There has been a lot of news related to benchmarking lately, including an admission by Google that they blocked Play Store downloads of benchmarking apps during the Pixel 8 review embargo, as well as fresh chips coming down the pipeline by Qualcomm and MediaTek.
Discussion questions:
Do smartphone benchmarks matter?
Are they still a useful reference and do you consider them when shopping for an upgrade?
Maybe? I look at them from time to time. For most people it is just a number and it is nice for an average user to confirm that the new phone is a little better than the previous.
I recently beta-tested a device (been using it since May). And I ran some benchmarks on it. I noticed that someone else was also benchmarking the device before and after pushing updates. So, I feel that there are companies out there trying to perform well on the benchmarks.
Are they still a useful reference and do you consider them when shopping for an upgrade?
I'm mostly concerned about the following, in no particular order:
age of the SoC
screen refresh rate
availability of replacement parts and repairability
durability
the company selling the device (CSR, ESG, reputation)
whether or not the device is an rebranded rectangle from an OED
bloatware
Bloatware removes many brands from my list of potential devices. Yes, I could use adb to remove them, or maybe even root my phone, but I shouldn't have to buy a device with Facebook baked in.