Credit: Adam Molina / Android Authority
Whatever you think of the iPhone 12, there’s little doubt that it will influence the design of other phones in the near future. You just have to look at the flurry of notched phones that arrived after the iPhone X as an example. Even though some companies got there first, Apple was the trendsetter. With that in mind, it’s just a question of when an Android phone maker copies the iPhone 4/5 throwback-style, flat design adopted by the latest Apple flagships.
But which Android brands would benefit most from taking inspiration from Cupertino’s latest look? While we certainly wouldn’t expect companies to simply follow Apple’s lead when Android thrives on variety, there are a few vendors that could stand to borrow a page from the iPhone 12’s book. It could not only rejuvenate some major names but address flaws that hold their handsets back.
What to expect from next-gen performance
One of the most obvious points of comparison is between the CPU setups in the Exynos 2100 and Snapdragon 888. Samsung and Qualcomm are both participants in the Arm CXC program, netting them access to the powerhouse Cortex-X1 CPU core. Both chipsets also use three big Cortex-A78 cores and four small Cortex-A55s.
Samsung has clocked its CPU cores more aggressively, however. This hints at a slight performance advantage for your day-to-day apps. Nevertheless, there’s more at play than clock speeds, such as core and system cache sweet spots, which affect performance too. Regardless, with Samsung’s custom Mongoose cores gone, we can expect much closer performance and energy parity between Exynos and Snapdragon this generation. Benchmarks show the Cortex-X1 to be even beefier than Samsung’s last-gen M5 core, so the Snapdragon catches up a lot in this regard.
Google’s transition from the Nexus to its Pixel series coincided with the company’s aspiration to take its products mainstream. The idea was that Pixel devices would sit alongside and compete with Samsung’s Galaxy phones and iPhones in carrier stores.
It’s been four years since the Pixel’s bold introduction, and it’s clear that Google’s strategy with the line has morphed and evolved over time. The 2016-released Pixel 1 and the latest Pixel 5 are aimed at different sectors of the smartphone market. They also have different strengths and weaknesses over their respective competition.
Let’s break down this shift in strategy and discuss why Google’s premier smartphone line has morphed so much in its short lifetime.