What defines a flagship? It used to be a powerful processor. For lack of other technologies, all manufacturers could do was increase the processing power of their smartphones. In principle, this was logical, given that Android required much more headroom than iOS. But at some point, users have ceased to admire kernels, gigahertz and gigabytes, and manufacturers had to focus on the camera. But processors are still important.
It is impossible without flagship smartphones, even if state employees began to work no worse than them
Despite the fact that today there is a very common opinion that flagship smartphones are no longer needed (I admit, until recently, I thought so myself), this is certainly not the case. This was largely due to the appearance on the market of rather powerful processors of the middle price segment. Therefore, the paradigm changed a little, and priority was given to the photographic capabilities of devices, while their performance became something of a matter of course. Someone even began to believe that mid-priced processors are in no way inferior to top-end ones. Let's figure out why this is nonsense.
The most powerful processor for smartphones
Above – smartphones with Snapdragon 865 Plus, the third from the bottom – a smartphone with Snapdragon 76 5G. Behind him are the flagships of past years
Let's start with the actual performance. The most common misconception about this is that processors like the Snapdragon 76 5G are almost as good as the Snapdragon 865 and 865 Plus. This is not true. Testing in synthetic tests shows that Qualcomm's flagship chip outperforms the mainstream in performance by almost two times. As for me, this is a serious gap, given that in the ranking of the computing power of Qualcomm itself, the Snapdragon 76 processor 5G follows just behind the Snapdragon 865 and 865 Plus.
Why you need a powerful processor
Why is this performance needed? Here are just a few reasons:
- Faster loading of applications;
- More efficient game development;
- More processor performance equals more graphics performance;
- Faster processing of web pages;
- Faster photography.
But there are also hidden benefits. In addition to the actual performance, the headroom of computing power gives the smartphone the ability to deeply integrate artificial intelligence and smart algorithms. It is thanks to the algorithms, in particular, that it is possible to achieve a higher quality of photo and video, which is confirmed by the almost complete absence of camera phones based on non-flagship processors on the market – they simply do not pull out. And those that artificially force the quality to be extended do not reach an acceptable level in terms of speed. For this reason, incidentally, the Mi Note 10, which is considered a non-flagship camera phone, takes pictures slower than the classic Mi 10.
Smartphones with the best cameras
There are no non-flags in the DxOMark top
I'm not even talking about quality. We will not now give examples of photos taken with different smartphones in order to avoid subjective assessments. Instead, I suggest you open the DxOMark ranking and see which smartphones make up the top ten. You can relate differently to this laboratory and their assessments, but, oddly enough, for some reason, there is not a single sub-flags in the top of the rating – only smartphones based on Snapdragon 865 and Kirin 990 (flagship processor Huawei). After all, even if DxOMark can be bribed, do you think that no manufacturer of inexpensive smartphones wanted to do this? You just can't argue against facts.
What conclusion can be drawn from this? In my opinion, very simple. Flagship smartphones, like flagship processors, are needed and should be. Without them, we will be deprived of the colossal opportunities to which we have become accustomed. After all, modern smartphones are many times superior to models even three and four years old, at least in terms of speed, at least in photo quality, at least in any other indicators. Therefore, if you are not ready to spend money on top-end devices, this is your right, and there are many decent models among state employees. But if you want to have a top-end device, then it can only be a flagship.