What chipset powers a phone is a significant factor when choosing your next phone. Of course, this is a result from last week’s poll and our readers are more tech-minded than the general population, but still – very few people picked the “don’t care” option.
The results clearly show that having the latest and greatest silicon isn’t particularly important. For over 40% of voters, an older but still capable chipset is a perfectly fine option. Recently, it is the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and the Dimensity 9200 that have been filling this role.
Although only half as numerous, there is still the group of those that do focus on getting the latest flagship chipset – it would be the one with the latest innovations. Mobile technology is still moving at a fast pace and recently generative AI (be it for images or text) has been in the spotlight with chip designers promising hardware to speed up those use-cases.
As it turns out, however, more people would be fine using even a mid-range chipset (a few percentage points more). And they do have a point – Google’s new Magic Editor for the Pixel 8 series uses a cloud-based service, despite the Tensor chip being geared specifically towards AI. If a server somewhere does the heavy lifting, why pay extra for a faster chip that will sit idle in your pocket?
Finally, there are those who see flagship chipsets as something only for gaming phones. Indeed, mobile games are some of the heaviest workloads a modern chip can encounter as AAA titles are launched by big studios. Like on desktop, faster hardware could be crucial for a good gaming experience.
Long story short, a cutting edge flagship chip will be enjoyed by early adopters today, but its life doesn’t end there – as it gets older and cheaper, it will be used in great value for money phones a few months or even a few years down the line.