According to the current development of the mobile phone market, we have taken stock of the technological progress and highlights of last year and this year, and by the way, I will teach Lao Feng's cheats for choosing a machine~
1. Four things you need to consider before buying a mobile phone
First things first: budget
You can eat as much as you want, and it's completely unnecessary to buy a mobile phone beyond your budget, after all, mobile phones are basically outdated after three or four years. Don't buy a phone that will last a lifetime. Don't spend more money than you can afford to buy a mobile phone, and now the mobile phone can't reflect your identity or anything, after all, the average person can afford to eat three months of soil.
As for how to set a budget, I can give you some advice: use your monthly income as the upper limit. Exceeding this limit may have an impact on your quality of life. Of course, this is a cap, and of course you can also choose to buy a mobile phone with less money. After all, now you can buy an Android flagship for 3,000 yuan.
As for the student party, first ask your uncle and aunt how much budget they are willing to give you!
The second thing: demand
If you want to buy a mobile phone for the elderly, of course, you must buy a mobile phone with a large screen, a large font, and a cool speaker.
You're a game party yourself.,Of course, you have to buy the top flagship processor + super-large battery + high brush screen.,Otherwise, how can you take your sister off during a team battle?
If you are the reincarnated spirit child of Daguerre and the secret disciple of Master Chen, of course, you will need a mobile phone with a powerful camera and accurate screen color.
If you're a girl・・・・・・ girl, just look good and buy something
In short, you need to be clear about your needs in order to find the right phone for you. Of course, I will also put each mobile phone in the later mobile phone recommendations which needs to be suited.
The third thing: the purchase channel
I first recommend going to Jingdong's self-operated flagship store to buy a mobile phone,Jingdong's brand self-operated flagship stores are all opened by each brand in Jingdong,For example, Xiaomi's flagship store is Xiaomi's official opening in Jingdong,The first wave of new products on sale is also in Xiaomi's self-operated flagship store。 The biggest advantage of Jingdong's brand-operated flagship store is that it is convenient to repair and return goods, unlike Tmall, Jingdong can return and exchange goods for no reason within 7 days, and Tmall Taobao must issue a fault certificate of the brand's maintenance point to return the goods. In addition, Jingdong has its own logistics, and if the mobile phone is broken, you can call the people of Jingdong Logistics to send it for repair, so you don't have to run errands yourself.
In addition, Pinduoduo is also an option that can be considered, after all, it is cheap, but Pinduoduo has previously broken out the problem of sealing the machine (some merchants repackage the returned machine and sell it as a new machine), so it needs to be weighed.
In the age of the Internet, there is no need to go to physical stores to fight profiteers. The physical store is also looking for the brand to buy, why not go directly to the brand to buy? not only save the layers of exploitation of the second and third level agents, but also buy a more reliable mobile phone.
The fourth thing: buy an Android phone or an Apple phone?
At present, there are only two mainstream mobile operating systems: Android and iOS. The main differences between the two are as follows
1. System support
I have an iPhone 6s that Apple has been providing for seven years of technical updates since its release in 2015 and did not abandon it until 2023.
On the other hand, the Android flagship of the same year, such as Xiaomi Mi 5, Samsung S6, etc., basically only has two to three years of upgrade support, and the version number will not be upgraded again after three years.
Longer system updates can ensure that your phone can last longer, although as the battery ages, the performance is outdated, and the actual version number is not much meaningful, but you can at least use it!
Of course, the prices of the two are not the same. Back then, 6s was enough to buy two Xiaomi Mi 5. Even now, the top-of-the-line iPhone models are basically two or three times the price of cheap Android flagships.
How to choose depends on your expectations for the age of the phone. If you want your phone to last a few more years, then I recommend buying Apple, and if you're thinking about changing your phone for two years, Android is also a good option.
2. The system is stuck
"It's 2023, and Android phones are no longer stuck"
There will definitely be many veterans who will teach the whites so earnestly. Yes, since the Snapdragon 835 era, basic Android phones won't get stuck -- provided you have a basic understanding of how to use Android phones.
One of the more unpleasant facts is that it's 2023, and there are still many people who don't know how to clean up the uninstall residues, WeChat QQ cache and advertising data cache---- In fact, most girls and the elderly don't know what these are.
Especially the mobile phones of the elderly, as soon as they are turned on, they will dance wildly.
If the Android system does not have basic maintenance, it will still be stuck after more than a year, but as long as the current Android phone does not use light memory, it will not be stuck into a slide like in the past.
Note that this is not a user's sin, but an old problem left over from the beginning of Android's design. In my opinion, mobile phones, such civilian consumer goods, should be simple and easy to use, and Android has forced many whites to become the gods of the machine, which is the biggest failure of Android system design. Not everyone can be a GEEK, and there are still 1.2 billion people in China who haven't gone to college, and you can't expect everyone to be able to operate a smartphone perfectly.
Apple does a better job of being easy to use — while Apple's extremely closed system makes iOS boring (no personalized themes, no plugins and frameworks, not even custom ringtones), but it's really simple. It can be used by children as simple as 80 years old and as young as 3 years old. I think that's the biggest advantage of Apple's system.
In short, Android is more playable, but requires you to have a basic understanding of Android smartphones to play, while Apple's iOS system is easy to use, but there is nothing personalized.
In addition, there is another point that needs to be emphasized: iOS and Android game account data are not shared. The Honor of Kings account in your iPhone and the Honor of Kings account in your Android phone are not the same account, even if you log in with the same WeChat ID, the skins you bought in your Apple phone cannot be seen in the Android account!
Of course, there are exceptions, miHoYo's games are data exchangeable, but Tencent, NetEase and other big factories are not interoperable at least now, and people want to make more money for you.
2. Popular science of basic parameters of mobile phones
1· Soc
The so-called Soc on mobile phones is essentially a general term for CPU+GPU + other chips (AI computing, etc.). Because the inside of the mobile phone is expensive, it cannot be assembled at will like a desktop notebook, so chip manufacturers are packaged chips when they are shipped, which is commonly known as a turnkey solution in the industry.
At present, there are only a few mainstream mobile phone chips: Apple A series, Qualcomm Snapdragon series, MediaTek Dimensity series, Huawei HiSilicon Kirin series, Samsung Orion series, and UNISOC Truong Tiger series.
A brief comment, according to the market share from low to high:
Ziguang Zhanrui Tiger Ben:
The mainstream model T610 has weak performance, mainly used in low-end machines, and its performance is similar to that of Qualcomm 675/665 and Kirin 710.
Samsung Orion:
It is basically impossible to buy it in China, and few manufacturers choose it, and only Meizu and vivo have used it in my impression. Although Orion has a variety of high, medium and low models, but the high-end model is extremely collapsed, the previous Exynos 1280 performance collapsed, the heat is not low, even Samsung itself began to dislike it, its own flagship S23 gave up Orion, and it was only replaced with Exynos 2400 on S24.
Huawei HiSilicon Kirin:
The once domestic light, especially the flagship series 900 series and 9000 series, has more performance and energy consumption than the Qualcomm and MTK for a while. It's a pity that due to U.S. sanctions, HiSilicon Kirin once became a swan song.
But in September last year, Huawei made a shocking reversal and launched a pure domestic chip Kirin 9000s, and there is also a domestic version of 5G baseband and RF chip, which directly kills and stages a Jedi turnaround.
By the way, all of Huawei's Kirin core mobile phones currently support 5G, but the logo will not be displayed on the phone, presumably to circumvent US sanctions.
However, Lao Feng said fairly, as the first generation of pure domestic chips, the performance of the Kirin 9000s is still relatively stretched, almost only at the level of the Snapdragon 888 three years ago, and it is now the performance standard of a mid-range machine. And because of the backward manufacturing process, the heat generation is quite large.
The backwardness in performance cannot be solved for the time being, and the current situation is similar to the situation of Kirin K3V2 more than 10 years ago, when Huawei HiSilicon was just starting, and Kirin K3V2 competed with Texas Instruments and Qualcomm, but because the architecture was too niche + TSMC was not at the 40nm level at that time, the compatibility of a large number of Huawei's flagships was extremely poor, and many software could not run, and at the same time, the heat consumption was very amazing.
The most critical problem was that HiSilicon and Huawei had no money at that time, and the K3V2 was used for three years, which directly led to the violent death of Huawei's flagship D series. But after seven or eight years of iteration, by the Kirin 990 period, Huawei can open with Qualcomm MediaTek 55.
Lao Feng can only sigh, Huawei still has two hundred brushes. Give Huawei and the domestic supply chain a little time, and there is a high probability that it will be okay to re-ascend to the peak.
MediaTek Dimensity:
It was once famous for the stalk of "one core is difficult, and nine cores are onlookers". Because MediaTek's core scheduling technology was not up to par in the early days, it often caused the single-core to be over-stressed, while the other cores were indifferent.
However, with the launch of the Dimensity series, everyone found that MediaTek chips are getting better and better. In 2024, the main ones such as the Dimensity 9300 (flagship) and Dimensity 8300 (sub-flagship) will have strong performance.
Many flagship phones with Dimensity 9300 are only around 3,500 yuan. And the Dimensity 8300 series of mobile phones directly bargained to around 2000 yuan, to have cost-effective performance, cost-effective and low energy consumption, Lao Feng could only yell: MTK, Yes!
Of course, the Dimensity series also has flaws, and in my opinion, the biggest flaw is that MediaTek never opens up the kernel source code to the public, so it is extremely difficult for third-party UI adaptation.
Don't underestimate this, most Android phones provide system upgrade support for only two years, if the manufacturer gives up on your phone, Qualcomm Snapdragon series due to the open kernel source code, so there will be a third-party team to use love to generate electricity, provide system upgrades and updates.
For example, ROMs such as Lineage are personally tuned by various gods, although they are a bit unsuitable in China, but they are no worse than the ROMs of various brands.
In addition, the Dimensity series generally has poor support for mobile photography. This is not MediaTek's pot, but the mobile phone manufacturers have cooperated with Qualcomm most of the time to engage in photography, and MediaTek has only risen in recent years, and the manufacturers and its supporting facilities are not doing very well.
For example, vivo's flagship X80 Pro is available in Dimensity and Snapdragon versions, but the number of shooting modes supported by these two versions is different. The Dimensity version lacks several modes compared to the Snapdragon version, such as Starry Sky, Supermoon, Time Slow Gate, and Motion Capture.
On the OPPO side, the gap between the Find X5 Pro Dimensity Edition and the Snapdragon Edition is even greater:
The self-developed Mariana X-sensor, Hasselblad imaging system, and floating image stabilization are not present on the Dimensity Edition.
Therefore, if you pay attention to mobile phone photography, don't choose Dimensity, it's not that MTK is not powerful, it's that the manufacturer's adaptation is really lacking.
Let's get back to the point and comment on two Socs that have a relatively large number of MTK shipments
Dimensity 9300
It adopts a very aggressive all-large core design, abandons small and medium-sized cores, and can achieve a stronger energy efficiency ratio under medium and high loads. In addition, the number of transistors is as high as 22.7 billion, which is the largest SoC at present, crushing the 18 billion of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen3.
Although the single-core performance is still inferior to the old rival Qualcomm, the multi-core performance is ahead across the board, and even slightly better than Apple's M1. In terms of GPU, the performance is outstanding, and in terms of gaming, it is stable Snapdragon 8Gen3 and Apple A17 Pro, and the power consumption is extremely low during high-frequency operation, and Genshin Impact can be suppressed within 5W.
The only flaw is that the all-large core design leads to a slightly higher standby power consumption, after all, there are no small cores to ensure standby power consumption, which is understandable.
This SoC Lao Feng recommends the performance party to buy, and it is very competitive at the price of 3000-4000, and MTK is also the first time that it can be opened with Qualcomm 55 in the high-end market.
Dimensity 8300
Compared to the old 8200, the process technology has been upgraded (from the first generation 4nm to the second generation), and the architecture includes four Cortex-A715 large cores clocked at up to 3.35GHz and four Cortex-A510 efficiency cores clocked at 2.2GHz. Compared to the Dimensity 8200, the peak CPU performance is improved by 20%, while the peak power consumption is reduced by 30%.
However, in terms of GPU, it has been greatly improved, equipped with a 6-core Mali-G615 GPU, the graphics performance test score has been increased by 60%~82%, and the power consumption has also been reduced by 55%. In terms of GPU performance alone, it is already approaching the Snapdragon 8 Gen2.
Strong performance, low power consumption, GPU is not good, and it can rank second at the price of 2000 yuan. Unfortunately, the CPU performance still can't beat Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3. Lao Feng is also recommended to the game party to buy.
Qualcomm Snapdragon:
As the largest selling brand in the Android camp, Qualcomm Snapdragon has two consecutive flagship SoCs overturning in the past two years, and the Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 8Gen1 generate huge heat, resulting in problems such as downclocking and poor battery life. It wasn't until TSMC production was changed that it could save face.
As Apple continues to rot, Qualcomm flagships have gradually caught up with Apple's A-series chips, especially in terms of multi-core performance and GPU. After giving up Samsung's production, the previous leakage problem has almost been repaired.
Snapdragon is divided into the low-end 4 series (4 Gen 1, 480+), the mid-range 6 series (6 Gen 1), 7 series (7 Gen 3, 7+ Gen 3), and the high-end 8 series (8 Gen2, 8 Gen 3).
Let's comment on the current Qualcomm Snapdragon shipments of several SoCs:
骁龙 7Gen3
Essentially, it's a skinned version of the old Snapdragon 778G, with a shabby CPU configuration, no X performance cores, and very conservative frequency settings. Compared to the Snapdragon 778G, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 has a 10% increase in CPU single-core performance and a 10% increase in multi-core performance. The GPU has been replaced with the Adreno 720, and the gaming performance is okay, and its performance is about the same as that of the Dimensity 8100 overall.
Overall, the peak performance is ugly, but the energy efficiency ratio is okay. Due to its cheap price, the Snapdragon 7 Gen3 is generally used in low-to-mid-range phones, and it is not bad if it does not exceed 1500 yuan.
骁龙 7+Gen3
The next-generation mid-range price-performance U features the same X4 core design as the Snapdragon 8 Gen3, including the full Cortex-X4 large core, Cortex-A720 mid-core, and A520 efficiency core. This architecture upgrade has led to a significant improvement in CPU performance for the Snapdragon 7+ Gen3, and although the cache has been slashed, its overall performance is still stronger than the Snapdragon 8+, and inferior to last year's Qualcomm flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen2.
There are 2 flaws: the old Adreno 732 used by the GPU, and at the same time, the power consumption is explosive, and the energy consumption ratio fails to be processed.
Personally, I recommend it to friends who don't play mobile games, after all, the CPU performance is still very good, but this GPU is indeed a bit stretched, which is not suitable for e-sports.
It should be noted that the Snapdragon 7 series generally does not have strong GPU performance, so although the large-scale mobile games in the last year or two can still hold up, if you want to use it for two or three years, it is recommended to take a look at the Snapdragon 8 series below.
骁龙 8+ Gen1(骁龙 8+)
After the Snapdragon 8Gen1 overturned, Qualcomm learned from the pain: It's not me who is wrong, it's Samsung!
After replacing the foundry with TSMC, taking advantage of TSMC's advanced process, Qualcomm can do it again!
The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor's heat control is much better than that of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, and the temperature is much lower, so it won't be too hot even when running at full power. This allows major mobile phone manufacturers to ensure the overall experience of the mobile phone through stacking, and there will be no bad situation of the previous generation of 8Gen1 frequency reduction and brightness.
However, the 8+ Gen1 is not perfect, although the temperature has dropped, the peak power consumption is still not low, and the power is quickly exhausted under full load, so many phones equipped with 8+ Gen1 are equipped with a large 5000 mAh battery to prevent the battery life from crashing.
Of course, don't worry too much, at present, there are only a few large mobile games that can make the Soc run to peak power consumption, and most of the commonly used apps run at low frequencies and do not consume much power.
In the final analysis, Qualcomm's radical high-performance design with a super-large core + 3 large cores is destined to be a high-frequency electric tiger, which TSMC can't save when it comes.
骁龙 8Gen2
The flagship SoC in 2023 is advancing by leaps and bounds, with single-core performance approaching the Apple A14, and multi-core performance hammering the Apple A15 approaching the A16.
The strongest is the GPU, and the graphics ability has hammered Apple's latest flagship SoC A16, and Qualcomm can once again beat Apple in some areas after seven years, which is gratifying.
In addition, this is also Qualcomm's first SOC that supports ray tracing technology, which can make the lighting and other effects in the game better, but there are very few mobile games that support ray tracing technology, so it's just fun.
Of course, the defects of the previous Snapdragon 8 series have also been inherited, and the peak power consumption is still exploding, up to 12W, which can wrestle with the laptop CPU...
However, this time, the scheduling control is OK, and the power consumption of running Genshin Impact under the media test is about 6W or so, and the power consumption for daily use is about 2-5W, so you don't have to worry too much.
骁龙 8Gen3
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has been replaced with TSMC's latest N4P process, and the energy consumption ratio has been greatly improved. Based on the Qualcomm Kryo 64-bit architecture, it includes 1 main processor core based on Arm Cortex-X4 technology clocked at up to 3.3 GHz, as well as 5 performance cores up to 3.2GHz and 2 efficiency cores up to 2.3GHz.
Its overall performance is already able to hold down the Apple A17 Pro, and it only slightly loses in terms of single-core performance.
In terms of GPU, the Adreno 750 GPU supports hardware ray tracing and 240 FPS gaming, with a 25% increase in performance and a 25% increase in energy efficiency, which can hold down the fruit of the A17 Pro but not the Dimensity 9300.
Overall, Qualcomm's generation upgrade is boring, it is a regular upgrade, compared to the stacked macho Dimensity 9300 next door, it has little advantage, only in terms of single-core and standby energy consumption, and other GPUs, multi-cores, etc., are hoisted up by 9300. If it weren't for the fact that mobile phone manufacturers are too hard to optimize MTK, the position of the king of machines may change hands this year.
In general, Qualcomm's performance in the past two years is still okay, and there are new technologies that have also greatly improved performance, whether it is a mobile game enthusiast or a photography player, as long as the budget is in place, it can be used.
Apple A-Series:
Once upon a time:
Apple Now:
Apple's A-series used to be the benchmark for ARM phones, with the strongest performance, the strongest energy consumption ratio, and always the strongest!
Even Apple executives said when they released the A15 that we were at least two years ahead of our competitors:
Three or four years ago, with TSMC's process advantages + self-developed CPU and GPU architecture, the A series had absolute performance and energy consumption advantages, and the Android camp was completely unable to confront it, and Apple was already close to writing "I'm going to fight 10!" on its face
However, with years of squeezing toothpaste, Qualcomm and MTK have already caught up with or even surpassed Apple in some areas (GPU, multi-core performance) in 2024. Qualcomm has also poached a lot of people from Apple in the past two years, and Apple's single-core performance may also be overtaken.
In addition, last year's new A17 Pro is also a joke, although the performance is very strong, but due to the collapse of iPhone 15 Pro's heat dissipation, a large number of mobile phones are unable to use after overheating, and there are even digital big V shooting videos, and the camera app is forced to pause. Later, Guozi also issued several iOS 17 patches in a row, and forcibly reduced the frequency so that users could use it normally. So the current A17 Pro is technically a remnant version.
Another problem is that Apple's products are not cheap, you have to pay at least 5,000 yuan for the performance of Apple hanging, whether it is cost-effective depends on whether your purse can withstand it.
Finally, attached is the all-mobile SOC performance ranking, which comes from Geek Bay:
2. Screen
The screen is arguably second only to the SOC. After all, we face the mobile phone screen every day, and if we choose a garbage screen, we will really be disgusted for several years.
Screen Material
The screen material of mobile phones is roughly divided into OLED and LCD, of which OLED is widely used in flagship and mid-range phones, while LCD screens are commonly equipped in low-end and mid-range mobile phones.
I won't popularize the technical principles of the two here, you can directly look at the figure below. I'll talk about their advantages and disadvantages here:
OLED advantages: richer colors, fast response time, low power consumption, high refresh rate upper and lower limits (as low as 1Hz)
Disadvantages of OLED: screen burn-in, screen flashing, expensive price, short lifespan
Advantages of LCD: cheap (low maintenance cost), long life (compared to OLED), basically no screen burn-in
Disadvantages of LCD: High power consumption and easy light leakage
In my opinion, OLED is a thousand good, but the fatal flaw of "screen flicker" makes me extremely disgusted with it.
I have used many OLED flagships before, and due to the severe screen flicker, it has caused me nausea, vision decay and other symptoms. Of course, I am a screen-sensitive eye, and it may not have much impact on some friends who are not sensitive to strobe.
But when I turn on my phone in the dark of night, I really feel the following:
Ah, my dog's eyes!!!!
In addition, OLED also has the defect of screen burning, OLED's pixel life will appear brightness attenuation over time, when a certain area of the screen displays a fixed picture for a long time, the pixel brightness attenuation speed in this area will be faster than other places, resulting in unrecoverable dark spots on the screen.
The main reason for OLED screen burn-in is that there is a fixed image at the same position of the picture for a long time.
Example:
However, OLED technology has made great progress in recent years, and it generally takes two years to burn the screen, while in the era when OLED was first introduced, the screen will be burned after 200 hours of continuous on. I think that with the advancement of technology, the problem of screen burn-in will be completely solved sooner or later, but now the problem of screen burn-in is still plaguing OLED users.
So, as an LCD party, I just want to shout those seven words frankly:
However, I also have to admit that there is no LCD flagship today in 2024, and most LCD is only used on low-end machines.
Refresh rate
The refresh rate is the number of times the screen is refreshed per second. The higher the number of refreshes per second of the screen, the smoother it feels.
There are two major advantages to a high refresh rate: on the one hand, it gives people a "more hands-on" experience when using apps such as Weibo and WeChat, as shown in the picture above, and on the other hand, when playing games, a high refresh rate can keep you about a few milliseconds ahead of your enemies:
Now, mobile phones with a 120Hz refresh rate have been everywhere, and there are even game phones that can reach a 165Hz refresh rate, which is really a must-have for the mobile game party!
Color gamut and color depth
The color gamut is the collection of display colors, and the current mainstream color gamut standards are sRGB and DCI-P3;
Bit depth is a unit that uses the number of bits to express the number of colors in a digital image.
DCI-P3 has a wider color gamut than sRGB, so many phones will claim to support DCI-P3 on their promotional pages.
However, there is no inclusion or contrast between color gamuts, and some colors can be displayed in sRGB but not in DCI-P3.
At present, there are no very good parameters on the mobile phone that can intuitively compare the color gamut and color depth of the screen of different models, so it is recommended to look at the relevant evaluation data for the quality of the screen, and go to the offline store to check it in person.
3· RAM
That is, running memory. The bigger the thing, the more you can open in the background of your phone, and the more parallel programs you have. Just remember that the bigger this thing is, the better, for the Android camp 8G is barely enough, 12G is good to start. Don't worry about the iPhone, due to the tombstone memory mechanism of iOS, 6G and 8G are used the same, but the system updates obtained by 6G memory are estimated to be two years less than that of 8G, and there will be a problem that the memory is exhausted when switching applications and the app restarts.
In addition, some friends may mind LPDDR5 and LPDDR4, LPDDR5 (5500Mbps) with a higher data transfer rate is definitely stronger than LPDDR4 (4266Mbps), but the performance perception is not strong, in other words, the more than 1000Mbps that are stronger are difficult to be felt by users.
In addition, some experts say that LPDDR5 memory consumes less power. Compared to LPDDR4X memory, LPDDR5 memory has 29% more bandwidth and 14% less power consumption.
However, this is only a theoretical result, and the difference in power consumption is very small in actual tests. For example, the Meizu 17 with LPDDR4x and the Meizu 17 Pro with LPDDR5 only had 1% more battery power than the Meizu 17 after a five-hour heavy battery life test.
So there's no need to worry too much about LPDDR5 and LPDDR4, it's certainly better to have LPDDR5, and it doesn't hurt to have it.
4· ROME
Storage, also known as Flash Memory. At present, there are two mainstream ROM specifications, UFS and eMMC. I won't go into the technical differences between the two, but let's just talk about the performance differences: UFS 2.1 has about three times the read and write speed of eMMC 5.1, and USF3.0 is about 85% better than UFS 2.1
In addition, there is a UFS3.0 advanced version of USF4.0, which is about 60% faster than UFS 3.0, and also reduces general power consumption, and is not much better than UFS 3.0 in other aspects. Of course, the more advanced USF4.0 must be the first priority!