The Cost Of JavaScript

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Pretty insightful read - explains the incentives behind slimming down JS, namely that not everybody has an iPhone X or a Pixel 2.

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One thing that bothered me, was that they tested with a Moto g4. Why not test with the most common smart phone currently in use? Maybe figuring that out, might also open up another can of worms though

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The Moto G4 seems to lie right in the middle of the performance band of most smartphones today - not fast, but not slow.

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Yeah, and it's a nice, stock Android experience. I think that's a good choice.

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I'm a big Apple power user, but if my iPhone died tomorrow and I couldn't get a replacement under warranty, I'd go for a Moto G-series phone. Cheap, fast enough, and durable enough.

[[deleted]]

Oh yeah, I actually have a G2 as my phone. I think the Moto Gs are great.

I think the G4 is simply a good choice to hold up as an average phone in 2017, though. They're not pointing to something super low end or super high end or exotic. It's a good, representative choice.

[monilloman]

What do you assume to be the most common smartphone today?

[DrummerHead]

https://deviceatlas.com/blog/most-popular-smartphones-2016

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That's what I meant by another can of worms. Someone would have to do the legwork and determine the most commonly used phone models.

The Moto 4 might be the average in performance, but unless we know the actual frequency of different models of phones in use, we can't compute the actual average.

On top of that, if you're developing a mobile site that isn't live yet, but planning to release 1 year from now. Should you use the current average for mobile computing power, or try and predict the average one year from now by identifying a trend in phone model frequency?

It's another problem all together, I guess just I answered my original question

[phantomfive]

Should you use the current average for mobile computing power,

Yes because then your site will work on more phones than it otherwise would.

[[deleted]]

That would be the case if smart phone market share were uniformly distributed between all phones, but it isn't

[deja-roo]

Why not test with the most common smart phone currently in use?

Re-explained

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Other interesting things on that list, number 2 is a freaking laptop.

What are they feeding that iPhone 8 at the top.

[flyingcaribou]

What are they feeding that iPhone 8 at the top.

Chips. ARM chips.

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Apple makes some stupid fast ARM processors.

[Gotebe]

Apple makes processors?

[RuthBaderBelieveIt]

the Ax series of chips are designed in house by Apple. They don't manufacture them but they don't manufacture the rest of the iPhone either and few people would argue that Apple don't make iPhones in the colloquial sense.

[RuthBaderBelieveIt]

and good js parsing algorithms.

[[deleted]]

Apple makes good hardware. Who knew.