I upgrade my phone every other generation or so, say 3-4 years, and I get my kids another generation back or pass down my phone. I cannot remember that last time I noticed something running slowly on an Android phone. I am much more interested int the battery life.
Phones are in decent shape but other ARM devices aren't so lucky. A lot of Android tablets sitting at low-midrange and below have extremely weak CPUs for example, even those costing $200-$300 which was a bit of a shock for me. I have a ~$210 2022 Lenovo tablet that is outperformed handily by 2018 midrange Pixel 3XL, which seems a bit silly.
>Phones are in decent shape but other ARM devices aren't so lucky.
Yes, but that's because Qualcomm and Samsung are about as incompetent at CPU design as early-2010s AMD was; their products have been 3-4 years behind the leading edge for the past decade.
This might change with Qualcomm's acquisition of Nuvia, but they're still going to take a few years to be comparable with what you can get in a 400-dollar iPhone/iPad and be unavailable in the sub-1000 dollar Android market (just like the Snapdragon 888- whose performance is on par with the 2nd gen iPhone SE- is today).
The Anandtech breakdown (https://www.anandtech.com/print/18871/arm-unveils-armv92-mob...) goes into detail on this. While all the cores are claimed to perform better at the same power draw, they draw less power if they have to perform at the same level as the previous generation.
Smartphones will use a combination of big (X-4), medium (A720) and small (A520). Since the small and medium cores are more performant and use less power, that opens up opportunities for battery savings. There could be loads where the larger core remains asleep while the smaller ones finish the job, since they’re more capable. Or the same cores do the job, but use less power.
So if you buy a flagship in a couple of years, the CPU will consume less power. The battery tech will have progressed as well. However, the screens might be higher res or higher refresh rate (120Hz instead of 60Hz). Or it might use a 5G radio that needs more power. So the net effect is that battery lasts about a day.
that's true, i was surprised when i switched my phone because after 5years battery life was not so great anymore, my old phone without sim card and almost dead battery was able to wake me up 3 days later
phone that couldn't last full day, lasted over 3 with about maybe 40% battery (idle and stationary but connected to wifi)
I would imagine that this translates to lower power consumption when doing the same tasks. Something that would require the CPU in a current phone to work hard for a couple of seconds, like calculating possible routes in Google Maps, being able to be completed in less than one would make a difference. Especially if we do this kinds of tasks thousands of times throughout the day.
Sadly this will probably mean some apps will be able to steal more CPU time for doing telemetry and serving ads because the user won't notice a difference in response time and performance.
I am driving my hardware usually to the ground - I am not gaming but browsing using apps on phone.
My Android is 8 years old and it was flagship at the time and I also don't remember anything being slow on it.
I have also low end Android phone - which is 3-4 years old, it was cheap like $50-$100 range and on that phone nothing really works and even when it was new it was quite slow anyway. But I keep it as a backup in case my main dies and I need some phone to put sim card in to be able to call people.
