benchmarks

Elon Musk envisioned that SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation would be able to deliver Internet to areas underserved by most carriers. The service, however, would have to cater to a broad range of users and locations located in a narrow band of areas where those satellites could actually reach. Starlink promised speeds faster than your average DSL or fiber Internet and Speedtest creator Ookla discovered that be true but only for certain areas. In others, it actually did worse than what consumers already had.

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Although it isn't exactly terrible, Samsung's performance in the mobile photography department can be described as inconsistent at best. It does take great photos and videos but, at least as far as DxOMark is concerned, it simply isn't the best by a long shot. Every new generation of the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note flagships are expected to bring improvements in that arena but that didn't seem to work for the Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G which actually fared worse than its predecessor.

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Last year, ZTE boasted about having accomplished what even the likes of Samsung still failed to do. It brought the world's first commercially available under-display camera on a smartphone and explained how it pulled off this difficult trick. As much excitement as it generated, it also raised doubts on how it would work in practice. Early feedback was less than encouraging but perhaps the most damning comes from DxOMark's review that almost put the ZTE Axon 20 5G at the bottom of its selfie list.

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Apple's M1 processor and Macs were undoubtedly the biggest tech news that closed last year. Its performance, especially for a first try at a desktop-class ARM-based processor, left many questioning Intel's supremacy in that space. There are, of course, still things that Apple's silicon may not be capable of at this time but that is also just a matter of time. Meanwhile, Intel is seemingly going on the offensive with a set of benchmarks that it claims show how actually inferior the Apple M1 is.

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The iPhone 12 mini is really the odd one out of the iPhone 12 series. It shares many things in common with the main iPhone 12 model but packed in a more compact form that Apple is hoping will appeal to fans of the iPhone SE series. It might not be turning out to be the case but those that did invest in the entry-level iPhone 12 option won't have anything to worry about, at least not in terms of photography performance based on DxOMark's rating.

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Samsung's Exynos has been the subject of much controversy and drama in the past months, especially as its performance gap with Qualcomm's equivalent Snapdragon chips became more prominent. The company's semiconductor business has been trying to turn that ship around quickly, especially with a favorable outlook for the new Exynos 2100. That said, the real highlight might still be coming later this year, especially if the combined powers of Samsung and AMD are indeed able to run circles around Apple's 2019 A12 Bionic chip.

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Samsung said that it created the Galaxy S20 FE, short for Fan Edition, to give Galaxy fans the smartphone they want. In its mind, those fans wanted near-flagship specs, a decent camera, and an accessible price tag. To some extent, Samsung was actually able to deliver those, much to the chagrin of owners of the Galaxy S20 base model. That said, you really can't have everything and the Galaxy S20 FE's performance on DxOMark reveals what you have to give up for that price, at least as far as the cameras are concerned.

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Compared to its Find line of smartphones, OPPO's Reno leads its mid-range family. While the performance of mid-tier devices has been catching up to high-end premium phones, especially in the 5G department, their photography performance still leaves a lot to be desired. Once in a while, a mid-range smartphone does rise among the ranks and, depending on your needs, OPPO's Reno4 Pro 5G could actually be that.

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The Snapdragon 888 is Qualcomm's flagship chipset for Android smartphones in 2021, and the stakes have arguably never been higher. On the one hand, Apple is flexing its chip-design chops, and while Qualcomm modems may be in its current hardware, that's not going to be the case forever. Meanwhile, Qualcomm's Android SoC rivals aren't standing still.

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Apple's new iPhones this year might have 5G support as their headlining feature but they might be better remembered for their photography capabilities. At least as far as the biggest and most expensive iPhone 12 Pro Max is concerned, Apple is catching up with the top performers in DxOMark's benchmarks. Not all 2020 iPhones are created equal and not all of them have the same cameras. While the iPhone 12 Pro models are just two points shy of each other, the non-Pro iPhone 12 might leave some mobile photographers a bit wanting.

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The OnePlus Nord marks the company's return to an underserved mid-tier smartphone market. By using a different name, OnePlus is ensuring that it won't be confused for its higher-end models and that consumers will be able to set their expectations right. Those expectations shouldn't be high, to begin with, but it would also be a disservice to write it off completely. As DxOMark found out, the OnePlus Nord does decently when it comes to taking photos and recording videos, as long as you don't expect to produce award-winning pieces from it.

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Apple's M1 Silicon has definitely been hogging the computing news spotlight these past weeks, most of them comparing its performance with Intel's chips. Not all M1 Macs are the same, of course, and not just counting the difference between an M1 MacBook Air and an M1 MacBook Pro. Even the MacBook Pro (Late 2020) offers two slightly different models with different RAM capacities. Thankfully, someone took the time to benchmark these two variants, and the results might surprise you a bit.

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