With how mid-range phones have improved these days, there’s much debate on whether flagship killers are still a thing. The idea of a flagship killer was popularized by the likes of the early OnePlus phones and the Pocophone F1, which would pack the best possible processor during its time and have an aggressive price tag.
However, things have changed since the COVID pandemic, with components being more expensive and shortages affecting their availability. Recently, a number of so-called “flagship killers” are starting to be more selective with the components they put in their phones. In most cases, brands would either prioritize a good processor, blazing fast charging speeds, or superior cameras–and not all three of them before they can call a phone a flagship killer.
Notable cases for these include the Nothing Phone (1), which went for the best possible cameras while only settling for an upper mid-range processor and average charging speeds, and the POCO F4, which has a previous-generation flagship processor, fash charging speeds, and better than average cameras.
On the other side of the spectrum, you have mid-range phones that have really good specs to offer on the table–these include the POCO X4 GT with its insanely powerful processor and the realme 9 Pro+ and GT Master with their great camera performance.
With how mid-range phones have significantly improved these days, is there still a market for flagship killers? Based on the number of phones we have reviewed, a mid-range phone these days is good enough for flagship killers to lose their relevance. A good example of this is the Snapdragon 778G (and its Plus variant) and the Dimensity 8100. Both mid-range processors are very powerful, can match flagship processors–and barely show any difference in real-life performance.
Another example is the vivo T1 5G, which has a Snapdragon 778G processor that’s good enough to handle some of the most popular and demanding mobile games like Genshin Impact–and overall performance is really comparable to a phone using a Snapdragon 8-series processor.
Unless you do a lot of gaming or primarily use your phone for creating content, the average user will not really notice the difference between using a mid-range phone over the so-called “flagship killer” phone. This is one of the reasons why people may be on the fence with the Nothing Phone (1) and its Php 30k price tag: while the brand does justify the price tag for using expensive components (ie. a flexible OLED display), the average user would do fine with a typical mid-range phone, allowing them to save several thousands of pesos along the way.
The times have changed, and aside from people being more conscious of how much they spend, it’s hard to justify the existence of flagship killer phones–when mid-range phone pretty much ticks all the minimum requirements for the everyday user.
