Sci/Tech The time has come—we’re going to have to choose between performance and battery life.

[tom_mai78101]

Smartphones keep getting faster. If you buy a new high-end phone this year, you’ll find it’s noticeably more powerful than last year’s best gadgets. It will let you run much more demanding apps, it will load up Web pages more quickly, and it will deliver sharper, more advanced videos and games.

This might not sound like a big deal—aren’t new gadgets always faster than old gadgets? Yes, that’s true. But what’s striking about phones is how quickly they’re getting quicker. This year’s top-of-the line phones are likely to be twice as fast as those released last year. And last year’s phones weren’t slouches—they were twice as powerful as the ones that came out in 2011. This pace is remarkable. Indeed, if you study the speed increases of smartphones over time, you notice a thrilling trend: Phones are getting faster really, really fast—much faster, in fact, than the increase in speed in the rest of our computers.

If you scrutinize this quickening pace, though, you’re bound to get disillusioned. One of the reasons phones have been getting faster is that they’re also getting bigger. A bigger phone allows for a bigger battery, which allows for a faster processor. But now we’ve hit a wall in phone size: Today’s biggest and fastest phones carry screens of around 5 inches, and they’re not going to get any bigger than that. (If they did, they wouldn’t fit in your hand, and would thus be phablets.)

The Great Smartphone Conundrum: Performance vs. Battery Life

Smartphones keep getting faster. If you buy a new high-end phone this year, you’ll find it’s noticeably more powerful than last year’s best gadgets. It...

slate.com

 

[FireCat]

What would you Choose? lol

 

[camelCase]

I don't particularly care for performance on my phone. I got a smart phone last year. The only thing I do with it is text and call.

 

[thewrongvine]

camelCase, you gotta' use that smartphone, eh? Use the apps!

A phone the size of the iPhone or S3/S4 is fine with me. The performance is great, though it would be nice to have a little bit longer battery life, even if some of the speed is sacrificed.

 

[camelCase]

Thing is, I don't find any of the apps useful to my life =/
All I do is code and sleep (and eat and shit and all the other good stuff).

I've visited the Google Play Store or w/e it's called multiple times but never find anything worth getting. Apart from whatsapp, which I use to talk to friends who're overseas.

 

[tom_mai78101]

He tells the truth. Other than entertainment apps, game apps, there's nothing useful in Google Play. Other than Google Chrome.

 

[s3rius]

Wad is a smart phone?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oEkkVG6vEAc/TgSF0Keth4I/AAAAAAAAAAc/TLlXRZLvuSw/s1600/Nokia-2600-01.jpg

 

[KaerfNomekop]

Other than entertainment apps, game apps, there's nothing useful

I guess that's why they call it Google Play?

 

[Inflicted]

In a serious response to the original topic.

I think the answer would very much depend on your age group and usage of such a phone.
I can guarantee you that most kids/teenagers especially those involved in the gaming section would almost always say that performance is more important. That they would rather have advanced graphics and better performance speeds, and charge their cellular devices every couple of hours.

While on the other hand, there could be the older section which finds the usages of such excessive apps and games to be unnecessary and would only use the device for actions such as calls or communication via instant messengers. In this case, it would be more practical for them to get a more basic and less performance based smart phone and one that is more focused on a sustainable battery life. Although made fun of regularly, Nokia phones are well known for their reasonably longer battery life, but lack in many other fields compared to alternative smart phones.

If you only need the phone for basic functions, why bother with getting the most complex and high-performance based device available?
The phone should cater for your needs, if you are athletic and require a phone that will be able to track your movements or distance via usage of GPRS or some app, then find an appropriate phone which is capable of doing so. If you are only going to use the functions on a core or basic model, for example you get a Blackberry for the BBM service, there may not be a need for you to buy the newest version if you aren't impressed by the changes in graphics, layout or general performance.

Conclusively, I personally believe it really depends on the user and the intentions of using the device.

 

[camelCase]

Great. Now I feel old. And I'm only 19.

 

[KaerfNomekop]

I have a Nokia with a flashlight :3 It lets me read books in the car, which my sister's and cousins' phones don't do yet.