I’ve tried looking for 400 and 600 series Gen 1 and Gen 2 phones, and not a single phone exists in this market that uses them with the exception of a few Redmi Note series phones (they’re still not released, as far as I’m aware of)?
For some reason, the processors are all outdated by at least two years old. The latest chip I’ve seen are the 480+ and the 695. I’ve not seen anything newer in the 400 and 600 series.
In September 1, 2023 IST (that is tomorrow), Moto will be releasing their Moto G84 with Snapdragon 695, which is just ridiculous, given that this SoC two years older.
I am not really aware about the Dimensity processors, but I’m imagining that the same must be happening for those series probably.
Has something happened in the phone market that I’m not aware of? Is there still a chip shortage?
Both Qualcomm and MediaTek have gotten greedy. It’s not the chip shortage or whatever as other people have been suggesting in your other post (that I also saw). At least Qualcomm seems to be making some progress now with their newer processors. MediaTek has gotten incredibly lazy and they’ve been rebranding old SoCs as new SoCs. Looking at your other post, you seem to have high expectations for the price. There’s no phone with stock-ish Android, newest SoC, root-ability and widespread custom ROM support, at least at 15k. Mobile phone SoCs have made almost no progress, except at the flagship end. And just now is the performance trickling down to upper midrange and mid-range lineups. The Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 is a great example of this.
MediaTek has been rebranding their mid-range SoCs since at least 2020. For example, the Dimensity 900 was rebranded to Dimensity 920 and then again to the Dimensity 930 with some overclocking. This was then rebranded to the Dimensity 1080 with more overclocking. Now, the Dimensity 1080 is rebranded to the Dimensity 7050 with a minor overclock again. The roots of their current midrange SoC is already about 3 years old. They’ve been doing the same with their other lower end SoCs too.
I’ll suggest you some phones on your other post.
Looks like the Mediatek situation is much horrible than I had imagined to be. The top pre-2022 SoC are not that bad, perhaps they’re worth considering. Especially the 480s, 680s and the 690s.
Yep, exactly. But that doesn’t mean MediaTek is all that bad. If you’re looking for a bang for the buck phone in terms of performance, odds are that it uses a MediaTek SoC. I’d say MediaTek is still the midrange and low end leader. Many Dimensity processors sold in certain price points are faster than the Snapdragon equivalents sold in the same price points. For example, the Dimensity 920 and rebadges are almost Snapdragon 778G level fast, and they usually sell for around 20k, where you’ll mostly see Snapdragon 695 phones. Their processors are pretty efficient too.
Obviously I am wayyy too late but here’s what I found.
Sale of new mobile phones has dropped significantly in the last few quarters because of global price inflation of consumer goods. Naturally, mobile chip sales has also dropped.
Since making a chip takes ~6 months, Qualcomm currently has too many old chips in their inventory because even if they completely stop making new chips, they’ll still produce chips for the next 6 months.
Because of that existing inventory, they aren’t selling new chips to OEMs until their old stock is depleted. Which (I’m speculating) has led to OEMs buying chips from MediaTek instead. Which has farther delayed the production of new chips.
Partial sources
Hello, thank you for sharing this. The news in my country is no longer reliable, and that is why I’ve stopped reading articles and stick to video formats purely related to tech and not the marketing side of it. Perhaps I’ll keep in mind to use a good RSS-like aggregator to keep myself up-to date.
I’ve tried looking for 400 and 600 series Gen 1 and Gen 2 phones
Any particular reason why? Generally, it’s preferable to buy an older generation flagship instead of a new budget phone. Especially these days, when mainstream manufacturers are providing 5+ years of updates. You could buy say, something like an old OnePlus for pretty cheap on eBay or similar sites, for the same price as a new budget phone, and enjoy better performance, more features, more accessories, better custom ROM support etc.
The main reason is that I want to future-proof myself, because I dont like changing stuff just in a year or two. Buying something that is two years old means that it might become obsolete too soon. At this point, I’m considering repairing my broken realme 5 pro, because it still works really well. At least it used to four months ago, until the screen cable was destroyed.
