Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The rise of mid-range smartphones, explained!”.
It felt like the 2020 tech scene was dominated not by feature-rich executive flagships but by the more humble and importantly accessible mid-range devices or at least devices with mid-range chipsets. Today, i want to discuss why this was along with what we could expect from mid-range chipsets going forward up until 2020. The limelight in the tech scene was mostly reserved for the monstrous best of the best devices with wacky designs and crazy cameras. Mid-Range devices were mostly lower profile and a lot more were sold, which made them more of a commodity and less exciting. To talk about what you’ll find, though, is that devices like the oneplus nord realme x55g, the pixel 4a 4a5g, and even the pixel 5 and lg wing were all rather talked about at length during the already rocky ride. That was 2020..
I don’t know about you, but i heard a lot less about the oneplus 8t realme x50 pro 5g and samsung galaxy s20 plus than these other devices there’s one big reason why mid range has enjoyed such success in 2020 and that’s the fact that qualcomm vastly improved Its cut down chipsets compared to previous years, the snapdragon 730g and 765g of both fantastic chipsets, with the latter being especially exceptional for a mid-range part. These are the chips that were mostly found in the more successful sub-flagship devices of the year, such as the ones mentioned before, but looking at things on a deeper level, it’s clear to see why these things were so popular with flagships normalizing at nearly four figures: cheaper Devices with good quality chips in them were a lot more accessible and appealing, especially given the situation that billions found themselves in this bump in mid-range devices. Also pushes companies to make their flagship products stand out and appear far more advanced.
If google’s cut down device is really good, spoiler alert, it is then it’s going to have to make the pixel 5 a lot better to make sense. Spoiler. The pixel 5 is quite a bit better than the pixel 4a. No company wants to cannibalize its own products and, with a really solid mid-ranger, should naturally come fantastic flagships. Secondly, the 765g got pretty fast. We ran a load of tests last year and the 765g comes very close to the snapdragon 845 in terms of cpu power.
As for gpu power, it’s not quite as close as i think. A lot of people would like, but it’s still a big step up from the snapdragon 730g as an overall package. The snapdragon 765g is plenty fast for those who daily smartphone routines, consist of scrolling through social media and watching the old program. Let’S face it, a lot of us could get away with using a mid-ranger these days.
The performance isn’t the only improvement. The 765 g’s feature set is also rather expensive for a cheaper chipset. There’S 5g connectivity support for up to ultra hd 4k 30fps video capture high refresh rate displays and up to 12 gigabytes of ram that first one 5g connectivity is going to mean a lot to those looking to quote-unquote future-proof their smartphone. Of course, this is going to depend heavily on which region and area you live in, but to some 5g is definitely going to be important and it’s something that the mid-rangers finally have was it a good thing to see more mid-ranges, with less of a focus on The high end, heck even google, ditched a flagship chip this year.
Yes, it was, in my opinion, along with making the tech scene far more accessible. It’S a big indication of how far we’ve come in the last couple of years, having flagship tech from two or three years ago, already trickled down into the mainstream volume devices shows the progress that many companies are making and is exciting, going forward. I’D be surprised if, in the next couple of years we don’t see, features like ultra hd, 4k, 60 fps, recording wi-fi 6 and a snapdragon 855 level gpu in a mid-range chipset.
These features are currently reserved for the top tier chip, but as those things get even better features, the trickle down seems all but inevitable. We’D love to hear your thoughts on the shift to mid-range chipsets in 2020. Would you buy a mid-ranger for the first time after using a flagship for so long? Did you buy one, or are you an out and out flagship or nothing kind of person? Let us know in the comments and that about wraps things up for today, guys. Please do check all the links in the video description and, whilst you’re down there hit like and subscribe to never miss a video like this one, i’m ryan thomas with android authority and i’ll catch. You later .