Modern smartphones can do a lot, which we are actively told in advertising. “On paper” everything is described as rosy and powerful, but in reality this is not always the case. In this article, we will consider a few tricks in smartphones that the seller will not tell you about.
Many cores – buy
Often on advertising posters of some smartphones proudly proclaim a bunch of cores that provide incredible power. Remarkably, most often such a marketing trick is done for budget devices. In fact, there is no sense in these statements . Quite often, the architecture of modern processors is divided into 2 clusters, one of which is more powerful, and the other is energy efficient.
Until 2018, such chipsets could not at all use all available cores at the same time . In fact, there was simply no sense from 6 or 8 cores. After all, only a few were launched at a time. And even if the cores are launched together, all the same, most of them will be energy efficient and they will work at a reduced frequency.
Only in the new flagship Qualcomm processors, the power can somehow be measured by the cores. In budget models, such a parallel cannot be drawn , even if there are 100 cores. A game of imitation, and that’s all.
Camera Modes Operation
Another trick of many smartphones is cameras, which often work differently from the stated ones. For example, some brand loudly declares: “Our smartphone has received a night mode.” But as soon as you start to go into details, things don’t get so rosy . It may be that the mode works only under certain conditions, or it cannot be launched on any of the cameras.
I often want to put little stars above the declared functions. There can be a lot of examples here, everyone must have come across something. Super slow motion video? Yes, but only 3 seconds. HDR when taking photos? Yes, but only for the main camera.
Inflated resolution and zoom
Another marketing ploy is the “unique” feature of smartphone cameras. Recently, manufacturers often write something from the series on advertising scarves: “Look, we have 1000 megapixels in the camera.” But is there any use from this and are not the manufacturers lying? In fact, it has long been known that mountains of megapixels do not give much increase in quality if there is nothing good in the camera besides them.
Whether your smartphone has 64 or 108 megapixels, your photos won’t automatically get better. Besides, it is not so easy to squeeze the juice out of these megapixels, and most often it is impossible for the average user. And the smartphone shoots at 12 MP by default , why would anyone need an increase that no one might even notice.
Therefore, there is simply no special sense from the mountain of megapixels. A similar story is with the zoom, which is also often praised by manufacturers. Like, see how our smartphone zooms in on the picture. All this is served under a tricky “hybrid approximation” sauce. Only in this case, most of the image is zoomed in software , which greatly degrades the photo. Half-truth in full measure.
Lack of memory or “why only 58 of the declared 64 GB remain”
And this nuance of the work of smartphones and in general of any technology should be noticed by everyone. For example, the box says that the device has 64 gigabytes of memory. We go into the settings, and there are only 58 or even less available. Who “stole” our gigabytes? Remarkably, as the amount of memory grows, so does the lack of space . A similar situation is with the operational storage, which is clogged with something immediately after switching on.
In both cases, marketing plays a key role in getting the buyer to give their money for the device. In our example, there might indeed be 64 GB of memory. But only the manufacturer will not tell you that some of this is reserved for the system, some will simply “evaporate” . So you get the missing several gigabytes.
