Storage space, support cycle, type of screen, third party OS support, aftermarket accessories, camera quality. Size.

Also kinda part of the SoC, but the frequencies supported since I travel a lot.

I think phones have been fast enough for a while now. There’s more to a SoC than speed. When I came back to Android, I went from the fastest iPhone to a SD480 with only 6GB of RAM and it was…fine for daily use. But the camera was a big letdown on that device so I got something a little bit better a year later.

Do smartphone benchmarks matter?

Probably, but not for me.

Are they still a useful reference and do you consider them when shopping for an upgrade?

No.

He misses the point that companies like Fairphone and Framework and system76 have proven that it’s possible to support devices for a very long time when the bigger manufacturers told us it wasn’t possible, or even if it were possible that there was no market demand for seven years of software support. In 2016, sustainability and longevity were not words associated with new tech. They showed us the way.

Nokia sells a couple of phones with a screwdriver now. Pixel 8 is going to receive updates into the next decade. Lenovo is trying to make 80% of devices repairable, a remarkable pivot from where they were trending. The demand is there and the ability is there. They also made us think about things that we had never considered before in terms of impact, educating us along the way.

If Fairphone folded tomorrow, they left the smartphone market a better place than they entered.

The software development is outsourced to a few people, and Fairphone is not the only project those people work on.

Its a made up criticism to make it look like the author is thorough, but it doesn’t reflect a real use case. In two years using the FP4 in five countries, there has never been a single time where I wanted to swap SIM cards or eject a mounted SD card while the system is running. You do these things while the phone is powered down. It’s an argument being made by an idiot.

Criticizing bezel sizes when people put their phones in protective cases; criticizing having to remove batteries to get to components that you only swap when powered down anyway; bitching about price to performance ratio like this isnt a phone designed to last half a decade; this is what techbro marketing shills, AI output, and other brainless NPCs do. Not quite as bright screen, no LTPO, who the fuck cares, nobody is comparing two phones outside under the sun in any sort of real life situation. You generally carry one phone, two if you have a job where you’re on call, and you don’t really choose the iPhone they give you for that so why would you compare brightness for two devices outside and use that as a reason to tell people not buy a phone? That’s just not something real people do. You use one phone at a time. This review is not reflective of how people use phones. Its nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking. It’s a worthless marketing review.

LINE is the worst for spam though.

Yes, they are two separate things but both measured in Hertz.

Refresh rate is what manufacturers are hyping with 90Hz and 120Hz panels. That is how fast the elements on the screen are redrawn and is strictly a user interface issue.

PWM frequency is how fast the screen turns off and on, and is also measured in hertz.

It is possible to have a phone with a high refresh rate (120Hz) and also low frequency pwm (220Hz) that strains the eyes.

On mobile OLED displays, dimming is done by turning the entire display on and off very quickly (the individual pixels always stay at 100% brightness). This acts like a strobelight and can cause eye strain because your eyes are always adjusting to the change in brightness, even though your conscious brain doesn’t see or register the flickering, or registers it in a different way. Some people don’t notice it at all; others have trouble looking at the text because the words seem to wobble on the display.

Lots of things flicker, like LED lights, brake lights, the sun, but people don’t spend 6 hours a day staring into the bulb lighting their bedroom like they stare into their screens.

Flicker is not an issue on most LCD phones or laptops made in the past 7-8 years. It is also not an issue when the OLED pwm frequency is increased to where the flickering happens so fast that it is imperceptible to the eye (as in, 1000Hz or more). This is what many new OnePlus and Xiaomi phones are doing, as well as some of the phones in the article.

I agreed with every point, and that was before I realized OP’s rant was limited in scope to commuting.