The Toxicity of Tech Twitter

You might have surely come around takes from tech Twitter (now X). Ever wondered how true they are? Dive in!

If you are someone wandering over the never-ending, all opinionated tweets¹ — for your UPSC or just to keep your knowledge updated, you might have seen multiple controversial stances and takes — some of which were actioned and others left open to all². It is a fairly complex place to navigate and has so much misinformation and controversial takes. It is similar to the videos where influencers without knowledge of investment gave investment advice and people fell for it. Well, you can’t really blame people, can you?

Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash

Interestingly, earlier takes tech takes were actually valid points that reflected real life situations and were very helpful to consumers as such as they got a correct idea if the product suited them or not or whether the risk of trying the product was relational the price of the product or not. But now, tech Twitter has exploded into less useful things, most of which being paid reviews which aren’t specifically mentioned. Not that it’s wrong, it even happens on YouTube, but there is some kind of prejudice against somethings tech.

Now, upon checking, you might say that I am biased and as such, but take it, no. This isn’t a paid article nor am I accusing or protecting someone. Things have changed in a long time. I used Twitter actively to help Telegram users actually, but pre-2020, I was on Twitter for the reason most of you were — short form text content and getting access first to breaking news and so on. The platform was known for its wide content and reach. Now, tech Twitter has changed a lot. After the launch of AI tools like Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity and so on, almost everyone now seems to be a tech-person or a tech reviewer of sorts.

Someone who has a totally non-tech job and knows very little to nothing about technology or how it works is voicing their opinion to a mass of consumers who are then influenced by what they say. In the corona period, many people got a first mover advantage, of sorts. And many people exploring the app followed them. It all slowly began with posting tips, like, how to use transparent notepad on Zoom. Helpful for students, eh?

Slowly but surely, they came into the gadget space and influenced people over. While I do agree that there are genuine people, this action of widespread everyone-is-a-techie attitude, it is becoming hard to separate the genuine from the fake, which is why the folks who review products on YouTube are enjoying a strong growth. Here is an example of what I mean.

In 1973, UC Berkeley was on the brink of getting sued for gender bias. Their graduate school had admitted 44% of their male applicants but only 35% of women. They hired a statistician to review their admission data, and nobody expected what they found. Their process was slightly biased, yes, but it favored women applicants, not men. After digging into the data, they realized that the admission rates for women were higher than for men in 4 out of 6 departments. Women preferred departments C, D, E, and F, which were more competitive. Very few women applied to departments A and B. This is another example of Simpson's Paradox, a phenomenon in which a trend appears in several data groups but disappears or reverses when the groups are combined. People hide behind phenomena like this daily to manipulate data to support any story they want. If you aren't careful, you can arrive at the wrong conclusions even when the data is staring you in the face.

Given this stance, people tend to believe or take things at their face value, instead of scrutinizing it properly. A recent example is the launch of Samsung Galaxy A55 in many countries. A55 is a good phone, with its only downside being thick bezels are the price range. This phone is a no-brainer deal if you get it under/around for the price of A54 with discounts (exchange, card and student/corporate offers combined). It has improved drastically when compared with A54.

If you are getting it above ₹40,000 or $480, this phone is a no-go. A much better option would be OnePlus 12 R or Samsung S23 FE. The A55 is good with its specs, doesn’t lag (as some old, base A series phones), has good One UI, though not flagship. People think of this as a dealbreaker, but it isn’t. Samsung has to create a division, a difference of sorts between A and S series phones, otherwise what’s the use of having different series of phones?

Another thing that people fret over is (drum roll), Exynos - the in-home mobile processor of Samsung Semiconductors. The chip is known to be inferior than their Snapdragon counterparts and inefficient. While that may be true for Exynos chips made between 2017-2022, things are now changing. Samsung revamped their Exynos 2400 SoC to compete with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. While Exynos isn’t equal to 8 Gen 3, the difference in between is very minimal and visible only in tasks like rendering. Otherwise, there’s literally no change. Here is a comprehensive review for your reference which proves these chips are head-to-head. If you feel things need to be the same, then take a look at this - comparison between 8 Gen 3 and Dimensity 9300. 9300 beats 8 Gen 3, albeit by a small margin, same as SD 8 Gen 3 beats Exynos 2400. Nobody backlashed that SD is inferior.

The problem is with the brand image of Exynos. When you fail for 7 years in a row to make a good chip, which more often than not loses to a year-old flagship, sometimes two, it really dents the brand image. Not to mention the heating issues and lag. Exynos 2200 was a competitor to SD 8 Gen 2, but it lost to it and the year-old flagship 8 Gen 1. But now things have changed. Exynos is getting better (at least with 2400 & 1480).

A55 uses Exynos 1480 which competes with SD 7s Gen 2 and Dimensity 7200 (Ultra and Pro are just marketing gimmicks). It beats 7s Gen 2 and also the 7200 (Ultra & Pro included). Somebody just recommended Nothing Phone 2(a) instead of A55 which is absolute bullshit. Though it is a good phone in and of itself, it has jittering and lagging issues being reported, but Nothing being Nothing, will fix it in next few updates.

As of date, A55 and Exynos 1480 have been running smoothly, without giving any hitches as happened in previous A series phones. It fares better in almost all real-world usage, although it won’t make it as much “value for money” choice. If you want full value for your money in the phone itself, there are better options out there. However, if you want it to be throughout the duration you use your phones (3 years at minimum), Samsung suffices that value for money issue.

Samsung, as a brand, has deeply rooted itself in the ethos of multiple countries and has a strong presence to begin with. It sells numerous products, not just limited to mobile phones. Hence, they have to and they do provide a very good (or efficient) after-sales service. The service centers are spread out almost everywhere.

Now, I might (however unfortunately) have to agree that the level of service isn’t the same in all places. Not even the same at the same place. My phone had a weird image processing bug which happened after an update. I went to the Opera House - then the Samsung’s biggest experience store in Southeast Asia in Bangalore, India. Guess what? The service center manager outrightly declined the issue despite me recreating the issue in another phone which happened to belong to an employee sitting beside him.

While I was exiting the Samsung Opera House, a salesperson came and asked me about my issue since I was waiting for manager and he was unavailable. I told the salesperson my issue and he said that my phone and another Samsung phone using the same sensor are having the same issues. This will be resolved with One UI 6. And yes, that happened.

Later, I went to another Samsung authorized service center and the issue was acknowledged and escalated, reaching to the Head Office in Gurugram/Chennai (I don’t recall exactly). Later my issue was acknowledged and fixed in the One UI 6 update. Not just this, but I have visited for physical damage as well. I don’t think Poco/Vivo do these things, as I have had first-hand experience with one of them. My friend had broken his front glass. He went to the service center, and I accompanied him. Despite having paid north of ₹40,000, it took more than a month to be repaired.

Samsung gives its S and Z series users a spare phone to use, but not the other series which is little disappointing. But apart from this, it is a very good experience. The phones are premium, sturdy and achieving, not to explicitly mention that Samsung has never weathered from its promised years of software updates and enhancements.

Not a fanboy, but yes, this phone is everything, except if you want your money a good run. For that, there are alternatives. Now what remains is your thinking and choice because you will also have to deal with the consequences of choices/actions.

1. Tweets are now known as posts after the Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk and changing it from Twitter to X.

Read more.

2. Twitter trumps Trump.