Summary
- Advancements in smartphone chips are delivering diminishing speed returns.
- Most apps are now bottlenecked by network performance, not processing power.
- You can probably ignore speed concerns unless you’re majorly into gaming or generative AI.
While I was relatively late to the smartphone game — I bought my first one in 2012 — for years afterward, the main thing I looked forward to with each upgrade was the speed boost. Apps would install and launch noticeably faster, and in some cases, whole new functions became possible. Consider that both Apple Maps and Google Maps now support 3D terrain while you drive. That would’ve been way too demanding on my iPhone 6, but on my iPhone 16 Pro, it’s almost trivial.
Smartphone processors are still getting faster, but there seem to be diminishing returns. The jump from an iPhone 6s to the iPhone XR was huge, but I was surprised at how small the performance bump was on the iPhone 13, and the difference with my 16 Pro is almost unnoticeable beyond specific apps. Similar things can be said about the Android space — I have a OnePlus 9 5G that feels nearly as fresh today as it did in 2021.
That raises a serious question — are the processor upgrades on smartphones largely meaningless these days? All about bragging rights rather than practical value? I think that’s true in many cases, but not entirely.
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Why smartphone speed is (usually) meaningless
Think twice before you upgrade
If real-time 3D maps over cellular have become trivial, that implies little to no demand from most apps. A text-based social media app like Bluesky could probably run on your smartwatch, if there was enough screen space for reading. Apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat claim a bigger footprint, but mostly because they need to cache video and/or overlay visual effects — and when was the last time you heard major complaints about how fast those apps were running?
Arguably, the biggest bottleneck for most phones isn’t how fast they can process data, it’s how fast they can receive or send it over a network, especially since a lot of data is processed in the cloud or on a secondary device anyway. When I finish a weightlifting session, I need to wait a moment for the Fitness app on my iPhone to sync data from my Apple Watch, but that data loads all at once when the sync is complete. It then takes a few moments more for that data to sync with other apps on my phone, such as Cronometer and Google Fit, yet there’s hardly any load time when I actually launch them.
If I wanted to make a phone my primary gaming device, I wouldn’t consider one with anything less than 2023 flagship specs. Even that will probably become outdated in a few years.
For the apps that count on a daily basis, in other words, speed is often no longer a concern. While you can potentially encounter hurdles on a modern budget phone like the Samsung Galaxy A36, even that device delivers performance that was limited to flagship phones a few years ago.
I can’t see this situation reversing anytime soon. Though there’s always pressure to make apps more visually appealing, there’s only so far you can stretch that for the purpose and budget of most apps. Phone screens, meanwhile, have hit a quality ceiling — the Pixel 9’s OLED panel is about as sharp and colorful as anyone needs.
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Why smartphone speed still has some value
The niche cases that persist
You should consider processor power when buying a phone, but only for one of two reasons (possibly both): gaming and AI. Of those, gaming may actually be the more legitimate concern.
Many people limit their phone gaming to 2D titles like Candy Crush or Words With Friends, and if that’s you, you’re already set. The technology of 3D games continues to evolve, however, and there’s no sign of it slowing down. Forget Fortnite or PUBG — more graphically intense console games are beginning to appear on mobile, such as Resident Evil: Village. The more powerful your GPU, the smoother your framerates are with these games, and you need to prioritize that if you want access to a top-flight library. If I wanted to make a phone my primary gaming device, I wouldn’t consider one with anything less than 2023 flagship specs. Even that will probably become outdated in a few years.
AI hasn’t inflated smartphone sales so far, and in fact there’s been a bit of a backlash against it.
Generative AI is the trend du jour, and does take some serious horsepower when it needs to be processed on-device. That’s why everything in the iPhone 16 lineup includes an A18 chip, for example, instead of some models sporting a last-generation processor, as Apple has tried to get away with in the past. It can be worth it for both companies and consumers to spend extra to ensure AI features run smoothly, particularly anything involving search, photo editing, or audio mixing.
We’ll have to see how much that actually drives demand. AI hasn’t inflated smartphone sales so far, and in fact there’s been a bit of a backlash against it, since many features have a minor impact at best. Yes, object removal can help salvage an important photo, and talking to Gemini or ChatGPT may help you answer everyday questions — but you’re probably not that concerned with notification summaries, rewriting work emails, or generating AI images for fun.
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The bottom line, and where we go from here
Laying groundwork for the post-smartphone era
As things stand, I’d argue that most shoppers can safely ignore processor power as long as they buy a new(ish) device whenever their next upgrade rolls around. They’ll almost certainly get something capable of running the majority of apps, including many AI features, since the bulk of generative AI processing takes place in the cloud. I’m almost surprised to hear myself say these things, but they’re true. You could grab Google’s Pixel 8a today and be happy for years, unless you’re aiming for 60 frames per second in every game.
Phone makers really are just trying to one-up each other for marketing purposes at the moment. Intentionally or not, however, they are at least laying the groundwork for a post-smartphone world. Current AR glasses tend to be too weak, too expensive, or too short-lived, often in some combination of those. If processors continue to improve performance while shrinking in size, though, it’s not hard to imagine a world in which we’re riding to work without anything in our pockets except our wallet and keys.
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