Sunday debate: Are our smartphone processors fast enough?

15 July 2018
We discuss if faster chipsets actually benefit your user experience or if they are just for bragging rights.

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  • ?
  • Anonymous
  • mx{
  • 15 Jul 2018

I have a dream... where one day.... apps like asphalt 8 will open as fast as stock apps like the calender app

    • ?
    • Anonymous
    • amu
    • 15 Jul 2018

    Whackcar, 15 Jul 2018Thing is, that every flagship chipset since the Snapdragon ... moreOnly to a point though.

    We've seen this in the PC market. Every year the newest CPU would give you a much nicer and snappier experience.

    But today the improvements are very slim for the majority use cases.

    We'll get there with phones as well.

    There's still some way to go though, as a phone's chipset is doing heaps with image processing and things like that. So slow motion, endless 4K60 recording and so on are yet to be realised to their potential.

      • H
      • H-1
      • ajb
      • 15 Jul 2018

      Anonymous, 15 Jul 2018Snapdragon 800 was enough already.. Ppl want power of P... moreI second that, I have a SD400 device that has one major problem: 1gig of ram.

      If it had a 2 or 3 gigs, it'd run most casual games with ease.
      I could even run asphalt:airborne :)

        H-1, 15 Jul 2018Yes, more speed would be nice. But keeping current perform... moreI remember those days! And I miss them..

          • ?
          • Anonymous
          • xq5
          • 15 Jul 2018

          I'm not a gamer but fast performance is very important. You must enjoy the phone not hate it's annoying lags and slow performance.

            • ?
            • Anonymous
            • JT5
            • 15 Jul 2018

            What I need ...

            8 cores
            4 x 1.35GHz + 4 x 2.2GHz
            5nm
            Video = 4K30fps HDR
            Sensors up to 25MP

              • ?
              • Anonymous
              • JT5
              • 15 Jul 2018

              r33fd, 15 Jul 2018The thing about the smartphone processors industry is that ... moreI use SD810, still as good as day 1.
              From android 5.0.2 to 7.1.1..
              No regret.

                • ?
                • Anonymous
                • JT5
                • 15 Jul 2018

                Snapdragon 800 was enough already..

                Ppl want power of PCs just to run games that SD400 can.

                  • D
                  • AnonD-120291
                  • JiG
                  • 15 Jul 2018

                  the chips are fast enough already, its all to do with optimization if we want the apps and such to open faster, a new OS from the ground up written properly and built for speed could make use of the super chips that are here now or the chips that are coming over the next 12 months, obviously that isnt going to happen but engineers should just be focusing more on making the OS smoother

                    GSMArena, where is the Finals of the Phones? You seems to have been forgotten that...

                      • ?
                      • Anonymous
                      • r7b
                      • 15 Jul 2018

                      Pou is world

                        • H
                        • H-1
                        • ajb
                        • 15 Jul 2018

                        Yes, more speed would be nice. But keeping current performance and focusing on power efficiency would introduce devices with good performance that last 3+ days of use.

                        I don't want pc-grade graphics on my device as much as I don't want my PC to take good selfies. Call me an old school, but back in the day, 500 mAh was something huge that kept phones running for a week.

                          • H
                          • H
                          • D$J
                          • 15 Jul 2018

                          Need it to be more faster and battery efficient, as we move ahead with ar, vr, ai, etc we need more horsepower in the smallest cross sectional area in order to make wearable tech and also revolutionize our homes with integrated IoT.

                            For the majority. It's enough, For me, It's just 0.01% of the power I want in my phone, I need the power the smartphone gives, and the faster it is, I'm happier. (I am not really sure if It'll pass, but I have kind of a mindgasm when I think of the fact I have the highest power of the same year. Anything else and I'll chase to have it)

                              • J
                              • John
                              • 3a4
                              • 15 Jul 2018

                              They are already fast enough, what more do you want to do with them? All apps work perfectly fine and open within a couple of seconds. What needs to be improved is the batteries of phones because processors are fine as they are, there really isn't anything on phones that is demanding.

                                • ?
                                • Anonymous
                                • 0rY
                                • 15 Jul 2018

                                They could still be improved a bit, so they can run 960fps or even more with camera recording. Without needing a separate Dram chip that can only store pictures for 0.182second.

                                  Sure it's more than fast enough. . .


                                  . . . only if there's no more "updates", "new features", and "improvements".

                                    Whackcar, 15 Jul 2018Thing is, that every flagship chipset since the Snapdragon ... moreAgreed. That's how business work. Encouraging people to buy more. Yearly phone upgrade becomes usual.

                                      • r
                                      • r33fd
                                      • n2x
                                      • 15 Jul 2018

                                      The thing about the smartphone processors industry is that the relative performance degrades very fast over time and not just because the cpu gets old after a lot of current passes through, but also becomes obsolete because faster and faster chips launched every year mean developer will not bother to optimize their apps as well for the older chips as they do for the newest and shiniest.

                                      That's part of the reason why so many older android devices feel a lot more sluggish 2-3 years after launch, while ios devices are usually fine for longer periods. (developers take more time to properly optimize their apps for each ios device, while on android they just make a very generic app made to run on anything and only maybe add some optimizations for the newest and most popular chips like Snapdragon flagships)

                                      On desktop the need to buy the latest and greatest cpu was small for many generations because the technology progressed at a much slower rate. Only recently the core count started to rise from 4 to 6 or even 8 on mainstream cpus and this already determined most people to upgrade their processor.

                                      So my answer to the question is that processors are never fast enough!
                                      The need to buy a better one is strictly linked to the race of development for more powerful hardware.

                                        Fast enough for what? As if processors were ever fast enough, be it in phones or computers...