Does Hardware in Smartphones Matter?
Silly question. Of course it matters, otherwise we would not be getting 1080p phones and 3D-capable devices with the ability to run applications our PCs ran four or five years ago.
But how much attention do you have to pay to the hardware in smartphones that are on carrier shelves today?
I consider myself a moderate geek and always enjoyed comparing hardware specs and being at the bleeding edge of computer hardware, at least as far as my budget reasoning permitted. That has changed somewhat over the past years, perhaps as a result of the general commoditization of hardware (and growing age.) However, I noticed that I was paying much more attention lately to smartphone hardware, especially as the first dual-core phones arrived.
That was an enlightening moment by any measure. Faster hardware is not necessarily better hardware and it may not matter at all in the grand scheme of smartphone usage.
Several months ago, I purchased an HTC-built G2 phone with an 800 MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. The phone had issues, especially on the battery side, which barely lasted 4 hours under heavy use, but it was a decent phone otherwise. The only performance issue I ever noticed was a boot time of more than 1 minute. Now a phone geek, I could not wait to get my hands on a dual-core phone to see how app performance would improve. So I got a LG-built G2x phone, which uses Nvidia's 1 GHz dual-core Tegra processor. The effect: Boot time is down to less than 20 seconds and Firefox is blazingly fast in JavaScript benchmarks (about 3 times faster than the G2 in Sunspider), but I would still call it the worst phone I ever owned (just behind the RIM Blackberry Pearl).
The touchscreen is less sensitive and a nightmare in games that require accuracy. Application stability is even worse as the default Android browser takes leisurely pauses now and then, the core phone app crashes frequently during dialing and I have gotten used to the fact that my G2X reboots itself three or four times a day. I would love to get by G2 from my girlfriend back, but since she has seen the G2X, my chances aren't that good. I am not going to bash the G2X, even if my criticism is admittedly harsh. This may be a lemon and I am waiting for a replacement device.
The important observation is that the hardware may be, in the current competitive smartphone landscape, a nice-to-have feature, even if you are shelling a lot of money for your gadget and expect the very best from it. The true value of your phone, however, may not be so much single-core or dual-core at this time. It is platform integration. Apple is, conceivably, leading this discipline since it has only one two devices (excluding tablets) that are fine-tuned to work with its software platform. Just like its desktops and notebooks, Apple is recreating an overall experience - and experience that is tough to match by an Android or Windows Phone manufacturer. HTC or LG will never understand Android as well as Apple understands iOS.
A few weeks ago, I was called by a friend who had trouble with his new entry-level Android phone. He was tired of his iPhone, thought it was overkill and did not want to pay AT&T's high carrier fees anymore. However, that opinion changed quickly - he got an Android phone with a 3" screen and learned that Android on a 3 inch screen is a pain in the you-know-what to use. It had a horrible graphics engine and a build quality that suggested Yugo may have returned as a phone. Yes, he should have looked closer before he bought the phone, but it reminded of my LG and the overall lack of dedication to build a device that just makes sense from a usability view.
You can look a fragmentation from different angles - you can defend the Android model and you can attack it in various ways. But you can't lose your attention to detail and it seems that Google has given phone developers too much freedom in creating new devices. Perhaps it is time to pull back a bit and make sure that tougher standards have been met and better phones are being rolled out to market. Inferior hardware can quickly kill a product image, especially the perception of quality. Microsoft has made its fair share of experience here.
Hardware that works in sync with the overall platform makes it clear that faster and newer chips do not necessarily enhance the user experience.
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the only thing that frustrated me about the phone tech getting better is the fact that unlike with PCs (which you can pretty much upgrade how you want, when you want to) you are often at the mercy of the phone companies and their ridiculous contracts! Which means most of the time, finding out some new tech has been released is simply a way to get frustrated with your current offering
That was a very scatter brained article. I felt a better point could have been made. Droid phones can have an unpolished feel at times, but if the point was a more polished software package is better than bleeding edge hardware than it was poorly made.
I just hope some companies start investing for real on that market. So much variety and little quality. That applies to Apple too (on quality). Jobs is far from making the perfect smartphone but he's quite ahead. The only reason why he doesn't get my money is because i'm still a geek and like to explore and own whatever I buy.
That said, it's the first time ever someone written something good about Apple without being partial. No marketing just the truth.
Un-optimized hardware/software/firmware/drivers/kernel combinations play a bigger role in the speed of a phone than just the hardware spec. There are plenty of 1ghz ARM phones that aren't any more responsive than something like the LG Optimus S with a 600mhz previous-gen CPU.
I have no idea what point this article is trying to make. It is all over the place.
Sure iOS is nice to use, but equally so is WP7. One of those has a huge chunk of the market, the other does not. So ask yourself mr smart ass, does phone software really matter?
Answer: They both matter as little and as much as each other. Only user experience matters, and that comes from a phone maker who pays attention to tuning the software and hardware to work well with each other.
There, I just wrote the conclusion this article should have had.
Hardware in smartphones on the shelves today probably doesn't matter much. But give it a couple more years for the smartphones to mature, by then, the quality of it would saturate to a point where people would begin looking for high performance hardware.
Mr, Wolfgang Gruener i so agree with you and i've written a few comments on different web sites including Tom's about this issue. People keep blaming the OS when the problem is actually on the other end. I mentioned that microsoft has failed in gaining market and becoming the good guy compared to apple just because of the freedom given to the manufacturers. I've personally had three different HP laptops in which all three had AMD CPUs.... None of the three lap tops still exists due to failure reasons . Guess who i've blamed..... AMD. If the laptops stopped from working it's because AMD cpus suck right?? NO, Hp laptops suck so much in their cooling design that it's impossible to any component to survive that much heat. I don't even know if the problem was the cpu but the Note just stopped working. If AMD didn't allow what meters to their CPU to work well to be built we wouldn't have to face such problems. All that made me buy a Lenovo which has access to the fan and avery time it starts to heat up too much i can just clean the damn thing. WHat a simple thing to do!!! Android OS is so letting their OS be smashed by bad comments about how it stutters and how the user experience is not so good compared to apple's. And that is a shame. Thank you again for this post and i hope that you have the voice so that people at MCS and GOOGLE listen to you.!!
Is this really a surprise? I mean, look at the horrid computer issues of the '90s when desktops were first getting popular, or the early '00s when things were beginning to move towards laptops. Each time there is a major device change it takes a while for the hardware and the software to settle down, or at least move in a predictable enough direction, to work with each other nicely. It took nearly 10 years to go from the crap of 3.1 to the glory days of win2K and XP, and even then we had a hickup with vista before getting a mature OS. But now things work very well, even without bleeding edge hardware. Same with laptops; Remember old Pentium 3 laptops? The days when wifi was an option lol. And battery life was a joke until just 4-5 years ago. And it took a while to get an OS that worked nicely with wifi, and could scale to save battery life. XP sp2 helped that a lot, and win7 does a great job at it.
So it is with the cell phone market. 2009 was the first year that smartphones began to be popular, and I am impressed that they have come so far in just 3 years to go from the crock of the first mass market phones, to what we have today. But we are in the midst of growing pains. That ugly transition from phones, to a personal computing device. The first OS (win8?) that lets me use my phone as a boot device that has all of my apps and user data, and then lets me take advantage of whatever PC I hook into for screen, processor, graphics, etc, and the manufacturer that has the hardware to do it best, will win the day. Once we move more in that direction, the sooner the growing pains will end and we can be productive again.
I think that the hardware has reached great levels to be honest. Apple is still doing fine with their iOS with less hardware than that of many leading Android models.
The difference is the OS optimization. Android is so bloated and its primary advantage of being workable across many configurations is its biggest downfall. I've tried out the Xoom tablet and its laggy even after a fresh reboot - the same goes for the Iconia tablet.
What Android needs to start doing is to optimize their OS better.
Does one life really matter in the grand scheme of life... no not really but I still care about mine.
When you depend a lot on one device, presumably your phone, yes everything matters. But the worst device is the one that ran out of battery because you simply can't use it. I won't have a phone I need to reboot 2 or 3 times a day. And finally I don't care for functions that doesn't do what they were designed to do or are not intuitive. I think the phones today are suffering for a extremely broad ambition and that they are starting not to excel in anything. I understand why, and as others pointed I think in a few months or years the software will be perfected. I have not doubts we will have true powerful and reliable computers in our pockets in a few years, but until then in my personal balance I prefer to have fewer functions, more battery life and the best reliability. I vote for the user experience.
The Samsung Galaxy S line is one of the best phones on the market in my opinion. It can be had for cheap on any carrier right now. And for a oldish smartphone still beats newer phones in performance.
Anyone who buys a phone looking for the 'latest and greatest' features is an idiot.
1) Bloody Expensive
2) Tied to a Fixed 2 or 3 year expensive data plan
3) Obsolete a couple months after you get it.
Right now, theres really no reason for dual-core phones. Whats so demanding that really requires them?
Do they improve network coverage? No. Theres not even true multitasking on phones so you dont see any basic funcionality improvements.
Angry birds and the other popular App games arent that demanding, and for some reason people are obsess with playing with 3-4" devices.
Anyone remember the Nokia 3210 of 1999 and 3310 of 2000? Those phones were excellent and EVERYONE had them. Why isn't there a market for phones that lack systemic flaws?
I've had 3 Nokia Xpress Music screens (and my brother had 1) and all 4 cracked. But I still prefer it over my wife's unbelievably sluggish Blackberry (Pearl I think). That thing takes 3 seconds to do anything with every button press, it takes an hour to figure out how to change the ring tone (and I'm tech-savvy), and it needs fancy software to access it via USB because it can't use MicroSD. And Razors--half of those are broken when they're shipped from the factory.
This is exactly why I don't own a smartphone or buy many sports video games--they put out junk on a quick redesign cycle instead of just putting out quality and improving features in iterations.
You are buying these Chinese brand phones and wonder why they suck?
I guess that I'm just too much the engineer. To me, the most important bit of hardware kit in a mobile handset is the radio chipset and associated hardware. Does it have good reception? Is the clarity of the call good? Does it xmit well? None of these phone functions require a CPU, BTW... (Or a screen, or an fm radio, an mp3 player, etc.) And the most important bit of software (for me) on a mobile handset is a good FE test suite.
I have a really nice PC at home that has a really nice screen, and a really nice laptop with a really nice screen for road trips.
You should test out a quality phone. I just picked up the Xperia Arc, and I must say, even with a single core processor, this thing functions better than almost anything else I've seen. Plus it has fantastic aesthetics, and loads of special features to boot.
I always give Apple props for 3 things they do right.
1. customer service
2. tech for dummies way for all of their devices to talk to each other
3. marketing
It is only right that Apple is owning majority of the shares in the smartphone, tablet section. They have the 3 things done right. Service, marketing, and compatibility.
In maybe 3 more years people will start picking out their devices according to hardware rather then software once the softwares mature.
I think the short version is better
LG sucks, nough said, avoid at all costs.
That was a very scatter brained article. I felt a better point could have been made. Droid phones can have an unpolished feel at times, but if the point was a more polished software package is better than bleeding edge hardware than it was poorly made.
I agree with this. I got the message the author was trying to convey, that right now software integration is much more important than hardware integration, but it wasn't terribly well done.
I also disagree with the author's offhand dismissal of WP7. I have a windows phone 7 phone, the Samsung Focus, and am extremely satisfied with it. It has the software unification of the iPhone and the hardware to run it. Microsoft set a minimum system requirement and while my Focus currently has just that, the minimum, it works just as well, and as fast, as the iPhone 4 my best friend has and so, so much better than the Samsung Impression my mom has.
In fact, I honestly have no idea how the two phones are made by the same manufacturer. Other than the relatively low build quality and the awkward button placement, these two phones couldn't be more different.
And with the update that (finally) came out, my phone now runs twice as fast as when I bought it.
I agree that a tougher standard must be set by Google for hardware manufacturers and app developers to follow and develop on Android. Only until then, Android can truely compete against iOS.
I agree on the platform integration point; but my friend has a better experience in Android from iOS. He uses expensive HTC Nexus One (3G GSM) and Samsung Nexus S (AWS/3G type 5) versus an iPhone 3GS.
The article gets one thing but in a ho-hum manner: had I on a market for smartphone, I narrow down on HTC or Samsung and a regular phone Sony Ericsson is good to look for. Price is indeed great equalizer that puts LG design on the map but you do get what you paid for with $100 Android phone.
My $100 Windows Mobile phone from HTC is solid; extremely crispy loud speaker, good battery life; a manufacturing befit the HTC brand; but Windows Mobile 6.5 Standard gives out whole slew of app problems that puts it no better than a Sony Ericsson. Though AWS did limit my choices across only few selections.
When do I get a phone that could capture Ultra HDTV (7680x4320) at 120fps with 200Mbps H.265 encoding, which then I could burn on my 6TB holo-disk?
If you want SmartPhone or Android Update. You know what to do? Right. Just visit here: http://mytechnoisland.blogspot.com/ so simple
When do I get a phone that could capture Ultra HDTV (7680x4320) at 120fps with 200Mbps H.265 encoding, which then I could burn on my 6TB holo-disk?
Tonight... In your dreams.
When do I get a phone that could capture Ultra HDTV (7680x4320) at 120fps with 200Mbps H.265 encoding, which then I could burn on my 6TB holo-disk?
call me. i have this setup.
When do I get a phone that could capture Ultra HDTV (7680x4320) at 120fps with 200Mbps H.265 encoding, which then I could burn on my 6TB holo-disk?
I also have 2 of those. The problem is that their both stuck here in my country and I can't get them to the US. If you could help me out I'll give you one of them as payment. Just send me $5000 to cover some expenses and I can get them right to you.
After the iPhone 3G slowness debacle, I switched immediately to a Motorola Atrix 4G. Very happy with the phone all around. Great battery life (about 2-3 days battery life with my usage, yours may vary), stable OS (no weird crashes), fast performance in all apps (yay dual-core), and user-friendly.
OK. I understand... you got an entry level Android device with inferior hardware, the user experience suffered as a result, so you decided to write an article about the importance of hardware in modern smartphones, and how we're not going to reach a point where stronger hardware isn't a major factor for a very long time.
Wait... you're arguing the opposite... i don't get it.
I still fail to see the need for a "SmartPhone"....even after owning one myself. Sure, my Blackberry was the best phone I've ever owned, but I didn't need 98% of the features that the phone had. I don't see "Smartphones" ever replacing desktop or laptop computers due to cost, battery constraints and size....as well as software availability.
Anyone remember the Nokia 3210 of 1999 and 3310 of 2000? Those phones were excellent and EVERYONE had them. Why isn't there a market for phones that lack systemic flaws?
Not everyone had a Nokia 3210 or 3310. My sister had several Nokia phones from 96-98 all of which failed within 2-3 months. My family has avoided Nokia like the plague ever since.
I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again - I can scroll down through the article titles on Tom's home page and ALWAYS pick out which ones were written by W.G., just by the pointlessness of the subject. Does hardware in smartphones matter? This is a question that no one with half a brain needs to ask. Just once I'd like to see Mr. Gruener tackle an issue that's actually worth writing about.