Do you really need flagship phone nowadays?
When you walk into a retail store or carrier branch, you may be surprised to find flashy premium smartphones like Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra or Huawei P40 Pro+ on sale for over US$1,000.
That’s a tough price to swallow. But then you see a somewhat identical phone with slightly weaker internal harware on the another shelf and the price tag catches your attention.
US$250.
Now you wonder: since when have midrange phones been so good, and so cheap?
Dark Days of Midrange Phones
Midrange smartphones before 2018 were rather mediocre. Take Moto X4 and HTC U12 Life as examples.
They often have weak Snapdragon 6xx processors inside that don’t run graphical intensive games well, okay 1080p LCD panels, bad camera that captures barely usable photos and body design made of flimsy and cheap materials.
Worst of all, they costed over $300 when they were launched.
Credit: MrMobile [Michael Fisher]
Seriously, using these phones feel more like a chore than a delight when you need to put quite a lot of efforts to make it works the way you want it to and get around corners manufacturers cut to make them affordable.
The Game changer from China
Everything changed in 2019 when Qualcomm announced the more premium midrange Snapdragon 730 SoC and Chinese electronics manufacturer Xiaomi announced the legendary Mi 9T.
For just US$350, you can get pretty much 90% of features found in pricer flagships. The glass and metal sandwich, the modern and tall AMOLED display, the versatile camera setup and a processor that feels fast enough for daily tasks and games.
Credit: Xiaomi
The Mi 9T walks a fine balance between cost to own one without sacrificing much. It’s like a dream come true. That is why it is one of the most loved smartphone among Android enthusiasts since the OnePlus One.
You may ask, how does Xiaomi make profit from this phone? The simple answer is that, they don’t.
As TechAltar pointed out in 2018, the Chinese tech giant capped their profit margin at just 5% so they could grab more market share and earn revenue from users staying in the ecosystem.
This business model definitely works as Xiaomi ranks 4th in global phone shipment and has promising annual growth now.
Boom in the race
Seeing the success of Xiaomi’s inexpensive offering, other phone makers bascially copy the same formula to occupy larger space in the market.
Huawei makes Honor more attractive, Oppo introduced Realme X2 to directly fight against 9T, Samsung and Google focus more on the A series. Even Xiaomi themselves put more resources on Redmi and the new subsidiary Poco.
In just a few months, these brands released products that were almost the same as their competitors but at a lower price to win over potential phone buyers.
Eventually, people can buy mobile phone with exceptional hardware and value without breaking the bank.
Of course, not all recent midrange phones were announced without flaws. Samsung Galaxy A51, for example, is notorious for being laggy at times. The camera hardware is usually decent but processing has room for improvement.
Credit: Hardware Canucks
Chinese skins like MIUI and realmeUI with crappy bloatware aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, though there’re tons of custom ROMs out there as remedies.
It’s true that most midrange phones contains 80% of features flagship phones have but the remaining 20% can be irritating to some.
To wrap up
The smartphone landscape has changed so much in just a short period of time. As flagship smartphone market becomes more and more saturated and out of reach for the average consumers, many turn to midrange phones that are almost as good as pricer counterparts.
The competition between US$300 and US$500 will only become more fierce as global economy continues to flatline (due to coronavirus pandemic and political tensions) while new, innovative concepts like foldables are still immature.
And that’s good news for consumers.
