Do most mobile users encounter applications where processor speed is the limiting factor? Almost all smartphone usage in my experience is bottle necked by network IO. I don't really use my phone for gaming or anything intensive - I guess people expect their phones to run Fortnite these days so maybe processor speed is more important.
> I don't really use my phone for gaming or anything intensive
Let me be the first to tell you that for many, many people, smartphones are their primary computing platforms, and they do everything on them. I've had to help people file taxes on smart phones, sign documents, and more. Processor speed isn't important now so much as it is later. A good portion of the budget market is going to grab a phone because of the price and hold on to it for years. Will a 20% slower processor stand up as well as its bigger cousin in the future? Probably less so.
Sure but then primary computer for most people don't need that much computing power. It's mostly about documents and communication. People who really need more processing power are either tech/gaming enthusiasts or professionals, and for sure this device isn't aimed for them.
It's been fun watching this line be repeated for 30 years without getting more correct.
Normal users need good performance too, but the bottom end of the market is always saturated with completely unsuitable crap. A safe way to look at it is that most users need roughly the power of a 2 year old flagship device. That has been true for many years as well.
> It's been fun watching this line be repeated for 30 years without getting more correct.
It absolutely is getting more correct. I used to update my desktop every year or two. I'm now still on a Core i5 2500 from 2011 and have zero reason to upgrade again, even despite some gaming use.
For phones, it's a bit different because they're back on the part of the performance curve where desktops were years ago and power efficiency is still improving rapidly but I think they're getting close to that crossover point.
It seems like for every desktop user who's still on a Sandy Bridge or whatever, there's a user asking for N*2 RAM where N is the maximum currently amount of memory available in a laptop.
I find that both statements are correct. 10-year old processors are still fast enough (I'm using one) but we need more RAM in 2019 than we needed in 2010.
There aren't many benchmarks yet, but the Snapdragon 670's performance is roughly between the Snapdragon 821 and 835, which were the flagships just 3 and 2 years ago.
Even a 10 year old PC (assuming it wasn't low-end at time of purchase), with a SSD, is still good enough for most people.
For me, I'm planning on getting a Pixel 3a. The talk of it being like a "2 year old flagship" sounds great to me, not a detriment at all. I'm upgrading from a Honor 8, which is an almost 3 year old mid-range phone, so the Pixel 3a will be a decent upgrade, even though the performance of my Honor 8 is still perfectly good. I'm mainly upgrading for the camera, 3 years of software updates and because my Honor 8's Bluetooth is becoming less reliable over time.
Loads of chromebooks ship with Rockchip processors sporting A17 chips at 1.7GHz. They can do all those web things just fine. The A73 at 2.0GHz will blow that performance away.
The limiting factor of a cellphone as a primary computer platform is actually lack of keyboard and screen space. Computing power for most people has been fine for years now.
I do regularly game on my phone, and I'm still quite happy with a three-year-old iPhone 6s. The vast majority of mobile games don't require advanced specs, and even if I played Fortnite I wouldn't play it on a damn phone.
Apple chips actually fall behind current Qualcomm chips in most GPU benchmarks now. They still have a lead in core CPU performance but the gap there has narrowed considerably.
>Apple chips actually fall behind current Qualcomm chips in most GPU benchmarks now
Not sure why you are getting that idea. But that is not true. Even including cases where Qualcomm Adreno 640 used in 855 under some overclocked condition.
And unless something truly magical happens I don't see Qualcomm will catch up, GPU performance scales linearly with Die Size used for GPU, and Apple will forever have the advantage in that area, where Apple are using the SoC themselves and could afford larger die, while Qualcomm makes profits on die and yield of their SoC.
But not modems. They're still the top there, and competitors seem unable to beat them; can any one provide insight as to why? Maybe Apple will do in-house development and succeed with that.
Doesn’t Qualcomm protect their modems with a giant firewall of patents? I’d wager it’s hard to make a good modem without violating (or being forced to license) at least a few of their patents.
Apple already is doing in-house development; that's why they poached the head of Intel's in-house wireless modem chip team. But they clearly don't have a product yet, or Apple wouldn't have paid several billion dollars to Qualcomm to settle up.
