No one is born as anything, and I certainly wasn’t born a tech enthusiast. I proudly call myself one right now, though. But the phone enthusiast in me died a long time ago.
I remember arguing with friends about which phone was better than the other based on specifications. It was an easy job to be a specs warrior back then because we didn’t have as many smartphone brands as we have right now.
This is one of those rare things from the past that I don’t regret, because phone specifications were a significant factor at that point in time. It mattered, everyone cared, and so did I.
I’m not aware of any tech historian who’s ever tried to record the exact year phone specifications began to lose their influence over users’ purchasing decisions, but it’s a shift that many people, including myself, agree has happened.
A good specs sheet is still important, and it still tells a lot about a smartphone, but the problem is that everyone has learned to get it right for most people.
We should all be more worried about what brands don’t talk about, instead
A smartphone isn’t a single slab of hardware. Several hardware components work in synergy to keep our eyes glued to the phone for hours each day.
However, not all parts always work well together. When they do, sometimes they come with unintended consequences that phone brands don’t put enough effort to address.
The heat problem, for example, is a result of powerful hardware components working together inside a small space.
While you can’t disobey the law of Physics that says when energy is used to do some work, some of it will turn into heat, phone makers have yet to come up with a robust way of managing the obvious byproduct.
We should all acknowledge how difficult an engineering problem this is, but it’s also a fair question to ask why brands keep repeating the same mistakes of prioritizing “impressive specs” while doing little, or worse, completely ignoring their consequences.
Some phone makers offer clever software solutions to this problem by showing a warning on the screen when it gets too hot, as the iPhone does, or by shutting down certain features to cool the phone down.
While these are sensible solutions, they expose the cost of obsessing over specs. For an average user, who represents the majority, the trade off isn’t worth it because they hardly ever get the actual benefit of “impressive specs.”
We all love faster charging, denser batteries, and faster chips, but they have gone to such an extreme that they have begun to hurt more than they benefit.
I don’t need my phone’s battery to get full in 15 minutes. Take longer, but please don’t overheat when I’m doing something as light as browsing the web when it’s plugged in.
I don’t need the fastest chips that win benchmarks, either. The one that most of us need is the one that stays cool and prioritizes stable performance over peak performance.
Specs were never a reliable way to judge a phone on their own
And they probably will never be
Smartphones may have become a daily commodity, but let’s not underestimate how they perform tasks that once required a device that takes up the size of an entire room.
We don’t need to go that far in history. The camera, for example, has evolved from a specialized luxury item into an everyday utility, thanks to the rapid advancement in smartphone technology.
I still remember the day when Nokia started marketing the Nokia Lumia 1020’s 41-megapixel PureView camera as a replacement for a bulky professional camera.
It was a great marketing strategy to catch eyeballs, and many Android manufacturers later used the same “DSLR replacement” messaging to highlight the strength of the camera of their flagship phones.
The problem with this was that the companies knowingly or unknowingly planted an idea in consumers’ minds that higher megapixel counts mean greater camera performance.
We no longer see brands coming up with the same kind of messaging because I believe there is enough awareness among users that megapixel count alone doesn’t make a great camera phone.
A 12MP lens can outshoot a 200MP camera if the tuning is superior in the former. It’s not just about megapixels, sensor size, image processing, stabilization, autofocus accuracy, and lens quality; they all matter.
While higher megapixels do influence shots in specific scenarios, it doesn’t say anything about how good the photos will look.
To that end, the megapixel count in the specs sheet is misleading. Unfortunately, phone manufacturers still highlight that huge megapixel number without giving important context.
In much the same way, the CPU specs of the phone can be misleading if you take its raw specs at face value. Sure, core counts and process nodes are all important metrics, but they don’t tell you how the phone will feel to use.
The phone with the same chip can feel very different if it comes with great software optimization, better battery behavior, and better sustained performance, and timely updates. Unfortunately, phone makers don’t highlight them while advertising.
Let’s spark a healthy debate
All of this must stop. We, the users, need to take the initiative to take the debate on what constitutes a great smartphone in a healthier direction.
It’ll surely prompt companies to take corrective measures and give users what they actually want: a phone that’s not only great on paper but does feel great.
