switched to optimizing more important details. The dimensions of the pixels themselves are changing, auxiliary sensors appear, focusing and stabilization technologies are improving. All this, of course, is great, but the list of characteristics of the photo module will still not give you an overall picture of how this smartphone shoots.

A prime example of not relying on raw specs is the Google Pixel 2 with a Visual Core chip. The latter was created specifically for processing photos from a 12-megapixel camera. It is he who is responsible for the incredible HDR + effect and portrait blur mode, for which competitors use a second camera.

Comparison of portrait photography on Google Pixel 2, iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy Note 8

Even if you do not take into account the flagships of Google, which are not officially sold in Russia, you should understand that a camera with top-end characteristics does not guarantee you the best shooting quality. The record-breaking aperture and larger pixels reflect only the potential that software algorithms for photo processing must reveal. They are the ones who squeeze everything that is possible from the camera.

Battery

Smartphone battery capacity is measured in mAh (milliampere-hours). It is this parameter that allows you to characterize the energy charge that the battery can hold. It would be logical to say that the more the better. However, bare numbers in this case do not guarantee anything either.

How the smartphone will manage this charge depends on the technical equipment and software algorithms. The power and efficiency of the processor, the size and resolution of the display, the number of built-in sensors and even the sound setting - all this affects the autonomy of the smartphone.

Some manufacturers resort to tricks like temporarily disabling sensors or forcing applications to unload from the background to increase the duration of smartphones. Moreover, this is often done by default. Such moments should definitely be checked in the battery and performance settings.

Outcome

characteristics of smartphones: the bottom line

But nevertheless, you should not close your eyes to the technical characteristics. The main thing is not to exaggerate their significance, but to use them only as a guide. Sometimes some manufacturers from less impressive hardware on paper get the most, while the top specifications of another gadget in practice may turn out to be completely imperceptible.

When choosing a new smartphone, it is very important to study as many reviews as possible, read reviews and comparisons of those resources that you trust. It is field testing and the experience of using other buyers that can be much more useful than a list of characteristics.