I don't really understand why they had to make this.
The Redmi note 3 already had everything the new one has, including 2 A72 cores from the SD 650. I guess china still drools over the number of useless small cores.
Early Redmi note 3 is Chinese version and has hello chip. The international version (redmi note 3 pro)came several months later with new snapdragon. Since this redmi note 4 will come with hello, I hope the international version will come with newer snapdragon.
Not every market had the snapdragon version mate, some of them had the mediatek helio x10 version of note 3.. helio x20 is a significant upgrade over the x10... More processing power for less battery consumption
Agreed. X10 was a horrible, horrible chip. Haven't had experience handling the X20 yet, but if MediaTek knows anything about yearly improvements, it should be a solid update. Also 64GB model is now the step-up, no 32GB anymore.
Design looks significantly better though. I expect international customers will soon see a Snapdragon 652 or whatever is the 14nm successor to the 650 (likely 660) with the same 16MP camera as the international Redmi Note 3 Pro.
4 high performance cores, 4 low performance cores, 4 medium cores, 4 cores for when it’s hot out, 4 cores for when you feel vaguely sad about nothing, 4 cores for sundays on the 15th of the month.
The Chinese SoC company strategy.
But seriously, getting two Cortex A72s for that price is pretty amazing (you already could with the 3). Comes close enough on the CPU side to high end SoCs that it’s moot at that point. Though the two clusters of 4 A53s though tuned for high or low performance silicon, ehh, those are just inflating the marketing numbers and multicore scores, just the low power optimized A53s and the A72s for everything else would probably do the same.
I've got the Note 3 and it's fast when it needs to be, thanks to the 2 A72 cores on the Snapdragon 650. I don't see the need to have a low and mid-level cluster to complicate things, especially when Mediatek power management isn't great to begin with. Moaaar cores = moaaar better? Don't think so.
I think 2 A72/73 and 2 A35 cores would make a ton of sense from a efficiency standpoint. Use A35 under light load and A72 when more performance you need. And you have best of both worlds + such SoC would be smaller. But cores sell apparently.
@ WPX00 - Not very sure what math you do but Apple's core is very big and they use a lot of area on cache. A72 on 16FF is some 1.15mm2 and a quad cluster with 2MB L2$ is about 8mm2. ARM packs a few times more perf per mm2 than Apple and that's a hell of a lot more impressive. A72 vs Apple , just the core with L1, offers some 3.5 times the perf per mm2. If you include L2 as implemented ARM offers almost 3 times the perf per mm2 and if you include Apple's L3 caches too, ARM gets to 4 times the perf per mm2. it would be fair to factor in ARM's little cores too in the math but i'm not doing that math lol. We also don't have any good power numbers for Apple so that's a bit of a problem in doing the math. However, ARM is far more impressive in perf per area and the fact that Apple's software ecosystem is built for dual cores is a huge problem for Apple and they need to catch up as computing hasn't been about dual cores for a decade.
The only area where Apple has a big plus in NAMD speed as Android needs standards but it gets better with UFS 2.1 becoming available.
I understand the philosophy, I'm just saying 8 cores between "low power" and "medium power" is excessive when you also have the A72s.
I don't see when a user would benefit from 4 low power cores being spun up and 4 of the same core type but optimized for higher clock cores spun up at the same time. If something requires low power, hand it to a low power core. If something puts a load on, spin up an A72 and hurry up and get idle.
The middle cluster is questionable. Or at most, maybe 2 low power tuned cores and 2 medium power cores.
Anyways, that's all buying into big.LITTLE too, as the A7-9 series show two big meaty high IPC cores can be properly power gated for low idle and background processing power as well.
As those slides show you the majority of the load is on the medium cluster. The smallest cores save you a bit more power at a low cost since they are tiny and the dual A72 kicks in when needed. Do note that the big cores are a lot efficient than A53 so trying not to load them saves a lot of power. It's not about core count, the SoC is not aimed to load all 10 at the same time, it's about efficiency and cost to get there.Vs 4+4 you save on low load and you can clock higher the big cores since you only have 2. Can't quickly find a better video so check out 360 N4 (2.1GHz) vs LeEco (2.3Ghz) vs Meizu Pro 6 ((2.5Ghz) vs MI 5 with SD820 https://youtu.be/oDkfpnxzOMA?t=385 The thing to watch is how the cores are loaded. Not the best vid as you don't see situations where only the small cores work. Fewer cores could work but Android seems to thread pretty well and then you lose efficiency with fewer cores.
Mediatek claims 30% more efficiency moving from 2 clusters to 3.
Considering how insignificantly cheap another couple of A53s are in comparison to the area cost of baseband/gpu/ISPs/etc, it seems like a good tradeoff.
Yeah, A53's die area is 0.7mm2 at 20nm, literally the head of a pen added to a die for each core, really really tiny. It makes sense that cheaper SoCs sprinkle them everywhere, which is easier than investing in high IPC cores.
And it's a MediaTek phone, something to avoid like the plague if you like to hack or want updates for a few years. The Note 4 looks exactly like the Note 3 except with a tiny bump in battery capacity. I'd rather get the Note 3 Pro with the Snapdragon 650 rather than any Helio whatever from a serial violator of the GPL.
Looks like Redmi Note 4 has updated better looking design, camera and SOC. The Indian launch should be soon enough as Xiaomi should 1.75 Million Redmi Note 3 within 5 months in India.
Re: supported bands, Xiaomi usually releases "World"' versions of their phones with support for more bands than the China versions, and Google Play et al pre installed. for example, for previous Redmi Note 3 Pro - International Version: http://www.geekbuying.com/item/Xiaomi-Redmi-Note-3...
Are there physical differences between the models? Usually it's possible to flash MIUI China and Global ROMs on the same phone.
On the Note 3 Pro, Xiaomi had a Taiwan special edition that added support for different LTE bands and had a MIUI Marshmallow-based release. It's a unicorn model though, most Note 3 Pros sold outside China (mainly in India) are the same model as the China-market variant.
The cpu update over the snapdragon version will be pretty unmeaningful, but it will be a substantial upgrade over the mediatek version of the note3 which ships with a helio x10 processor... The only thing that's really worrying is, the note4 uses only 4 cores of the Mali880 GPU. I don't think 4 cores of the Mali 880 GPU will have comparable graphical rendering power as the adreno 510. Of course if they plan on releasing snapdragon version of the rest of the world , I won't be complaining if they put in the 1.8ghz 820 for $135 USD :D
The X20/X25 has 3 versions. X25 is MT6797T with A72 at 2.5Ghz while X20 is MT6797 with clocks at 2.3GHz and MT6796m at 2.1GHz. The GPU clocks also differ but you can figure those out yourself.
The best value are still 360 Mobile N4 and N4S and the big weakness for this device is the RAM. They really should have 3GB for the base model, even if at higher price.
As for using Qualcomm for a global version why? MTK has CDMA2000 support, they can cover anything that is needed. Sure in India the patent trolls arranged for Xiaomi to be forced to use Qualcomm, funny how that just happened and regulators don't notice.
I am using xiaomi mi4c 5in slim snapdragon 808 along my 6s. It is quite powerful, same as redmi note 3 pro. But the cyanogenmods only support mi3/4, and redmi note 3 pro for now.
I wish google would work with Xiaomi and make a nexus phone based on this model/design. This phone's classy design would be great with up to date untarnished android and an up to date camera/screen.
personnaly i read 2 main lacking points for me to buy the redmi note 3 pro. one was the outdoor readability of the screen and it seems they implemented some sort of sunlight display technology in this one. second point is the missing LTE band , B20 - 800Mhz because i don't change my phone until it die or can't manage the software anymore.On this point they released a special edition in taiwan with B20 and B28 - 700Mhz of the redmi note 3 pro i hope xiaomi will do the same with note 4 pro.
Other than that i read alots website and forums and i think the redmi note 3 pro qualifies for the best midrange phone in the world.
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SetiroN - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
I don't really understand why they had to make this.The Redmi note 3 already had everything the new one has, including 2 A72 cores from the SD 650.
I guess china still drools over the number of useless small cores.
JoshHo - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
It looks like this is mostly an update to the SoC and design. The camera might be better but it's hard to say.realbabilu - Wednesday, August 31, 2016 - link
Early Redmi note 3 is Chinese version and has hello chip. The international version (redmi note 3 pro)came several months later with new snapdragon. Since this redmi note 4 will come with hello, I hope the international version will come with newer snapdragon.implantedcaries - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Not every market had the snapdragon version mate, some of them had the mediatek helio x10 version of note 3.. helio x20 is a significant upgrade over the x10... More processing power for less battery consumptionWPX00 - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Agreed. X10 was a horrible, horrible chip. Haven't had experience handling the X20 yet, but if MediaTek knows anything about yearly improvements, it should be a solid update. Also 64GB model is now the step-up, no 32GB anymore.Design looks significantly better though. I expect international customers will soon see a Snapdragon 652 or whatever is the 14nm successor to the 650 (likely 660) with the same 16MP camera as the international Redmi Note 3 Pro.
tipoo - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
4 high performance cores, 4 low performance cores, 4 medium cores, 4 cores for when it’s hot out, 4 cores for when you feel vaguely sad about nothing, 4 cores for sundays on the 15th of the month.The Chinese SoC company strategy.
But seriously, getting two Cortex A72s for that price is pretty amazing (you already could with the 3). Comes close enough on the CPU side to high end SoCs that it’s moot at that point. Though the two clusters of 4 A53s though tuned for high or low performance silicon, ehh, those are just inflating the marketing numbers and multicore scores, just the low power optimized A53s and the A72s for everything else would probably do the same.
serendip - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
I've got the Note 3 and it's fast when it needs to be, thanks to the 2 A72 cores on the Snapdragon 650. I don't see the need to have a low and mid-level cluster to complicate things, especially when Mediatek power management isn't great to begin with. Moaaar cores = moaaar better? Don't think so.WorldWithoutMadness - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
So you can compare it like a child. I have moar cores than you. I got +1 than you.Uneducated market is the best kind of market and we have no regulation to end all of this madness.
hojnikb - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
I think 2 A72/73 and 2 A35 cores would make a ton of sense from a efficiency standpoint. Use A35 under light load and A72 when more performance you need. And you have best of both worlds + such SoC would be smaller. But cores sell apparently.jjj - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Maybe the slides here help you understand the point of 10 cores http://semiengineering.com/mediatek-grabs-another-...jjj - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
And here's a look at the cores http://www.elektroniknet.de/typo3temp/pics/4653129...The entire SoC is 100mm2 on 20nm.
WPX00 - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
So it's only a smidge larger than the dual-core Apple A9 on a 14nm Samsung process or a smidge smaller than the A9 on TSMC's 16nm process.Goes to show just how Apple makes dual-core so damn powerful.
jjj - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
@ WPX00 - Not very sure what math you do but Apple's core is very big and they use a lot of area on cache.A72 on 16FF is some 1.15mm2 and a quad cluster with 2MB L2$ is about 8mm2. ARM packs a few times more perf per mm2 than Apple and that's a hell of a lot more impressive.
A72 vs Apple , just the core with L1, offers some 3.5 times the perf per mm2. If you include L2 as implemented ARM offers almost 3 times the perf per mm2 and if you include Apple's L3 caches too, ARM gets to 4 times the perf per mm2. it would be fair to factor in ARM's little cores too in the math but i'm not doing that math lol. We also don't have any good power numbers for Apple so that's a bit of a problem in doing the math. However, ARM is far more impressive in perf per area and the fact that Apple's software ecosystem is built for dual cores is a huge problem for Apple and they need to catch up as computing hasn't been about dual cores for a decade.
The only area where Apple has a big plus in NAMD speed as Android needs standards but it gets better with UFS 2.1 becoming available.
jjj - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
NAND*tipoo - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
I understand the philosophy, I'm just saying 8 cores between "low power" and "medium power" is excessive when you also have the A72s.I don't see when a user would benefit from 4 low power cores being spun up and 4 of the same core type but optimized for higher clock cores spun up at the same time. If something requires low power, hand it to a low power core. If something puts a load on, spin up an A72 and hurry up and get idle.
The middle cluster is questionable. Or at most, maybe 2 low power tuned cores and 2 medium power cores.
Anyways, that's all buying into big.LITTLE too, as the A7-9 series show two big meaty high IPC cores can be properly power gated for low idle and background processing power as well.
jjj - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
As those slides show you the majority of the load is on the medium cluster. The smallest cores save you a bit more power at a low cost since they are tiny and the dual A72 kicks in when needed. Do note that the big cores are a lot efficient than A53 so trying not to load them saves a lot of power.It's not about core count, the SoC is not aimed to load all 10 at the same time, it's about efficiency and cost to get there.Vs 4+4 you save on low load and you can clock higher the big cores since you only have 2.
Can't quickly find a better video so check out 360 N4 (2.1GHz) vs LeEco (2.3Ghz) vs Meizu Pro 6 ((2.5Ghz) vs MI 5 with SD820 https://youtu.be/oDkfpnxzOMA?t=385 The thing to watch is how the cores are loaded. Not the best vid as you don't see situations where only the small cores work. Fewer cores could work but Android seems to thread pretty well and then you lose efficiency with fewer cores.
alfalfacat - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
Mediatek claims 30% more efficiency moving from 2 clusters to 3.Considering how insignificantly cheap another couple of A53s are in comparison to the area cost of baseband/gpu/ISPs/etc, it seems like a good tradeoff.
tipoo - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Yeah, A53's die area is 0.7mm2 at 20nm, literally the head of a pen added to a die for each core, really really tiny. It makes sense that cheaper SoCs sprinkle them everywhere, which is easier than investing in high IPC cores.serendip - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
And it's a MediaTek phone, something to avoid like the plague if you like to hack or want updates for a few years. The Note 4 looks exactly like the Note 3 except with a tiny bump in battery capacity. I'd rather get the Note 3 Pro with the Snapdragon 650 rather than any Helio whatever from a serial violator of the GPL.BMNify - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
Looks like Redmi Note 4 has updated better looking design, camera and SOC. The Indian launch should be soon enough as Xiaomi should 1.75 Million Redmi Note 3 within 5 months in India.BMNify - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
Xiaomi *sold 1.75 MillionStormyParis - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
Re: supported bands, Xiaomi usually releases "World"' versions of their phones with support for more bands than the China versions, and Google Play et al pre installed.for example, for previous Redmi Note 3 Pro - International Version: http://www.geekbuying.com/item/Xiaomi-Redmi-Note-3...
serendip - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
Are there physical differences between the models? Usually it's possible to flash MIUI China and Global ROMs on the same phone.On the Note 3 Pro, Xiaomi had a Taiwan special edition that added support for different LTE bands and had a MIUI Marshmallow-based release. It's a unicorn model though, most Note 3 Pros sold outside China (mainly in India) are the same model as the China-market variant.
implantedcaries - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
The cpu update over the snapdragon version will be pretty unmeaningful, but it will be a substantial upgrade over the mediatek version of the note3 which ships with a helio x10 processor...The only thing that's really worrying is, the note4 uses only 4 cores of the Mali880 GPU. I don't think 4 cores of the Mali 880 GPU will have comparable graphical rendering power as the adreno 510. Of course if they plan on releasing snapdragon version of the rest of the world , I won't be complaining if they put in the 1.8ghz 820 for $135 USD :D
vidal6x6 - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link
My redmi note 3 has bricked 3 week. don't have any support the chinese programs don't work. i dont recommend this shit to anyone.Pissedoffyouth - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
how the hell did you brick it? You must have done something stupid like force-unlocked the bootloader without doing it the official wayqlum - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Nice how the 4th picture is clearly a intel (desktop cpu) and not the MediaTek’s Helio X20. Mobile soc's don't use an ihs like this.tipoo - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Hardly a hard and fast rule:http://www.theipadguide.com/images/content/apple-a...
romanat - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
At Geekbuying they already have them for $239, not bad.jjj - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
The X20/X25 has 3 versions.X25 is MT6797T with A72 at 2.5Ghz while X20 is MT6797 with clocks at 2.3GHz and MT6796m at 2.1GHz. The GPU clocks also differ but you can figure those out yourself.
The best value are still 360 Mobile N4 and N4S and the big weakness for this device is the RAM. They really should have 3GB for the base model, even if at higher price.
As for using Qualcomm for a global version why? MTK has CDMA2000 support, they can cover anything that is needed. Sure in India the patent trolls arranged for Xiaomi to be forced to use Qualcomm, funny how that just happened and regulators don't notice.
hojnikb - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
If they made a 5" version, i would be all over this. 5.5" is too big for my little hands though.realbabilu - Wednesday, August 31, 2016 - link
I am using xiaomi mi4c 5in slim snapdragon 808 along my 6s. It is quite powerful, same as redmi note 3 pro. But the cyanogenmods only support mi3/4, and redmi note 3 pro for now.Awful - Saturday, August 27, 2016 - link
I wish google would work with Xiaomi and make a nexus phone based on this model/design. This phone's classy design would be great with up to date untarnished android and an up to date camera/screen.Malodin - Tuesday, September 13, 2016 - link
personnaly i read 2 main lacking points for me to buy the redmi note 3 pro.one was the outdoor readability of the screen and it seems they implemented some sort of sunlight display technology in this one.
second point is the missing LTE band , B20 - 800Mhz because i don't change my phone until it die or can't manage the software anymore.On this point they released a special edition in taiwan with B20 and B28 - 700Mhz of the redmi note 3 pro i hope xiaomi will do the same with note 4 pro.
Other than that i read alots website and forums and i think the redmi note 3 pro qualifies for the best midrange phone in the world.