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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  • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • hydroGEN@lemdro.id
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      1 year ago

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