Processor

The heart of your phone. It executes your commands each time you touch the screen. It contains your memory, cache, northbridge and southbridge connections to make things work. Phones use variants of ARM processors which are based on a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer). ARM is a company that designs ISAs (Instruction Set Architectures) and sells them to companies to develop a chip. The most common chips we know of are Apple’s A series chips and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips. A few other chip designers are Google’s G series chips, HiSilicon’s Kirin chips and Samsung’s Exynos chips. Each company uses a different combination of ISAs from ARM to develop their own chips.

Traditionally a phone containing the latest high-end processor was the way we determined how powerful a smartphone is. Mobile phones have now advanced so much that a mid-tier processor and a high-end processor can function and perform the same without noticeable differences. That begs the question, do we really need high end processors? To answer that, yes and no. We still need high end processors to push the limits of what current technology enables us to. Without innovation, it won’t set the baseline for what we as users expect from a phone. Mid-tier processors set the baseline of how phones should be and it is rightfully so the performance of a mid-tier processor will catch up to the performance of a high-end processor from previous generations thanks to innovation.

The processor not only sets the standard for performance, but it also contains the necessities of what enables phones to appear so effortlessly smooth. The processor contains your graphics processor (GPU), your memory (RAM), your connectivity (Bluetooth, Wi Fi, 4G/5G), your camera processor specifications and cache for fast access. The processor determines a lot of your functions on the phone and is an important factor when choosing a phone. Power users will ultimately be using the latest premium processors, but for the general audience, mid-range processors are enough for daily tasks.

Interestingly enough, a new type of processor will start to appear more often in chip designs and that is the NPU (Neural Processor Unit). They are the bits that enable AI to run on your phone. NPUs are used to provide faster efficiency to your phone workflow, knowing which applications to load, knowing how to process images to make it prettier and to understand your questions to give you results on demand. Chip designers are all big on NPUs now, with the advent of genAI, becoming more powerful over the past few years. Before genAI, the applications of AI were niche and selective to a few functions such as voice to text recognition or the gimmicky AI processing when you take a photo or video as they often can be a hit or miss, depending on the device manufacturer. With AI becoming more general purpose through genAI, there will be greater focus on NPUs in chip designs.

You might be wondering why I haven’t mentioned anything about low-range processors. The reason I didn’t mention it is because they are generally reserved for phones on a budget. They don’t have the bells and whistles of their bigger siblings but they contain the power to get you through the day or days for people on low budgets or if phones aren’t really worth the investment. Don’t expect a lot of performance on the low-range processors because they are only designed for bare-minimum connectivity and features. The processors used are for the cheapest smartphones on the market to buy.

The processor not only sets the standard for performance, but it also contains the necessities of what enables phones to appear so effortlessly smooth. The processor contains your graphics processor (GPU), your memory (RAM), your connectivity (Bluetooth, Wi Fi, 4G/5G), your camera processor specifications and cache for fast access. The processor determines a lot of your functions on the phone and is an important factor when choosing a phone. Power users will ultimately be using the latest premium processors, but for the general audience, mid-range processors are enough for daily tasks.

When comparing the differences of high, middle and low end processors, I thought I should also mention the costs associated in manufacturing them. Processors are made from silicon and they are predominantly made by either Samsung or TSMC. SMIC gets a worthy mention, but their technology stack isn’t as advanced or great as the two others. Processors, depending on their target market, will be manufactured across different generations of processor nodes. Nodes are measured in nanometres (nm) and generally refers to the width of one transistor. The current generation is 3nm. As we attempt to go beyond and further shrink the node technology down further, the greater the costs are associated in producing processors. There are several factors to the increased cost but the most prominent is the increased complexity of producing quality chips. This increased cost is reflected when purchasing phones as they increase in price from the previous generation of flagships.

Camera

Cameras are one of the top features users might like to look at. The evolution of camera photography is fascinating but since the introduction of dual lens cameras on smartphones, it has changed the game. Flagships nowadays can pack up to 5 camera sensors into one phone, with each serving a different purpose and a different frame of view. Each camera has its own strengths and weaknesses and it is a balancing act between the price of the lens, acceptable quality for the given phone audience and software optimisations to the camera.

Typically phones will have a main sensor that is the main star of the show. These produce the best quality images and videos of any of the sensors on the phone. Typically they are your standard 1x zoom that you see on your phone camera app. The next common lens is wide angle lens. This captures shots at a wider angle, allowing a wider degree of detail for the same shot from the main lens. Wide angle shots tend to have distortions on the corners of the image as the lens is more of a fish-eyed lens. Software will attempt to straighten it out to look reasonably normal. Sometimes wide angle sensors with a high megapixel count may be used as an alternative for macro images. Depending on your budget, you will typically find these two are the most common lens on a phone.

Other lenses are available but often depend on the choices the manufacturers make when designing a phone. Some others include periscope lens, time of flight, dedicated zoom lens or macro lens. Different choices made create different combinations of capabilities your camera has. The more cameras you have, technically speaking gives you more flexibility and choice in the way you want to produce an image or video, but that’s not always the case. You see, phones now are reliant on the processing to enhance the images during or after taking the shot. Different phone makers will have varying amounts of resources and priorities and sometimes camera optimisations are not their main focus. This can lead to subpar or underperforming results when using the camera app. With premium flagships they tend to have more developments on the camera optimisations and will make images look better to a certain extent before you know it looks a bit over-processed. Different manufacturers will have different algorithms for camera optimisations but sometimes they also utilise NPUs to enable better enhancements on the photographs or to fix images after the shot is taken.

A new wave of features revolve around the ability to edit images by easily editing a subject in an image and allow AI to fill in the hole or the gaps as requested. This will usher in a whole new era of photography where the fine line between what you capture now might not be how you see because it has been edited post-taken.

Front facing camera can also be a deal breaker. If you like to take selfies a lot, having a good camera that doesn’t overexpose your face or make you look as if you were stitched into the frame. Like rear cameras, different companies will have their own software fine-tuning of the cameras and can sometimes be a hit or miss. Some front cameras include technologies that help provide a more secure method of unlocking your phone. This may include (3D mapping of your face) to securely detect who, if you are who you are, is holding the phone.

AI

This ties in nicely with the above topic because AI is here to stay. No matter how sceptical or how afraid you are of it, we will continually seek to do more with AI features and they will be integrated into your phone services even more as newer flagships appear. With most major phone makers on board with their own niche AI offerings, only time will tell and see what they have to offer. Most current services allow you to edit images after a shot is taken. This allows you to move the subject or to erase items in the image, where AI will utilise contextual information from the image to fill in the gaps.

As mentioned previously, a growing part of how AI and genAI is enabled on phones is the improvements and designs to the NPU on your phone processor. Each generation will improve the amount of operations each cycle can take, where it enables higher capacity to create and give you answers in a faster and more knowledgeable format.

Screen

Something alluded to before but screens can also be a deciding factor. The more premium the phone is, the better the screen and technologies come into play but it might come at the cost of battery life.

Screens traditionally had bumpers around the top and bottom of the screen, where the front camera sat at the top bar and the logo sat at the bottom of the bar or you had a fingerprint reader. This soon changed when phone makers started to aim to achieve full body coverage of the screen, resulting in the eventual disappearance of the bumpers. This also introduced our new friend, the hole punch on the screen and on-screen fingerprint readers. Somehow, even though they thought this was good, they often made the bottom bumper visibly larger than the top of the screen which infuriated me because surely it should be equal around the edge right? We’re only starting to see equal width now on premium models but other phones it is a hit or miss.

Larger screens usually refer to an increase of pixels on the display. Each pixel on the screen needs to be set each time it is refreshed or changed to produce the output you have commanded. Commonly phones nowadays have increased their screen pixel density to offer 2K or 4K screen output. The display output can be changed to a lower resolution if you have a high screen resolution, leading to better efficient management of your battery usage.

Along with screen resolutions, a screen refresh rate can also be a choice concern. Refresh rate typically refers to how many times the screen refreshes in one second. The refresh rate has evolved over time, where 60Hz was the standard, however this has shifted a bit. Phones from mid-range and upwards will be around 90Hz minimum, with phones going up to 165Hz on gaming phones. Some phones have newer technology, which is LTPO. This enables the display to variably control the refresh rate between 1Hz to typically 120Hz. Static pages don’t require very high refresh rates, which can take advantage of the low refresh rate. This enables better utilisation of battery life and use it only when high refresh rates are required such as games or videos.

Battery

Batteries are fundamental. They are what gives life to your phone when it’s not connected to a charger. As important as they are, not all batteries are made equal. Generally speaking, a higher mAh battery means it can last longer and that is all there is to that. When you have a larger screen, a higher screen resolution, refresh rate, background apps, or just things that eat up power, the daily usage time differs greatly.

As discussed above, screens come in different shapes and sizes, which results in varying battery drains. Generally, a larger screen or with a higher screen solution results in a higher pixel density count, leading to more battery drain due to the higher quality of output they need to provide for whenever the screen is on. The refresh rate also affects battery life as a higher refresh rate demands a higher battery draw. Often screens can play a major factor in how your battery drains because it is the piece of hardware that you rely on to communicate with you and your phone.

Background apps and the way you use your phone can impact battery life. If you are constantly using multiple apps or using apps that require intensive tasks such as using the camera app or playing games it will drain your battery. Some phone makers will have automatic ways to kill apps in the background to maximise battery life. This is dependent on the manufacturer and software optimisations into the OS.

Batteries can also be extended by using newer processors. As the ISAs are updated and we use newer manufacturing nodes, it means we can achieve the same amount of processing power for a lower battery demand. Processors are integral to battery usage and if it is constantly used or heating up, it will impact battery performance as the phone tries to cool the batteries and the processor to achieve sustained desired performance.

Storage

Phones come in various configurations and perhaps one metric you want to look at is the amount of storage the phone has. Higher storage means you can download more applications, have longer chat histories (if that’s your thing) or keep videos and photos for longer without having to constantly transfer it to your desktop or upload to your cloud service. Phone storage is easy to understand, that is, the larger the capacity the more storage you have. But did you know not all storage is made equally?

You see, storage on your phone is typically in the form of a standard. This is referred to as UFS or Universal File Storage. UFS comes in many versions and each version is different from one another. Typically, your phone will have UFS 2.x, 3.x or 4.0. Each version have different speeds as listed below.

UFS	Bandwidth per lane	Max. number of lanes	Max. total bandwidth
1.0	300 MB/s	1	300 MB/s
1.1	300 MB/s	1	300 MB/s
2.0	600 MB/s	2	1200 MB/s
2.1	600 MB/s	2	1200 MB/s
2.2	600 MB/s	2	1200 MB/s
3.0	1450 MB/s	2	2900 MB/s
3.1	1450 MB/s	2	2900 MB/s
4.0	2900 MB/s	2	5800 MB/s

Ecosystem and Operating System

Personally, I think ecosystem plays a very important factor. As we head towards an IOT future and using smart home devices, our reliance on the fluidity of the physical world and digital world becomes increasingly important. The way we want to transfer photos between devices effortlessly or the way we can listen to audio from one device and switch it seamlessly to another device. It’s the use of ecosystem that the product is bound to. Apart from AI, this is the direction many phone makers will steer towards to, by increasing the products they have that just work easily with one another without the hassle. Once we decide on what ecosystem to use, such as Android OS, iOS or HarmonyOS, the devices we use are locked into the devices that support it. Think about our cars, most of them offer Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. Ecosystem will be important as phone makers try to lock you into their ecosystem they have developed.

Services

Services are what future phones will be heavily geared towards. We are already in a world where we pay SaaS, or Software-as-a-Service. Think about your subscriptions to Netflix, Spotify, YouTube and others. They are forms of SaaS that provides a service for a certain amount of money. As we shift to more AI capabilities, this infrastructure to support it needs to be present and in one form or another, we need to pay for it. Phone manufacturers may want to take a slice of pie in the services market. Apple has done so with iCloud, Apple Music. Google has done so with G Suite. Likely bigger phone makers want to do something similar. Samsung will introduce services relating to AI with S24 range of phones this year but to continue using their AI services you need to pay a fee.

The beginning of a journey

As you can see, the list of what makes a phone great is long and expansive. This doesn’t cover the full spectrum of what manufacturers will do to differentiate from itself. As you can see, the greatest most expensive phone is great, but you might be better off with something cheaper that fits your needs and purposes. What your use case is for your phone really determines how much you should spend. If nothing suits your boat, at least the latest flagship phone from x, y or z will do the job albeit might not be your number 1 choice.