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Do Specs Matter Anymore For the Average Smartphone User?
ourlovecanlastforeve writes: While reviewing a recent comparison of the Nexus 5 and the iPhone 6, OSNews staffer Thom Holwerda raises some relevant points regarding the importance of specs on newer smartphones. He observes that the iPhone 6, which is brand new, and the Nexus 5 launch apps at about the same speed. Yes, they're completely different platforms and yes, it's true it's probably not even a legitimate comparison, but it does raise a point: Most people who use smartphones on a daily basis use them for pretty basic things such as checking email, casual web browsing, navigation and reminders. Those who use their phones to their maximum capacity for things like gaming are a staunch minority. Do smartphone specs even matter for the average smartphone user anymore? After everyone releases the biggest phone people can reasonably hold in their hand with a processor and GPU that can move images on the display as optimally as possible, how many other moons are there to shoot for?
640K ought to be enough for anybody.
Just like PCs what matters has shifted.
On the desktop speed is becoming less important while video is becoming slightly more important thanks to GPU compute being used for transcoding video and of course games.
Laptops cpu speed is less important than display quality, graphics performance, battery life, and weight.
Oh phones it is really all about the screen and battery life for most people.
CPUs right now are fast enough for majority of people. Of course there are users that need the fastest CPU, GPU and so on and others that need the lowest possible power draw.
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The experience does.
When the experience is good, specs don't matter.
When someone has a bad experience or sees someone else have a better experience they lack, then specs matter.
For example, I'm going to assume resolution is going to stop mattering with the 6+ having 1080p (surely 4k/8k will be superfluous here, right?), until phones can emit 3D holograms. But they can work on other metrics till then like contrast and sunlight readability.
When it was a question of phone, it was mostly Nokias that were inexpensive, worked well, battery held up days. Then we had the SMS craze that gave us better screens and a better keyboard. These were purchased mostly for weight and for look, like a jewelry piece. They lasted years until someone grew tired of it, after the 3rd battery change.
Now, the best correlation would be the computer industry. In the 90s, a computer would last 3 years until a major paradigm shift and a break to a much better CPU/GPU/HDD. Now, the Average Joe doesn't need the latest greatest 3K$ computer, (s)he can take a 1K$ computer and be happy for years with it.
The phone industry gets there slowly too. There are major speed advances, miniaturization, optimizations, and a phone you'd be tempted to change every year doesn't need to be changed anymore at such breakneck speed, however the industry is still improving with users demanding even more, so we're not there yet. My iPhone 4 still works relatively well, although it shows its age by not running the latest apps as fast as a new phone can. It's more than 10x slower than the current 6 in most categories, and apps are getting to use that speed. My battery life is 2 days of normal use, however, it drains quickly if I start to connect to Facebook or Safari, or other heavy-duty modern applications. But I just look at my wife's 4S and it's leaps beyond by 4, and it's merely a year later ... We could probably keep it 1-2 more years, or even more, depending on what the modern apps expect of the phone.
I'm giving the iPhone as example. This applies to any given phone that's using 3rd party tools and apps. I noticed the upgrade pace is slowing in users. You need a real shift in order to get a user to switch these days, where it was ridiculous _not_ to shift every year 3-4-5 years ago.
Nobody's saying that innovation should stop, just that CPU is "good enough".
Faster CPU is not the only possible innovation, and not increasing CPU speed does not mean "status quo". If the CPU is fast enough for mainstream users, innovation can apply to other aspects that people actually care about, like camera quality, battery life, voice quality, data speed, waterproofing, improved functionality, screen quality, ... you name it!
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Because your e-mail loads equally fast doesn't mean mine does (I have 10k+ messages in my inbox). Because you use your phone for simple games, doesn't mean I don't use it for viewing 3D brain scans.
You sound exactly like the average user the article is talking about.
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I actually sat down and thought about this, and I think software obsolescence is a big factor. Apple supports phones with new OS releases for four years. (Which is nice by phone standards but kind of shameful by any other measure. Something that a pleateau in specs might fix, but I digress.) You might get a year or so of reasonable compatibility beyond that but we're already seeing apps that start at iOS 8.
If you're spending £600 on the latest iPhone at 64GB, that's £150 per supported year
If you're spending £500 on last year's 5S at 32GB, that's £166 per supported year
If you're spending £400 on a 5C at 32GB, if you can still find one, that's £200 per supported year.
Viewed as "renting the device" for a certain number of years of faithful service, you really are better off going with the newest model. I'm not sure about the Android or Windows Phone situation though.
(As you can guess I've been doing this calculation to figure out which phone I should buy. I would probably be on an iPhone 5C already if I wasn't worried about it running out of support before I pay it off.)
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Do smartphone specs even matter for the average smartphone user anymore?
Generally speaking no they do not. I would argue that they never really did aside from plainly obvious things like screen size or ability to access data. Certain features are basically table stakes (good screen, camera, adequate storage, etc) but it's pointless to pay for features I'm not going to need or use. Sure I'm happy if the phone is faster but I don't really give a crap how many Mhz the processor has or how much RAM it has unless it somehow gets in my way. I want enough performance that I can do the activities I want without the perception that the phone is holding me back. Whether the Samsung or the Apple device has marginally higher screen resolution is not something I care about at all unless the difference is very noticeable.
Personally though I wish the phone makers (Apple I'm looking at you) would get over this obsession with making the phone as thin as possible and put a bigger battery in the damn things. There is a reason companies like Mophie are making a lot of money selling battery cases. Lots of us value longer battery life over thinness and weight.
Android handsets are in a numbers race as far as specs go, going so far as to push beyond what anyone would appreciably notice. Case in point: The LG G3 with its 1440p, making for 534 PPI. What, exactly, is the point of this ridiculous PPI? You certainly aren't going to notice a difference between a 1080p screen and that one at these screen sizes unless you're used to using your phone under a magnifying glass or an inch away from your face. And yet it's a big feature, proudly displayed as the first bullet point on the website. It's a numbers game.
Then there's the dual core vs quad core (and beyond) and maximum clock speed bit, which is absurd when you consider that different implementations (Qualcomm vs Apple for instance) even within the same architecture will have different levels of efficiency. In the PC world, for instance, Intel's processors absolutely dominate AMD's per-core and per-clock, and both are x86-64. For some perspective on that, Anandtech wrote that a single Haswell core has double the floating point performance of two AMD modules - four "cores". For Android's part, the trend seems to be, similarly to AMD, pushing for higher and higher clocks (Snapdragon 80x), and not efficiency. This can be seen in the preliminary benchmark results that show Apple's supposedly underpowered CPU topping the charts.
And then, coming back to the story's example of the Nexus 5 vs the iPhone 6, comparing Android to iOS as far as RAM requirements go couldn't possibly be more misguided. iOS is far more restrictive as to what an app can do in the background than Android is, and much more aggressive with reclaiming memory for the app in the foreground. Android keeps apps running for as long as possible (until memory is needed, basically), and apps can do essentially whatever they want to do in the background. This also factors in to battery life, where power consumption on Android is likely to be much higher and therefore much larger batteries are being used there for what is basically similar battery life.
It's for those reasons that it's tough to actually compare the two ecosystems, and it's tough to say whether the specs really make that much of a difference to the overall experience. I think the ultimate answer is that regardless of performance numbers on paper, we've hit the wall for what we're expecting our devices to do. For my part, I say that, for now at least, specs are irrelevant. As long as the device is able to handle the tasks thrown at it without choking and has the features I'm looking for, it's a device worth considering. I think the Nexus series in particular has always embodied that point of view.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
I disagree ... my ability to have a spare battery (which allows me to charge it while using the phone without having an annoying cord attached to the phone) and SD card is more important *to me* than longer battery life and a thinner phone and a better camera. For the most part, those things are irrelevant, my phone battery life is 'good enough' and my phone size is 'thin enough' and my phone camera is 'good enough'. Only smug elitist have to have what they consider to be the best, in my opinion. For 90% of the population, 'good enough' is good enough.
For example, many people only use their phone camera to post to the Internet with no editing ,, so anything about about 4MB really doesn't gain anyone anything. People who want a quality camera buy a camera .. people who want to take pictures of their food use their phone. Granted, I wouldn't knowingly buy a phone with a really crappy camera, but even my Samsung Gear 2 watch takes pictures suitable for posting on Facebook. Now, I've taken some great pictures with my Samsung 4, just got back from a motorcycle trip to San Francisco and took some amazing coastal panoramas with it.
Specs are important, but not everyone cares about the same specs. Some people don't care as much about battery life or camera quality. I am interested int he Samsung Active because it's water resistant.. It's nice to have a wide variety of phones.
Which is why I buy Android phones, they offer the most choices of any type of smartphone. More vendors, more options, more price ranges. I can move from one vendor to another and not loose the apps I've bought.
There is nothing in the Apple specs that provides that capability. And why I'll never buy an iPhone. No matter how amazing their camera is.
I have a dSLR and specialty lenses for amazing. And no .. it's not the 'best' camera out there either. Just one that is 'good enough'.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.