Samsung is set to release its highest-performance to date this August – the Galaxy Note 8. It will have an amazing 5.7″ Super AMOLED display, an amazing dual 13MP main camera, iris scanner, barometer, a series of other sensors and security features, and it might be powered by Qualcomm’s brand new Snapdragon 836 System on a Chip. It will be an amazing handset with an amazing price tag – although it hasn’t been officially confirmed yet, the handset might be sold for a price around $1,000. I’m sure many of you have read the previews and followed the news about this amazing new handset with a craving in your eyes, and many of you have probably started saving to be able to purchase this pocket-sized powerhouse among the first once it is released. But before you commit to paying a small fortune ($1,000 could buy you a used Mercedes, after all) stop and think about whether you need such a powerhouse in your life.
Are you the average smartphone user?
What does the average smartphone user like? Well, it’s hard to say – smartphones are used by all kinds of people, of all ages and of all genders. They have become part of everyday life for over 3 billion users – almost half of the world’s population has a pocket-sized computer connected to the internet. If you are an average smartphone user, you are most likely a millennial reading the morning news, playing puzzle and casual games, shopping, listening to music, keeping up with your friends on social media, and overall keeping yourself entertained on the go. And you probably have an Android-powered handset.
Now ask yourself as an average smartphone user: do you need to double the processing power in your pocket? Does anything you do on a daily basis require eight high-performance cores, more RAM than an average office PC, and a graphics chip that could handle the most power-intensive games on the market today with ease?
How much can you save with a mid-range smartphone?
Let’s stick to Samsung for our example, the smartphone manufacturer with several product ranges. Its mid-range models are marked “A” – and the top of that range is Samsung Galaxy A7 (the 2017 model, launched this January). The handset currently sells between $350 and $400 on Amazon – less than half the rumored price of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 8. And how does its hardware measure up?
It has an octa-core Exynos 7880 SoC running at 1.9 GHz, 3GB of RAM, an excellent 16-megapixel camera, a ton of storage expandable with a memory card, and every security measure of the more expensive one, except for the iris scanner. It can handle the average smartphone user’s everyday tasks perfectly well, and it won’t yield in front of even the most hardware-intensive games on the market today. And it will cost you far less than the flagship model you crave after so much.
So do you need the latest flagship in your pocket? The answer is most likely “no”. So why spend twice as much on it?