Weekly poll: do flagship chipsets still matter?

12 November 2023
The latest silicon brings higher performance and advanced features for image processing, game graphics and AI. But do you really need all that?

Sort by:

alcatraz, 12 Nov 2023I never buy new phones. I am very happy about the existance... moreMy gf has been using an iPhone 11 for the last year and it is impressive how well it holds up. No stutters or lags and very snappy, on the latest software. A phone from 2019. So yeah flagship chipsets do give you way more life in the long term.

    Flagship chipesets matter the most if companies plan to support the devices for longer periods of time,like Samsung or even more like Apple and Google.
    The matter less in companies with poor software support like Poco or Sony with just 2major OS updates.

    Also flagship chipsets push for better chipsets on the mid range market.
    Take for example this years Snap 7+ gen 2, what a beast of a Soc it is.
    Imagine Samsung A54 or S23FE with 7+gen 2.
    No one would want to spend more on something more expensive.
    Or the Dimensity 9000 on this years Nord 3. This was a 2022 flagship SoC that is now used on mid range device.

      • R
      • Ryuhoshi
      • mbY
      • 12 Nov 2023

      The answer is no with a small asterisk.
      Asterisk being that it doesn't matter as long as the price is appropriate to the chip used and it does not throttle. Looking at you Exynos and Tensor chips.
      Tensor G3 was especially disappointing when you look at it's gaming performance, considering how expensive the newest Pixels are.
      All recent flagship snapdragons and Dimensity chips are great and outside of some very niche scenarios they are pretty much equal.
      And of course, if you don't game on your smartphone at all... As long as the phone does not feel sluggish i don't think it matters.

        • ?
        • Anonymous
        • Tqc
        • 12 Nov 2023

        We’ve reached a point in which performance gains are so negligible year over year that it’s getting really hard to justify chip prices when midrange chips that are several years old are still perfectly usable for most people.

        What we really need is heavy investment in efficiency, not just from the chip makers themselves but also from the OS and app developers. This would enable either longer battery lives or smaller batteries, therefore reducing material costs (both for the companies and for the consumer) and also reducing the product’s carbon footprint and environmental damage.

          Fun fact, a midrange chipset these days are far faster than a flagship from 5 years ago. As long as the apps or OS isn't too stacked and doesn't requires multiple resources, they won't slow your phone in the long run.

          Flagships chipset are still great since they don't slow down over time unless you did something terrible or OEM starts slowing it down on purpose. Plus it's better at sustaining newer apps, features and OS in the long run. It's the reason why you should get a flagship in the first place. They don't degrade as much as the lower ends.

          It's also a fact that these chipsets are completely soldered so switching to newer faster parts is always impossible. Getting something faster today guarantees it'll be fine in the next 4-7 years.

            • s
            • sumdumguy
            • nxE
            • 12 Nov 2023

            A year old high end chipset is definitely a better solution than a current upper mid range.

              • ?
              • Anonymous
              • pUW
              • 12 Nov 2023

              I only care about efficiency, nowadays the best chipset gives you a very good performance/endurance ratio so its good.

                • ?
                • Anonymous
                • nMX
                • 12 Nov 2023

                gaming needs apart, this is pure bullshit. Nowadays every chipset is good enough for generic use. Those are not PCs, mind you. All this ultra powerful hardware for smartphones is most of the working time absolutely useless. But then there's people which complain about micro lags...

                  • D
                  • AnonD-1121190
                  • 39y
                  • 12 Nov 2023

                  I have Oppo reno8 pro 5g and it performs same like some flag sh!t

                    • ?
                    • Anonymous
                    • SbF
                    • 12 Nov 2023

                    GAMIR3DH, 12 Nov 2023You mean pathtracing? And there's at the least 6 game... moreName these 6 games then.
                    Reason I said, at its fullest, cause there is single game (CyberPunk 2077) where added visual benefits are worth performance impact, if you have good card to play.

                    I'm aware that raytracing had been enabled in games since 2018 debut of Turing, except 2000 series were outright incapable to play with that setting enabled and added benefits simply weren't worth it (probably not worth at all).

                    Essentially, everybody played with RT disabled until 4000 series.

                    Todays mobile GPU-s are exactly on the 2018 year, perhaps even in 2017. Scaling down something which requires >300w right now won't happen overnight (mind you nvidia demonstrated RT capable GPU in 2009) so buying flagship smartphone for extra money because muh games is impractical and senseless.

                      • A
                      • Andre
                      • f3Y
                      • 12 Nov 2023

                      It's safe to say, if you don't have the latest flagship, you have no credibility to comment here since you have no clue what you're talking about. So my question is, does anyone here have credibility?!

                        • Y
                        • Yuyu
                        • tEZ
                        • 12 Nov 2023

                        AnonD-1003792, 12 Nov 2023I still have a Realme 7 with Helio G95. I don't recall... moreMen even with dimensity 1100, i experienced some stutter and lag in some app, maybe the optimisation is bad. But my current phone Zenfone 10 actually perform fast and smooth no lah or stutter even with 60hz refresh rate

                          Mid range chipset like Snapdragon 778g, Snapdragon 7 series and the dimensity series are more than enough to run daily task and gaming, I have a phone with the dimensity 8050 and I can say that it's full potential isn't frequently used , it's kinda pointless at this point but if the chip has some unique features like ai and etc. it might be worth it

                            Anonymous, 12 Nov 2023Ray tracing is still a meme in the PC gaming. There is a si... moreYou mean pathtracing?
                            And there's at the least 6 games that use that.
                            RayTracing is been added to several games since 2019.

                              • D
                              • AnonD-986504
                              • vI5
                              • 12 Nov 2023

                              I have a phone powered by the SD765G from about 3 years ago. And my experience with it has been suprisingly good, like if you talk about synthetic benchmarks then you would notice that this thing posts a score about 7 times lesser than the upcoming SD8G3 and I never felt until now except maybe like 2-3 times during my full tenture of using it that performance was inadequete. But again, I am not the heaviest user. I think mod range chips now are good enough for 85% of the people but for the rest who are heavy/tech savvy users, I think the flagship/sub-flagship chips can really elevate the experience and help with the longevity of the device.

                                It depends. What gives you the newest flagship chipset? When it comes to the raw power - I do not care about it. I now have s23 Ultra, switched from the OnePlus 7T Pro. It was good enough for me regarding how this device was working. What I would like to see is much, much better power efficiency. So that I need to charge my device every 3rd day. I do not play in demanding games on my smartphone. So if there was e.g. Snapdragon 8 gen 4 POWER, with maxed-out clocks, and Snapdragon 8 gen 4 undervolt with lover clocks, I would go for the latter with no hesitation.

                                  I don't need a new chip in my new phone. However, there is one criterion - the camera sensor. Companies taking the easy way use a small number of SoC and companies. If I had a two-year-old chip but the progress in the camera will be visible - no problem.
                                  Another issue is that the launcher, the applications and the system itself must be properly optimized.

                                    • ?
                                    • Anonymous
                                    • SbF
                                    • 12 Nov 2023

                                    Ray tracing is still a meme in the PC gaming. There is a single game , which utilizes at its fullest and while it looks good, it does require a lot of computational power (translated for you: a lot of power).

                                    Mobile gaming ray tracing is not viable in next 5 years, unless you brought into marketing and convinced yourself that you can see some gimmick (which you actually can't).

                                    As for flagship chips, I own a flagship and reasons came down ultimately to better software support and performance down in years (it is 4 years old and still holding it). So check your income and ask yourself , how long you want to have this particular device.

                                      • ?
                                      • Anonymous
                                      • nwF
                                      • 12 Nov 2023

                                      Anonymous, 12 Nov 2023Buy an SD 8 Gen 3 phone and use it like an SD 695 phone. Ab... moreRent free 😂

                                        I will still buy flagships. But maybe not the latest ones. I have been using old flagships since 2018, tried from Galaxy S6 all the way up to a Galaxy Note20 Ultra and haven't had almost no complaints with the peformance, but with midrangers, i just lose too many features. But at least the peformance is nice enough with big battery efficiency.