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Discussion: Do smartphone benchmarks matter?

Happy weekend!

There has been a lot of news related to benchmarking lately, including an admission by Google that they blocked Play Store downloads of benchmarking apps during the Pixel 8 review embargo, as well as fresh chips coming down the pipeline by Qualcomm and MediaTek.

Discussion questions:

  • Do smartphone benchmarks matter?
  • Are they still a useful reference and do you consider them when shopping for an upgrade?

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21 comments

  • Do smartphone benchmarks matter?

    Benchmarks matter inasmuch as it reflects the user experience, which is to say, benchmark numbers taken alone are meaningless. However, if you tell me a game runs with specific characteristics of user experience such as quality settings and frame rate, that data describe what I can experience playing that game.

    Maybe I don't play that game. Perhaps, I'm not a mobile gamer at all. Even then, benchmarks can provide value by describing what real world performance is attainable provided that benchmarks reflect real user experiences.

    I would say that benchmarks matter but only within the context of how benchmark numbers relate to a tangible thing you could experience with the phone. A CPU score? I think the value is questionable until you talk about how an app runs.

    Are they still a useful reference and do you consider them when shopping for an upgrade?

    I think benchmarks are more useful for enthusiasts to understand relative performance but are usually detached from the user experience that I really care about when making a purchase.

    I want to know the benchmarks, but these would not drive my purchasing decision. I want to hear from reviewers who actually used the phone... because I plan to use the phone to do phone things, not to run benchmarks.

    • These are good points. Storage and wifi speeds are two important ones for real world user experience but they're overlooked by many reviewers.

  • Do smartphone benchmarks matter?

    Maybe? I look at them from time to time. For most people it is just a number and it is nice for an average user to confirm that the new phone is a little better than the previous.

    I recently beta-tested a device (been using it since May). And I ran some benchmarks on it. I noticed that someone else was also benchmarking the device before and after pushing updates. So, I feel that there are companies out there trying to perform well on the benchmarks.

    Are they still a useful reference and do you consider them when shopping for an upgrade?

    I'm mostly concerned about the following, in no particular order:

    • age of the SoC
    • screen refresh rate
    • availability of replacement parts and repairability
    • durability
    • the company selling the device (CSR, ESG, reputation)
    • whether or not the device is an rebranded rectangle from an OED
    • bloatware

    Bloatware removes many brands from my list of potential devices. Yes, I could use adb to remove them, or maybe even root my phone, but I shouldn't have to buy a device with Facebook baked in.

  • I think a good review of the overall perceived performance is more important. Some phones are fairly powerful on paper in their specs, but real world performance can be very different. That might not even show in benchmarks: CPU might score great, GPU might score great, but somehow day to day performance even just scrolling the home screen is horrible. I've even seen phones where 3D games render faster than just a plain 2D scrolling in the settings app.

    I guess benchmarks can be useful to put some numbers on, but most don't end up benchmarking the Android APIs just the raw performance. But it's not gonna catch that the CPU<>GPU bandwidth is insufficient for a basic ScrollView to be smooth as new items gets rendered.

    My Galaxy S7 ended up slower than even a an aging Galaxy Nexus or Nexus 5 despite being much better in most specs, even running the display at 720p instead of 1440p, resolution didn't make a difference whatsoever. My OneTouch Idol 3 was unbearingly slow despite having the exact same chipset as a Motorola model that ran butter smooth.

  • I would need to be a serious enthusiast to benchmark a phone unless it's for pure curiosity.

    Benchmarks are less important on phones as the hardware doesn't change through it's life. If I was writing custom drivers or testing custom images, sure. Regular benchmarks make sense to see if software changes are correctly utilizing the hardware. That falls squarely in enthusiast territory though.

    For comparison, when I building a new PC, I turn all the knobs to 11 and overclock it to full capacity. Benchmarks show performance numbers as well as test system stability. I'll benchmark again after major hardware changes or major driver changes. The system wasn't built in a lab and components are all selected by me to meet my performance goals.

    Now that I think about it, benchmarks on any device makes sense for troubleshooting. If I had a problem with my phone, running benchmarks could be extremely useful in identifying what components are failing. Still, I have rarely, if ever, done that.

    And no. I don't bother with benchmarking new phones. Performance is nice, but functionality is more important to me. I will absolutely minimize stress on the components to ensure longevity of the device.

  • They only matter when considering efficiency, throttling, and battery life. If the next SoC has throttling, efficiency issues, i would not consider buying it. Smartphone SoCs have become plenty fast for regular everyday tasks (even midrange ones). It's not a matter of "If it can?" Anymore as much as, how long? If you don't get the fastest flagship, it will still do whatever tasks you throw at it (barring heavy gaming/emulation) just that much slower.

    I have a smartphone with 6gb of ram and 6GB of virtual ram powered by dimensity 700. It's still plenty fast for most tasks and light to medium gaming and does multitask well. It slows down, but only when throttling. The performance is sufficient. I will get another year out of this smartphone but will need to upgrade for security updates and increased ram(some LLMs need that much ram)

    Edit: typo

21 comments