It goes without saying that the past two years have been difficult for the tech world. The pandemic caused factory shutdowns just as demand for microchips was exceptionally high due to the cryptocurrency craze, and telecommuting accelerated business upgrades.
This resulted in a struggle for manufacturing space, which caused low-margin products to take a back seat to GPUs, CPUs (servers and PCs), and crypto ASICs (specialty chips). The only exception is probably Apple, which gets preferential treatment at TSMC for the Taiwanese company’s advanced burning processes.
With the return to normal, some of the terrible trends seen over the past two or three years will potentially disappear.
A new era of more efficient and less overheating flagships
Over the past three years, high-end smartphones have shown very unstable and sometimes even lower performance than previous flagships. You may have noticed this if you’ve been performing demanding tasks on a smartphone for the past three years or reading the tests de NextPit.
Worse still, some smartphones even force quit apps on benchmarks, or were heavily throttled in games, resulting in unstable and uneven framerates. This should change this year, if manufacturers don’t take too many liberties in the manufacture of their smartphones of course…
The SoCs of 2023 should require less exotic cooling solutions… / © NextPit
Newer high-end SoCs like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ are 4nm, delivering better performance with less thermal throttling. It’s true that previous generations of CPUs were also engraved in 4 nm, but the most important thing is that the manufacturing process changes according to the foundries.
For several years, the nanometer engraving no longer really reflects a unit of measurement, but only a marketing-driven generic generation name. This led to some weird situations where the major players’ transistor density was very different, with TSMC’s N7 (7nm) being roughly equivalent to Samsung Foundries’ 5LPE (5nm) and 10nm etching from Intel.
Towards autonomy and beyond
The result could already be noticed before the shortage of semiconductors during the pandemic, in the Exynos vs Snapdragon debate. The Exynos SoCs engraved in 7 nm by Samsung Foundry were not only more prone to overheating, but had a much lower autonomy than the Snapdragon engraved in 7 nm.
It wasn’t a coincidence (or a grand conspiracy) when Qualcomm SoCs from the Snapdragon 888 onwards started exhibiting overheating issues in benchmarks, along with worse battery life (and sometimes no performance benefit at all). due to thermal clamping).
This generation, along with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, was manufactured by Samsung Foundry, presumably after Qualcomm was unable to reserve production capacity for TSMC, at the time overwhelmed by demand for processors from Apple, no only for iPhones, but also for the transition from Intel processors to its own ARM chips in MacBooks.
With the Exynos vs Snapdragon debate over, hopefully the winner won’t rest on their laurels. / © NextPit
With the return of Snapdragon SoCs at TSMC, starting with the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, we are starting to see smartphones that offer good reasons to change models.
First impressions from my colleagues Camila and Matt suggest that the Galaxy S23 (Plus) equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC have excellent battery life, while having more stable performance. And the first tests on Youtube, like that of MKBHD, confirm the trend, not only for Samsung smartphones, but also for new models equipped with the latest SoCs from MediaTek and Qualcomm.
Updates Galore
Another point where the new flagships bring better value is software maintenance. While in the past you had to buy a Pixel smartphone to get a good update policy, nowadays most manufacturers (with the glaring exception of Motorola) offer at least three updates. Android for their high-end smartphones, OnePlus, Oppo and Samsung go even further.
This should allow new smartphones to be usable for longer, and it will even benefit those who update annually or bi-annually, with second-hand models potentially retaining more value over time than before.
Even the mid-range is at its best
And some of these advantages even apply to mid-range models, which over the years have incorporated really competitive SoCs from MediaTek (Dimensity 1000 and above), Qualcomm (Snapdragon 778G), and even Samsung (Exynos 1280) , offering performance close to the 2018/2019 flagships for less.
The Nothing Phone (1) may have marked a change in the perception of mid-range SoCs. / © NextPit
Obviously, opting for a mid-range smartphone requires making concessions on the photo module, fast charging and sometimes software maintenance. But the thing is, mid-range smartphones are more than enough for most people. Unfortunately, the segment also drops features like the microSD slot and headphone jack, but that’s another discussion.
Yes, the economic outlook is among the worst we’ve seen in a generation, with budgets cut for superfluous purchases and the inescapable effects of inflation. But by a terrible twist of fate, it’s happening just as we’re about to witness one of the best generations of smartphones in years…
The alternative, as always, is to keep an eye on the good deals, especially those from your telephone operator, and of course, to see if the trade-in offers available are worth it. More than ever in the age of smartphones, every euro counts, and certain contractual offers are particularly interesting if you plan to keep your smartphone for at least two years.
What do you think? Have you bought a high-end smartphone recently and did not notice any of the symptoms mentioned above? Do you think it is irresponsible to change smartphones in such a tense economic context? Or have you opted for a mid-range smartphone and are you very satisfied with your purchase?
