What is more important in a smartphone: performance or autonomy?

Marketers from different sides assure us that the speed of the smartphone is a rather important parameter that gets better with each model. This is confirmed by a lot of synthetic runs of various devices and a fun exchange of information with growing numbers from various expert agencies and bloggers. But in fact, most models on the market, in various budget ranges, have long allowed you to comfortably use a smartphone in everyday household tasks, and the main problem that can stand in the way of the trouble-free use of a smart device – autonomy.

If we look at the more practical side of productivity, for example, running an application. The top iPhone 16 Pro opens popular services just a few tens of milliseconds faster than the 15 Pro. In the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra with the flagship Snapdragon, the time to open applications has hardly changed at all, compared to the S23 Ultra.

And what information can be highlighted regarding autonomy. According to recent studies, most users charge their smartphone twice a day. Hands-on tests showed that Samsung's flagship reduced video battery life by 7% compared to the S23 Ultra.

What are the options for improving autonomy

According to smartphone manufacturers, modern models have a number of innovations that should save battery life. The iPhone can reduce the processor frequency when performing non-resource tasks. Samsung processors have several frequency ranges for the same purposes. Smartphones can also adapt the screen refresh rate to display static content and select the optimal Hz frequency in different scenarios.

But globally, the user still has only two options in choosing the optimal smartphone usage modes: disable all «flagship functions» and add 1-2 hours to the usage time, or charge twice a day

Therefore, when the choice arises – overpay more hryvnias for a more productive processor, or pay dearly for a larger battery. Pay more attention to the last parameter. especially since the manufacturers themselves are slowly getting to this point. For example, Oppo is already preparing a smartphone with a 7000 mAh battery for release, and if you don't edit 4K videos on your smartphone, but simply scroll through the news feed in Telegram most of the time, then why do you need half a million “parrots” in AnTuTu.

True, the choice on the market at the moment is not so great, a really large battery capacity can only be found in Chinese smartphones of the 3rd echelon. But among popular mass market models, the autonomy indicator is growing quite slowly and insignificantly, but there is a tendency towards this.