The "Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders" vs ROG5 Preview: Branded vs Original
by Andrei Frumusanu on August 16, 2021 10:00 AM ESTBattery Life - A Horrible Downgrade
Battery life for the Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders is interesting for one fact alone: Qualcomm and ASUS’ decision to equip the device with a much smaller 4000mAh battery. While that figure alone isn’t particularly small for a regular device, the industry has seen steadily growing battery capacities over the years. 4000mAh is actually the same size battery that ASUS is employing in the small form-factor Zenfone 8, and the ROG Phone 5 has a massive 6000mAh unit, so naturally we’re expecting quite a massive difference in the battery performance.
As expected, the 60Hz web browsing scores of the SSI are just horrible and massively disappointing. At 10.38 hours runtime, this is only 62% of the battery life presented by the ROG Phone 5 under the same test conditions. The SSI’s battery is 66% of the sibling device’s size, and the further difference could be explained by the more aggressive performance characteristics of the SSI.
At 120Hz, which I opted for instead of the 144Hz maximum of the phone just for apples-to-apples purposes, the device ended up as the shortest lasting high refresh phone we’ve recently tested. At only 60.9% of the ROG Phone 5’s battery life, we’re seeing two polar opposites in terms of the runtime in our chart.
In PCMark, it’s again the same story. Besides the Exynos 2100 regular small S21, the Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders ends up as the worst performing device in recent testing.
Overall, the SSI is just a perplexing phone. For the little weight difference and 0.4mm thickness differences, we’re getting a phone that’s really only less than two-thirds of the ROG Phone 5 when it comes to the battery life. This puts it amongst one of the worst performing Snapdragon 888 devices on the market when it comes to battery life, which is abysmal.
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Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, August 16, 2021 - link
Phones don't have true zooms, the 3x is in reference to the the 27mm equivalent main module. The telephoto is 80mm, anything beyond is crop magnification.Arbie - Monday, August 16, 2021 - link
One important use for my phone is audiobooks. No headphone jack means no sale - even at $500 more...xTRICKYxx - Monday, August 16, 2021 - link
Same here!flyingpants265 - Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - link
Removing the headphone jack is a very obvious tactic to push people towards wireless headphones, which are worse in every way. More expensive, limited battery life, even inferior quality. I would be willing to accept that crap if they had unlimited battery life, but they don't. They should have tiny swappable battery cells that you can slide inside the phone to charge them (like the Note Stylus). I am not carrying some separate box and waiting for those things to charge, that is completely crazy.29a - Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - link
Removing the headphone jack is a way to make the phone more waterproof.s.yu - Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - link
No it is not. Sonys are regularly waterproof and still have the jack.Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, August 17, 2021 - link
We've had the S7 to S10 all with 3.5mm and IP68.drajitshnew - Wednesday, August 18, 2021 - link
Galaxy S5 was also waterproof with a headphone jack AND a removable battery.wr3zzz - Thursday, August 19, 2021 - link
You forgot to include that TWS has a hard planned obsolescence of recharge cycles. A $300 TWS is guaranteed to die after 3-4 years while a $300 wired headphone that sounds 10x better could last decades.eek2121 - Monday, August 16, 2021 - link
Somehow they managed to charge more than Apple. Impressive.