What is the reason why mobile phones are becoming increasingly laggy?

Judging from the technical indicators, Apple's A15 single-core performance can run more than 1700 points in Geekbench5, which exceeds the 10th generation i7 and is at the level of the 11th generation i7. Even in the Android camp, the Geekbench5 performance of Snapdragon 888 has more than 1100 points, which is also at the level of the 8th generation i7.

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However, when we actually use it, we can't feel the powerful performance of the mobile phone processor. From the perspective of load, most mobile phone apps can be solved by the web version, and they can run smoothly with very low performance.

Why are our processors becoming more and more powerful, but they are becoming more and more slow to use?

1. What performance does a smooth mobile application require?

Currently, the resolution of most mobile phones is at the 1080p+ level. Because of the full screen, it often reaches 2400*1080, which is similar to the standard 1080P performance requirement.

The 1080P era of mobile phones began in late 2012 and early 2013. The popular processors at the time were NVIDIA's Tegra 3, Snapdragon 8064, Samsung's Orion 4412, and Huawei's HiSilicon's K3V2. At the time, these processors were already able to run daily apps smoothly.

I have some mobile phones from different eras. I use geekbench3 to run the scores to see how big the difference in single-core performance is.

The mainstream Snapdragon 865 single-core has a performance of over 3500 points.

Xiaomi's Snapdragon 888 cannot run at full speed when running Geekbench 3, and its strength cannot be seen.

The Snapdragon 855 is above 3200 points, the Snapdragon 835 is around 1800 points, the Snapdragon 660 is around 1500 points, the Snapdragon 810 is around 1100 points, and the Snapdragon 600 is 600 points.

The weakest phone I have is Gionee's s5.5, which has an MT6592 processor and can run more than 400 points. This phone also has a resolution of 1080P.

According to today's apps and Android systems, a phone with a single-core score of about 1100 is not very useful. The Gionee S5.5 only has a performance score of 400. Today, I downloaded the latest version of an app, and it took a long time to open the app. It took several minutes to load, and it was very slow when I used it, and it was basically unusable.

However, if you use the appropriate APP version, this machine with only one-tenth of the mainstream performance can still run smoothly.

The system of Gionee s5.5 is Android 4.42. The MT6592 single-core of this system is enough to run a smooth desktop. If Android 9.0 is used, the Snapdragon 660 will also feel stuck. If Android 12 is used, the fluency of the Snapdragon 855 is not very good.

Therefore, the system version directly determines the lag of the phone.

On the APP, if you use the latest version of iQiyi on Gionee S5.5, it takes minutes to open the APP, which is basically unusable. However, if you use the original version of iQiyi Express, it takes about 7 seconds to boot up. Then it can play 1080p videos smoothly, and there is no problem with normal use.

Similarly, the initial version of Himalaya Speed ​​​​Edition takes about 5 seconds to cold start. It is about the same time as the latest version of Himalaya with Snapdragon 888, and all functions can be used normally.

That is to say, only one tenth of the performance of the mainstream mobile phones we currently use is enough to run smoothly.

Nowadays, mobile phone lags are caused by the waste of system and APP performance.

2. Andy Bill's Law

In the IT industry, in addition to Moore's Law, there is also Andy Bill's Law. The high performance brought by hardware will be taken away by the waste of software, and users still cannot get a good experience.

For mobile phone apps, the same function can be programmed in different ways depending on the programmer’s implementation method. If the hardware level is limited, in order to ensure smooth operation, the programmer must make various optimizations, use tools with relatively high execution efficiency, and use various algorithm optimizations to program. This often requires programmers to have a high level of technical skills.

If the hardware is not restricted, programmers will naturally use inefficient methods, but the programming difficulty will be lower and there will be less need for optimized tools to program, which will reduce the labor intensity and the ability requirements for programmers.

In the early 1980s, Japanese programmers who programmed for the FC game console could program directly by looking at machine code. In the mid-1980s, these programmers had to use assembly language. Until the PS3 era, Japan could still program directly on hardware to improve efficiency, so the performance of the PS3 is much weaker than today's mobile phones, but the game graphics are still beyond the reach of most mobile games today.

So, in 2012, programmers designed programs to run smoothly on the processors at the time.

By 2021, even if the core functions of an app have not changed, programmers will still waste a lot of resources just to make the current processor run smoothly.

The result is that the processor performance increases 10 times, but the programmer wastes 10 times the programming efficiency.

Users keep spending money to replace their phones, but they still freeze after a short time. This is because when new phones are released, programmers develop new versions based on the new phones' non-freeze standard.

3. How to prevent our mobile phone from lagging?

From a personal perspective, we can avoid upgrading the system as much as possible and use older versions of APP as much as possible.

For example, a Snapdragon 865 phone uses Android 11 and WeChat 7.010, and WeChat cold start only takes 0.33 seconds. iQiyi Express 1.10 takes 0.8 seconds, and UC Browser Express takes 0.4 seconds.

But if you use the latest version of WeChat, 10 seconds to boot up is normal, the speed difference is dozens of times.

From a national perspective, this waste is huge. From the perspective of power consumption, a highly efficient program would have required 0.1W to run. But because of the bloated program, it would have required 2W. This waste of more than one billion people would be a huge consumption.

At the same time, the bloated programs also shorten the life of mobile phones. A computer can be used for decades as long as the programs it runs do not change. However, a mobile phone will become laggy after only two years.

Therefore, the state should impose restrictions on APP manufacturers, control the listing review, and require the listing of highly efficient APPs.

In this way, the burden on consumers can be reduced and energy conservation and emission reduction can be achieved.