Well no, Chinese phones are above Apple material-wise (better battery, better cameras, better cooling) and on par SoC-wise since last year. That's what makes Google's strategy so baffling.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people).
It's entirely the same. I have gone back and forth regularly for the past 10 years. Android is completely on par app-wise. Apple has the iMessage lock-in in the US obviously but not in the rest of the world. Apple might have a slight advantage on the pro segment with the iPad but I don't think it has a huge impact on phones.
The really baffling thing to me is that while they lock down Android, they pay to put Gemini on iOS. Google has a real competitive advantage with IA and they just gave it to Apple.
It's clear to me that they are two companies fighting each other inside Google: the ex-Motorola who wants to be Apple and the service side who wants to be Microsoft.
I personally fear that they are making the bed of the regulators who will probably come for Play Protect at some point to open the door for alternative OS providers at least in Europe. But maybe they think it's coming anyway and are strengthening their position and trying to milk what they can in the meantime.
Both Qualcomm and Mediatek have caught up on the phone SoC market.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 has a slightly better CPU than the A19 Pro but a slightly worse GPU. Apple has a very slight advantage in watt usage but that's more than offset by the battery gap. Same thing with the Dimensity 9500.
One, you are entirely moving the goal post. Nothing was said of winning. The discussion was about catching up and catching up they did. As I said, the market is competitive.
Two, because the actual power consumption is not 65% higher - that's peak - and high end Chinese phones have batteries significantly bigger than the iPhone so you still get better screen time between charges in the end.
I think it’s fair to say that a SoC should perform better at higher wattages, so my comment is definitely relevant.
Regardless, I don’t understand how you can say that I’m moving goalposts when I mention performance per watt, which is absolutely relevant when talking about smartphone SoC performance, and then you bring up battery capacity, which is not.
Your initial question was "How are they on par SoC-wise?"
They are on par because they now sometimes beat Apple top of the line A-chips on performance be it single core, multicores or GPU and do so within a power budget which allows the phone they ship in to be competitive screen-on time wise.
Apple doesn't have a one generation lead anymore which is a huge change compared to only three years ago.
You are moving the goalposts because the discussion was always about the gap between Apple and its competitors and you have entirely shifted to peak consumption when it was clear the conclusion would not be the one you want/expect.
The whole claim that Qualcomm is on par with Apple predicates upon results from benchmarking tools, which stress CPU and GPU and thus induce peak power consumption.
If we were to look at more thorough reviews, e.g. Geekerwan, they always include TDP and power consumption, because that gives the necessary context to understand the results.
And obviously I’m not denying that Mediatek and Qualcomm have massively improved their designs, but they aren’t on par when we account all the things that matter.
Your argument is that, since manufacturers are putting larger batteries in phones, SoC power consumption shouldn’t matter. That is moving the goalpost, because you introduce a variable that should be irrelevant to SoC performance testing to dismiss my observation.
> And obviously I’m not denying that Mediatek and Qualcomm have massively improved their designs, but they aren’t on par when we account all the things that matter.
Hardly, you are intentionally looking at peak consumption because it suits the answer you want after being proved wrong. This is nicely highlighted by how you want to casually dismiss benchmarks which don't support your point.
> Your argument is that, since manufacturers are putting larger batteries in phones, SoC power consumption shouldn’t matter. That is moving the goalpost, because you introduce a variable that should be irrelevant to SoC performance testing to dismiss my observation.
No, that is looking at the actual experience of using the phone. Peak consumption is a useless metric. Nobody cares. People care about their phone feeling smooth and how often they have to charge. From this point of view, Apple has no lead whatsoever provided by their SoC while they used to which is the point I have been making from the start.
> The whole claim that Qualcomm is on par with Apple predicates upon results from benchmarking tools, which stress CPU and GPU and thus induce peak power consumption.
If you are saying that Qualcomm and Mediatek are on par with Apple because they perform the same in Geekbench, then we have to talk about peak power consumption and TDP. But regardless, even if we were to look at average power consumption over time, Elite Gen 5 still tops the A19 Pro by more than *20%*.
> No, that is looking at the actual experience of using the phone. Peak consumption is a useless metric. Nobody cares. People care about their phone feeling smooth and how often they have to charge. From this point of view, Apple has no lead whatsoever provided by their SoC while they used to which is the point I have been making from the start.
Speaking of moving goalposts...
This whole paragraph makes no sense. First you said that Qualcomm is on par with Apple based off benchmarks. Now, if peak consumption doesn't matter, therefore benchmarks don't either, so we have to compare the "experience" of using a phone? How do you quantify that? Which phone would you compare an iPhone with? Does every single phone with an Elite Gen 5 perform exactly the same? Do we choose the Poco F8 Ultra, which seems to throttle and stutter quite frequently, or the OnePlus 15, which reaches external temperatures of 50C?
Anyway, pick a lane, or at least make a good point, because this ain't one.
Unrelated, but this whole thing reminds me of how, back in the day, some manufacturers would put a desktop CPU and GPU inside a laptop as thick as a brick, fed the 10Kg monstrosity with a 400W power adapter, and call it "the fastest laptop ever", which could be technically true, but was very, very wrong.
That hasn't been true for years. Both Oppo and Xiaomi ship with very usable software nowadays, very inspired by Cupertino in the case of Oppo but still ok.
Well no, Chinese phones are above Apple material-wise (better battery, better cameras, better cooling) and on par SoC-wise since last year. That's what makes Google's strategy so baffling.
> Apple has better app selection (for most people).
It's entirely the same. I have gone back and forth regularly for the past 10 years. Android is completely on par app-wise. Apple has the iMessage lock-in in the US obviously but not in the rest of the world. Apple might have a slight advantage on the pro segment with the iPad but I don't think it has a huge impact on phones.
The really baffling thing to me is that while they lock down Android, they pay to put Gemini on iOS. Google has a real competitive advantage with IA and they just gave it to Apple.
It's clear to me that they are two companies fighting each other inside Google: the ex-Motorola who wants to be Apple and the service side who wants to be Microsoft.
I personally fear that they are making the bed of the regulators who will probably come for Play Protect at some point to open the door for alternative OS providers at least in Europe. But maybe they think it's coming anyway and are strengthening their position and trying to milk what they can in the meantime.