Wanted:
- large screen
- good battery life
- great camera
- long device lifetime, i.e. repairability, software and security updates, swappable battery, …
- enough RAM (8GB) and built-in storage (256GB)
- SD card slot and 3.5mm won’t hurt (but we use wireless headphones all the time)
The competition are (from my POV):
- Samsung S23+ (or similar)
- Motorola Edge 40 Pro (or similar)
- Google Pixel 8 Pro
I ruled out all other vendors due to disappointing update promises. Motorola with 4 years security updates promised (out of which the first year has already passed if the model is not brand new) is the minimum.
All phones are stretching the budget; must be really good to justify the expense. Benchmark for “great” is better than the previous generation (S10).
Mid-tier or any tier loosely defines a few components. Perhaps the most important being CPU performance, GPU performance, camera performance and screen quality.
There’s probably 1% of use cases that I subjectively encounter in my daily life that hit a CPU bottleneck on my old Pixel 6. If you’re like me, then CPU performance has stopped being important a few years ago. CPU power efficiency on the other hand is important because it’s reflected in battery life.
If you’re like me and don’t play 3D games on your phone, then GPU performance isn’t important either.
Camera performance on the other hand is a big one for me and the Fairphone is definitely not top-tier there.
Personally I don’t care much about the screen so long as its color calibration is decent. I use my Pixel in 1080p, 60Hz to save on power and I don’t see the difference in pixel density between 1080p and 1440p or larger resolution screens in the 6" size band.
I was comparing the Fairphone 5 to the Pixel 8 prior to buying a phone this year and went with a Pixel 8 specifically because of its camera performance advantage. If I didn’t care that much about that, I’d have bought an FP5. Both of these devices are going to be used for 5-7 years and the FP5’s maintenance cost is significantly lower.
I have a Pixel 7 Pro and I absolutely see a difference. Maybe I’m just used to it, but setting it from 1440x3120 with 120 hz to 1080x2340 with 60 all animations feel like they “stutter” and the text quality is noticeably worse.
On a TV screen a few meters away from me I couldn’t care less. But the phone screen is less than an an arm’s length away from my eyes.
Oh I can see the refresh rate difference too. I can’t see the pixel density difference.
Yeah, the individual pixels are just too small to count, but for me the overall look is worse when setting the reduced resolution.