Sunday Q&A - Week 12

Hello and welcome to the Week 12 edition of our Sunday Q&A! This week we discuss our battery test once again, fingerprint sensors and why we don't have more scores on the site.

Webster: Hi, I like your site for comparing phones, but would it be possible for you guys to list an IR blaster as a feature? This is one of the major points I look at when choosing a phone.

Hi, Webster. We are, in fact listing IR ports in our specs database - if you look at a phone that has it like the Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus, you’ll see a line for that. However, since it’s a rather niche feature we chose to omit the row entirely for phones that don’t have it so as to keep the length of the table under control.

Wasym: I like the fact that your reviews are very detailed but when it comes to comparing real life performance of cameras of smartphones, the compare tool is not a very good option because it requires a lot of technical know-how for any person to actually be able to spot a difference in two cameras. Is it not a very good idea that you develop a rating system for cameras, rating cameras on a scale of 1-100, like DxOmark?

Thank you for your input, Wasym, it’s much appreciated. First to address the photo and video compare tools - we don’t really think there’s a certain level of proficiency required to use the tool. You don’t need to be a pro photographer and be able to analyze all the technical aspects of every shot to take advantage of it - it’s meant to let everyone do their own comparisons.

The list of priorities for a phone in general and its camera in particular is something strongly individual so each aspect of its performance carries different weight to different people. That’s why producing a final rating will only serve to start fan wars and won’t be of real help to most people - in fact it will be misleading to them. And we really rather offer an “incomplete” service than a potentially harmful one.

Satyam: Can you do a comparison between chipsets like Snapdragon, Apple and Samsung Exynos?

Doing a comparison of the Apple chips and the likes of Qualcomm and Samsung is not a good idea (or at all possible) for two reasons. First, comparing benchmarks across platforms is bound to tilt the playing field as software runs different on iOS and Android.

Things are different with Android devices as there’s plenty of diversity there - both in terms of manufacturers and chipset makers. And as luck would have it, we just did a pretty detailed overview of the available options there - head this way to read it.

Abaid: I bought the Galaxy Note7 last year and we all know what happened. Now I am planning to get the Galaxy S8. I consider waiting for 3 months after the release, just to be on safe side, or going for the G6 as I heard it is using heat pipe to reduce battery temperature. Any suggestions from you guys? Did Samsung do anything with the Galaxy S8 to prevent a Note7-like issue?

First, the Note7 drama unfolded in about a month so waiting three months to see if it doesn’t repeat itself seems a bit excessive. In the aftermath of the recall Samsung explained in detail all the measures it has taken to prevent it from happening again, including 8 additional quality tests. The company’s battery division also committed to a $128M investment to boost the safety of its products - so a repeat fiasco is really unlikely.

That said, going for the LG G6 is also a viable option. Not because of its heat pipes, which are fairly common in modern flagships, or due to some inevitable Galaxy S8 implosion, but simply because it is a pretty good phone.

Ali: Hello! I am looking to buy a mid-range phone and there are some great options but, if leaks are to be believed, the snapdragon 660 and Helio X30 devices are on the horizon. Can you explain what will be the performance and efficiency difference between current crop of SoC and next generation 14nm and 10nm SoCs? Thank you!

If you are in the market for a new phone now, you probably shouldn’t be concerned about Helio X30 and the Snapdragon 660. The new MediaTek X30 chipset is unlikely to be available in any device before July at the very earliest and even if it makes that optimistic goal it will not reach the mid-range for at least another few months.

The thing is the jump from 14nm to 10nm isn’t nearly as big as the one from 28nm to 14nm so we aren’t looking at another huge jump, but merely a nice evolution step. So evaluating the potential reward versus the waiting required it’s probably not worth it and you might go for whatever is available right now.

Jaison007: Which is the best location for the fingerprint sensor on a phone? In the front or at the back? Where does GSMArena prefer it to be?

Hi Jaison, there are actually not two, but three different positions for the fingerprint sensor - Sony likes to put it on the side of its phones. And each of the locations has its pros and cons that we’ll try and sum up here.

To answer your other question - there’s no clear favorite position among our team. Yours truly would go with a rear-mounted sensor anytime, but many of my colleagues swear by the frontal location. The Sony side position also has a few fans, so it’s a pretty even split.

Anonymous: Can you please explain the differences between screen types used in smartphones? Many users always ask about it and we do not have a clear understanding of TN, TFT, IPS, LCD, LED, OLED, AMOLED & Super AMOLED. There are also confusing combination like IPS LCD, IPS-Neo, TFT LCD and so on. Sometimes I thought it is a typo on your behalf when reading the phone specs though I might be the ignorant one here.

There’s plenty written on the web on the differences between the different screen types, but by asking this question I assume you want a quick and simple explanation rather than a bunch of technical terms.

At the end of the day specific implementation of different display types vary quite a bit so the only way to be sure what works for you is to either get the phone and see for yourself or check out the display section of our reviews.

Jim H: What was the effect of standardizing of brightness for battery life tests? Did the numbers tend to decrease for the majority of phones tested? Which brands or phones were benefiting the most from a lower brightness at the previous test's percentage?

For the majority of phones the effect was minimal - a large percentage of those were close to 200 nits at their respective 50% settings, so it didn’t really make much difference. And no there wasn’t a decrease across the board - we’ve only done the test both ways on a few handsets and some did slightly better, some slightly worse. None saw a dramatic change though.

What it helped though is in seeding out the outliers - the ones who had their brightness south of 100nits and the ones that had over 300 nits at 50%. We hope that this move has made their battery test results more comparable to the other tested devices.

Some of the outliers in question include pre-Android Blackberries, which usually had significantly higher brightness level than 200nits - upwards of 300 nits. Most Huawei and Meizu phones had brightness bellow 150nits - often closer to 100nits and those might have scored differently under the old testing procedures.

Nokia Lumia phones were all over the place - some significantly lower than 200 nits, while other were much higher.Samsung's tablets had an average brightness of around 300nits.

But you have got to remember that we transitioned to the 200nit battery tests more than a full year ago (January 2016 to be precise), so the models tested the old way are already at the end of their life or on their way towards that.

If you have any questions for us - you can send them by using the form over here.