It is actually not easy to choose a domestic mobile phone nowadays. Since last year, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have adopted old chips in a new bottle and sold them as new products, making it difficult for mid-range mobile phone consumers to make a choice. Facing this environment, the author believes that consumers should choose old flagship models instead of new thousand-yuan mobile phones.

For example, old models like Xiaomi 12S and iQOO Neo are now sold for around 1300 yuan on second-hand platforms, with prices similar to those of new thousand-yuan mobile phones but much more powerful performance.

These old flagship models are equipped with Qualcomm's first-generation Snapdragon 8GEN series chips. Due to the overheating issues of the previous Snapdragon 888, consumers quickly abandoned this chip, prompting Qualcomm to fully develop the new Snapdragon 8GEN series, with Snapdragon 8GEN1 being the first chip in this series.

After Snapdragon 8GEN1, Qualcomm launched Snapdragon 8GEN2 at the end of 2022 and Snapdragon 8GEN3 in October 2023, releasing two high-end Snapdragon 8 chips within a year, an unprecedented move for Qualcomm. In fact, the gap between the first-generation Snapdragon 8GEN1 and the latest Snapdragon 8GEN3 is not significant.

Mobile phones equipped with Snapdragon 8GEN1 have only been on the market for a little over two years and have not been in use for a long time. Such flagship models with short usage time are rare nowadays. Additionally, due to the increased update frequency of Qualcomm's high-end chips, the price drop of Snapdragon 8GEN1 mobile phones has been significantly faster than that of previous flagship models.

The pressure from Apple has also accelerated the price reduction of domestic flagship mobile phones. Last year, Apple's iPhone 15 sales were poor, prompting the company to repeatedly reduce prices. In March, the iPhone 15's price was reduced by 1500 yuan, and in May, it was further reduced by 2350 yuan. In contrast, the iPhone 14's price was only reduced by more than 1200 yuan in May 2023, illustrating the rapid pace of iPhone 15's price reduction.

Affected by Apple's price reductions, domestic mobile phone manufacturers may have chosen not to significantly reduce the prices of their new Snapdragon 8GEN3 mobile phones to maintain profits but instead accelerated the price reduction of older Snapdragon 8GEN2 and Snapdragon 8GEN1 models, contributing to the rapid price drop of Snapdragon 8GEN1 mobile phones to around 1300 yuan.

In contrast, domestic mobile phone manufacturers have shown less attention to thousand-yuan mobile phones. Current thousand-yuan mobile phones are equipped with the renamed Dimensity 6020 chip, which is based on the three-year-old Dimensity 700, or even the renamed Snapdragon 680 chip, which is based on the 2018 Snapdragon 660. The performance of such thousand-yuan mobile phones is naturally far inferior to that of Snapdragon 8GEN1 flagship models.

Compared to thousand-yuan mobile phones, Snapdragon 8GEN1 flagship models offer better configurations in terms of screens, motors, speakers, and memory, making them significantly superior in overall performance. They can be used for another five years without issues, as many consumers still use the previous-generation Snapdragon 865 mobile phones, which are actually much better than Dimensity 6020 and Snapdragon 680 models.

Domestic mobile phone manufacturers' perfunctory attitude towards consumers has led to a near-abandonment of domestic thousand-yuan mobile phones. During the 618 sales promotion, a large number of consumers chose Snapdragon 8GEN2 mobile phones, preferring to spend a few hundred yuan more than on poor-quality domestic thousand-yuan models. The current domestic thousand-yuan mobile phone market is characterized by confusing positioning, extremely outdated chips, and unreasonably high prices.

Of course, high-end consumers do not consider these domestic mobile phones and instead opt for iPhones. This is also why the iPhone 15 topped the sales charts during the 618 sales promotion, with most consumers who purchased mobile phones priced above 3000 yuan choosing iPhones.