Techradar: "The OnePlus 8 has disappointingly little RAM" - Can we please stop encouraging useless industry practices that only hinder the consumer?

Article here:

https://www.techradar.com/news/oneplus-8-leaked-with-disappointingly-little-ram-but-a-great-chipset

With phones getting more and more expensive, and flagship prices skyrocketing from the ~600$ of 10 years ago to the 1400$+ of today's high tier devices, instead of articles criticizing the (let's face it, unsustainable) trend of increasing prices to make up for stagnating sales of new smartphones, I keep seeing articles that praise the mighty specs of phones that cost double the average home computer, or that criticize the specs of already expensive phones that AT LEAST are still priced in the realm of affordability for the average middle class consumer. OnePlus started with a flagship killer that was priced at 300$ (which was lacking in many respects), nowadays their phones are 700$+ (and they are arguably better than devices that cost double that, thanks to good software and optimization). Instead of actually understanding what makes a "flagship killer", I see people arguing that OnePlus should just offer insane specs even if they are totally useless. 16GB of RAM on a phone are totally useless with today's Android software ecosystem, and 8GB is plenty for everyday use and it'd be in the interest of the average reader of Techradar (and other publications) if manufacturers stopped putting 8 cameras on a phone to justify insane prices, and just started selling budget flagships that have no expensive gimmicks but beefy specs to drive everyday performance, just like OnePlus has been doing for the last few years.

In short, please ignore articles glorifying insanely expensive tech if the cost is just driven by gimmicks. Try to be critical. 16GB of RAM is not too much or too little in an absolute sense, it just depends on what you're doing with them. Are you rendering scenes for the next pixar movie? Then 16GB is too little. Are you making calls and texting your friends on Whatsapp or Telegram, on an OS which will kill apps for battery/power saving reasons no matter how much RAM you have? Then 16GB is as much of a gimmick as having 16 cameras on the back for high end photography that still can't match a real DSLR..yes you could technically use them, but you really shouldn't and you'd be better spending your finite budget on something else.

Also spare me the "tech is going on and in X years 16GB will be the norm". Yes I get it. But tech shouldn't go faster than our wallets. Yes we could technically have a 128GB RAM phone, but what's the point if it's not sold at the price of a normal phone? The market can't keep up with these devices, so publications should just contextualize high prices for what they are and at least they shouldn't criticize budget options for not including extra features that would drive their prices up a lot.

Submitted February 15, 2020 at 05:32PM by xevizero https://ift.tt/31YrMCQ via TikTokTikk