Value flagships are all the rage in 2025, becoming the tech industry’s new buzzwords. For a relatively affordable price tag, you can get flagship level performance, powerful camera systems, and a premium design. Sounding too good to be true? It probably is since there is always a slight catch (or two). On paper, these devices seem like “no brainer” buys, but there are always compromises to consider. So in this article, we unpack where brands trim costs and what it means for you as a buyer.

Flagship Performance on a Budget*

At the heart of most value flagships is a powerful SoC, which is often a recent Snapdragon or Dimensity flagship chip. This is coupled with plenty of RAM and storage as well. So you get impressive benchmark scores, smoother everyday performance, and a great gaming experience. But there are a few ways brands can cut corners in this regard.

One of the most common aspects is choosing an older generation flagship chip. An example is the Snapdragon 8 Elite/8 Gen 5 powered devices that are coming out now. While these are still quite powerful, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 stands out as the most powerful Android chipset. Similarly, we have the Dimensity 9500 SoC, which is basically just as powerful.

Another area that can impact performance is the thermal dissipation system. A top tier smartphone brings advanced cooling solutions like vapor chambers, heat pipes, and graphite layers. You might find these on gaming or performance focused value flagships, but other models could skip or simplify such a feature entirely. This can lead to thermal throttling, which leads to an inconsistent experience during sustained performance.

Where Display Quality Gets Trimmed

Another common corner cut in value flagships is the display. Premium devices typically use high-end AMOLED panels with top-tier brightness, colour accuracy, and adaptive refresh technologies. To keep costs down, value flagships might employ panels with lower peak brightness, less refined calibration, lower resolution, and a few other downgrades.

In-display fingerprint scanners are quite common for smartphones, but there are different types here as well. An ultrasonic sensor is typically reserved for flagship phones, while anything below these carries an optical scanner. LTPO is another display tech that enables variable refresh rates. This helps conserve battery life without compromising on display smoothness. Fortunately, more and more smartphones are beginning to shift to the more advanced fingerprint scanning tech, but only Chinese brands are leading this shift.

Camera Trade-Offs

Cameras are one of the biggest battlegrounds for mid-range smartphones. Many value flagships boast high megapixel counts and multi-lens arrays that sound flagship-level on spec sheets. However, delivering truly flagship-class imaging is about more than megapixels. A true premium phone offers larger sensor sizes, better image processing, and software optimizations. Some models even offer special tuning from major camera brands like Hasselblad.

Durability & Wireless Charging

Brands trying to make value flagships cheaper often take out certain features related to charging or use materials weaker materials for the build quality. Wireless charging is one of the first aspects that don’t make the cut. Similarly, Corning Gorilla Glass is often used for a more robust build quality. The Gorilla Glass Victus 2 is a high end glass solution that is better against scratches and shattering. But more affordable models get the weaker and cheaper Gorilla Glass 7i that is often found on mid range phones.

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The post Are Value Flagships Worth It? Here’s What You Sacrifice appeared first on Gizmochina.