Android phones span a wide range of prices, starting at around $80 and reaching as high as $1,500. While it is not reasonable to expect much from a low-end device, midrange phones have proven their place by offering good value for money, with reliable specifications that are more than sufficient for a lot of users without costing a fortune. Midrange devices now offer more RAM and storage than they did in previous years, and MediaTek, Samsung, and Qualcomm all offer capable processors that can comfortably handle light to moderate tasks.
In recent years, good midrange phones have typically been priced between $300 and $500. However, due to a combination of factors, prices are expected to increase across all price segments, making midrange devices more expensive and pushing the already hard-to-swallow prices of high-end devices even higher.
For nine years, I used midrange phones, including the Huawei P10 Lite, Huawei P30 Lite, Samsung Galaxy A71, and Samsung Galaxy A55, before switching to the Honor 600 Pro, which is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite, the company’s flagship chipset from last year. It is still considered a very capable chipset today.
In this article, I will discuss the differences I noticed between using a high-end processor and a midrange one based on my personal experience. Rather than focusing on benchmarks, technical tests, or specifications, my goal is to talk about real-life daily usage and whether a flagship processor actually makes a meaningful difference.
Table of Contents
Screen Reader Performance
As blind users, we need a smooth and responsive screen reader experience on our devices. A screen reader needs to always be running on a blind user’s phone, requiring enough resources to remain responsive and reliable.
While noticeable lag should be expected on low-end devices, as these phones sometimes struggle with basic tasks even without a screen reader running, modern midrange devices are generally powerful enough to handle screen readers smoothly. For example, a sighted person I know owned an Honor X5b, a phone with very modest specifications, and used to wait several seconds when answering a call for the phone to react and display the call screen.
However, even with capable midrange processors, many Android users notice that screen readers are good overall but not perfect. There can be a short delay between touching the screen or swiping between onscreen elements and hearing the focused item announced. This delay becomes more noticeable when scrolling, as TalkBack needs time to identify the new items and place focus correctly.
Based on my own experience, moving to a high-end processor does not eliminate these delays, or at least the improvement is not dramatic. After switching from midrange phones to the Honor 600 Pro with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, I noticed some improvement in overall responsiveness. However, I am not even sure whether the difference I noticed is a real improvement or partly the placebo effect.
Since TalkBack is not my primary screen reader, I do not use it often. That said, my Accessible Android teammates who use TalkBack as their main screen reader report noticeably better performance on flagship devices, even if it is still not perfect.
Of the third-party screen readers available on Android, I only use Jieshuo, so I cannot comment on the experience with all other screen readers. From my experience, Jieshuo feels more responsive overall than TalkBack, especially while scrolling, although there is still room for improvement. Both TalkBack and Jieshuo offer the ability to reduce the delay between touching the screen and announcing the item under the finger, which improves this part of the experience. However, Jieshuo users should first determine whether this feature is reliable enough for them, as enabling it can still introduce issues in some situations.
Additionally, TalkBack improves typing responsiveness through the ability to reduce typing focus delay, while Jieshuo allows users to type with screen reader gestures suspended, which can positively affect typing speed.
In my opinion, the problem with screen reader performance on Android does not come from insufficient processor power, but rather from the communication between the operating system and the screen reader at the software level. There should be a review of how the necessary interactions between the system and accessibility services are handled in order to provide an almost lag-free experience across both midrange and high-end devices.
Unfortunately, many people, including myself, notice a difference in screen reader responsiveness when using VoiceOver on iOS devices, with interactions often feeling smoother and more immediate. This does not mean that the Android screen reader experience is poor. I have been an exclusive Android user for more than 13 years, and Android continues to meet my needs. However, improving screen reader responsiveness is always welcome, especially knowing that even midrange processors are already powerful enough to handle screen readers efficiently.
TTS Engines
A lot of blind users rely on speech output from their screen readers to interact with their devices and access information. For those users, no matter how much screen reader responsiveness improves, a slow or unreliable TTS engine can ruin the entire experience.
With traditional TTS engines, I could not notice a meaningful difference between running them on a midrange device and on a high-end device. For example, Google Text-to-Speech performs similarly on both my Galaxy A55 and my Honor 600 Pro. Although it is the least responsive of the TTS engines I use, including Acapela, Vocalizer, and eSpeak, its responsiveness did not improve simply by moving to a more powerful processor.
However, with the emergence of neural and AI-based TTS engines, device performance starts to become more important. While none of the AI TTS engines currently available are ready to replace traditional engines as the primary daily screen reader TTS for most users, testing them, or using them to read articles or other content, is an interesting experience.
With these newer engines, I started to notice the limitations of a midrange processor. When testing ToBe SAID Pro on my Galaxy A55, powered by the Exynos 1480 processor, increasing the speech rate resulted in choppy speech, eventually reaching a point where the generated speech became almost impossible to understand. Even at lower speeds, speech interruptions could still occur sometimes.
Running the same engine on the Honor 600 Pro with the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor provided a noticeably better experience. I was able to increase the speech rate without experiencing the same issues, with the engine being able to generate speech quickly enough to keep up.
I also tested the Supertonic model through the BookFusion TTS engine. While the experience is still not completely smooth, the engine was usable. I have not tested this engine on my Galaxy A55, as the update supporting it was released recently, but I would expect the experience to be worse, with more lag and possible issues during speech generation.
Traditional TTS engines are still the most reliable choice regardless of the device being used. However, neural and AI-based engines are clearly here to stay, and they already demonstrate interesting capabilities. As these technologies continue to improve, processor performance may become increasingly important for blind users who want to take advantage of them.
App Installations and Performing In-App Tasks
Both midrange and high-end processors are capable of handling daily tasks, but the difference lies in the time it takes to complete certain operations, especially more complicated or intensive ones.
It is easy to notice the difference in the time required for the Play Store or third-party app installers to install the same application on a midrange and a high-end device. In-app tasks can also be completed faster with a more powerful processor. For example, converting a video to audio through the AudioLab app takes noticeably less time on a high-end device, with the difference being difficult to ignore.
It is worth keeping in mind, however, that some very demanding tasks can expose the limitations of a midrange processor, such as intensive gaming, advanced video editing, or other specialized workloads that many users may not need to perform regularly.
Opening apps and performing everyday tasks such as sending messages, making calls, and navigating through applications remain smooth and reliable on midrange devices, as they are already powerful enough to handle these tasks efficiently.
Even with many operations that are completed faster on high-end processors, waiting a few extra seconds for certain tasks on a midrange phone is still a trade-off worth considering, especially when taking into account the large difference in price between the two categories.
The Processor Is Not the Whole Story
The processor, with both its CPU and GPU components, is a fundamental part of a device’s performance. It plays a major role in determining how well a phone handles daily tasks, ranging from basic operations to more advanced and resource-intensive ones. Its impact can also extend to other areas, such as the maximum connection speeds the device can achieve and the capabilities of other hardware features that depend on it.
However, the processor is not the whole story. A mobile phone is a complete package, and the final experience depends on the decisions made when designing the entire device. A powerful processor can deliver excellent performance, but other limitations can prevent it from showing its full potential.
For example, pairing a high-end processor with limited RAM or slower storage is like having a highly skilled manager without the right resources to work efficiently. The manager may be capable of handling complex tasks, but limited resources can prevent them from reaching their full potential. Poor thermal management can also reduce the advantage of a powerful processor, as the phone may need to throttle performance to control heat and continue operating safely. Battery capacity is another important factor. A high-end processor with a small battery is like having a powerful car with a tiny fuel tank.
Software is another important part of the equation. Poor optimization, crashes, stuttering, or badly optimized applications can make even the most powerful processor feel like a much lower-tier one. A great processor can only perform as well as the software around it allows.
Since the goal of this article is to provide an overview of the performance differences between a device running a high-end processor and one running a midrange processor, rather than to serve as a guide on what to look for when purchasing a new Android phone, I will not go into detail about every compromise manufacturers make to keep prices competitive, how those compromises affect users, or provide recommendations regarding purchasing decisions. It is worth noting, however, that midrange devices usually involve more compromises to achieve a lower price, while high-end phones tend to offer a more complete and well-rounded package.
Are The Improvements Worth the Extra Few Hundred Dollars?
With the current and expected price hikes, high-end phones are becoming harder and harder for many people to afford. At the same time, flagship killers are becoming closer to the flagships they were meant to challenge, with some now reaching the prices of last year’s high-end devices. Midrange devices are facing their own challenges, as manufacturers are expected to make more compromises to keep their devices within an affordable price segment.
While I cannot say that using a midrange device with a midrange processor is comparable to using a more powerful device with a flagship one, I can confidently say that the difference I experienced does not justify the large price gap for many people. Screen reader and TTS performance remain close between both categories, daily tasks can be performed reliably on both, and even when certain operations take longer on midrange processors, the extra waiting time is often a reasonable trade-off.
On-device AI is another area where high-end chipsets have an advantage, as running AI models locally requires powerful hardware. However, many AI features still rely on cloud processing, and the on-device features currently available are not yet valuable enough for many users to justify paying more.
Spending hundreds of dollars more is not always the best decision. In many cases, saving that money for something else can provide more value. You should not take a loan or put yourself under financial pressure just to buy a smartphone.
Before going beyond your budget, ask yourself: Do I really need the most powerful processor available? Would a larger battery make a bigger difference for my usage? What aspects of my phone experience do I value the most? What tasks do I perform regularly on my device?
Whether you are a blind or sighted user, you should not expect companies to make midrange devices identical to their high-end models. There needs to be a difference somewhere, with certain improvements reserved for more expensive devices. As a consumer, your purchase should be based on your needs and budget, while understanding that compromises and limitations are part of choosing a more affordable device. However, those limitations are often much smaller than the benefits gained from saving a considerable amount of money.
That being said, with manufacturers increasing the number of years of software support, looking at a high-end device released one or two years earlier can sometimes be a better choice than buying a new midrange device. This is because a previous-generation flagship processor will often remain more powerful than a current midrange processor.
At the end of the day, we all like to have the best and newest devices, but we must be wise and balance what we get with what we can afford and what we actually need.
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