Sorry for the troll but I needed to get this out of the way! The 6P is coming up next as I finish putting it into the CMS over the next few days hopefully.
You despicable Huawei drone. I've noticed Huawei doubling down on the trolling and brainwash. There are unbelievable amounts of Huawei ads where I live and brainwash articles of Huawei all over the web.
Power-wise, have they optimized the higher clocked A53'e' in anyway? The curves seem to overlap, so there doesn't seem to be much of a difference. Might be they're better at very high frequencies?
Notice that the minimum frequency on the fast cores is much higher power so that might be an indication of the difference between the two clusters. Unfortunately I can't access voltage easily on HiSilicon SoCs so it's harder to determine the capacitance difference.
Aw Shucks! Thats some not so good news, Andrei! At least you contributed to the previous model, and your also GREATLY written deep dive with the Exynos Octa core. Honestly, all in all, no worries man! Its basically a 1080p S6 with insane audio incorporated, and a beautiful 23? MP camera to not forget...its like an iPhone + Samsung combined.
Any chance you tested perf with the memory locked at 800MHz? Just to see if there is a substantial diff in synthetic benchmarks. As for the 950, noticed in the Geekbench database that the memory score is all over the place. Integer and FP are around 1.9k and 1.6k but the memory score is from 1k to 2k .Makes yo uwonder what's going on there.
Interesting read as usual Surprising cpu perf of the a53 implementation ! - compared to eg Krait s801 is that representative of subjective real world usage for web browsing?
The 4 low power cores seem to consume more power than the high performance core cluster, they just shut off earlier. Curious.
With lower core counts in use it shaves off a bit though, but I'm still not convinced big.LITTLE with the same core types is worthwhile. Radically different cores? Sure. Might have more to do with "8" being significant in China.
You can't say either cluster consumes more or less power than the other because they have different power/frequency curves. The power-optimized cluster may use (marginally) more power near the top of its clock speed but you can see by 1GHz it uses significantly less. I don't know precisely how the two different clusters vary but I would guess that the power optimized cluster sacrifices much voltage/frequency scaling in exchange for much lower leakage.
Since the scheduler works with a gap between the "up" and "down" transition points in order to avoid hysteresis it makes sense to have the upper end of the power optimized cluster's performance range exceed the lower end of the performance optimized cluster's. Even if it uses a little more power doing so.
From a pure DVFS standpoint the power consumption curves presented are a fairly convincing argument for why this A53 + "A53e" setup is worthwhile. Either cluster on their own is pretty clearly inferior, either the A53e cluster needing 100+mW while on at its lowest frequency or the A53 cluster incapable of exceeding 1.5GHz. Perhaps a hypothetical implementation in between the two would be "good enough", but I'd argue that if you must use Cortex-A53 cores even a couple hundred extra MHz at the upper end is highly desirable for a lot of users.
Since the utility of DVFS is a foregone conclusion at this point the only real question is if the overhead in transitioning between cores is small enough to make this work as a DVFS system (we'll put aside the extra advantages and complications of a full HMP setup). A lot of people are arguing that it isn't, but I'm not really seeing hard data to support this. I personally believe people underestimate the number of loads that either have low frequency swings in performance requirements or reach a full on steady state for long periods of time. Even on mobile devices.
Please keep in mind that we might not be seeing the full curves as the vendors simply cut them off where it doesn't make sense. The 1GHz point is extremely important as a pointer as to what the actual physical difference is. Again it's a pity that I can't access the voltages on HiSilicon SoCs otherwise this would be a much easier discussion to back up, but imagine that for the perf cluster the 1GHz spot would basically be the bottom in terms of scaling voltage down at which point race to idle takes over. The other way round for the power cluster, voltages at the top frequencies there might already have reached the high end and thus not be able to go further up in frequency, but on the other side of the curve they're able to go much lower in power.
All in all I think it still makes a lot of sense in terms of implementation.
I just know you are a details guy. I love reading your analysis and have bought 2 phones based on your reviews. Keep up the great work and ignore the Apple/Samsung trolls :)
HUaaaweii smartphonee got battered as usual on this site :DDD Ananadidatechno-tech .. I CANNOT WAIT for Mate 8 review what u gonna say all about it .. I BETTING on next batter AGAIN :DDD even it has higher specs .. you will describe all as all on bottom graphs :DDD Don't worry I do not own huawei smartphone anymore.. will see in future.. :)
"The big "killer" feature of the Mate S was supposed to be the touted force-touch capability, but with that variant of the phone not being released until next year ..."
That's all there is to say about something that is missing.
Typo in conclusion - "great of a decision for costumers"
Also are my eyes reading that RRP correctly? Why would anyone pay more than 400 euros for this phone? A Galaxy S6 can be had for around that and it looks like it destroys this in every way.
what Jeffery said I am impressed that some one able to make $8960 in one month on the computer . you could try this out.....>>>>>>>............. .earni8 dot ℭom
Thanks for the very in depth review. I am increasingly finding myself preferring the design of Huawei and some other Chinese phones, but as for hardware, specs alone do not tell the whole story. Your reviews alone go into the kind of detail about all aspects of performance that I would like when making a purchase - this review has increased that level of detail and insight even further. I only wish you were able to review more devices.
So this consumes 3W of power at its maximum. Any body got a guess what the A9X would be consuming? I am wondering whether the reason we haven't seen a iPad Air 3 this year is that its TDP is too high?
Cannot confirm most od the negative conclusions made in this review. Battery life is not an issue as long as you do not use the preinstalled e-mail client, which is very buggy. K9 with push runs like a breeze. The display can be adjusted and looks much more natural than Samsung's breed. Performance in the smartphone area is phantastic - only complex 3D gaming is rather poor (do you realy wonna play 3D shooters on a phome?). I think the mate s is the best Abdroid device I ever owned. And there have been many.
It's not a bad phone, but it doesn't live in a vacuum and has competition. If they had priced it more competitively then the conclusion would have been different.
"Battery life is not an issue as long as " That can be said for many, most not as expensive as this.
"The display can be adjusted and looks much more natural than Samsung's breed" Samsung's can be adjusted also and can be "natural" according to measurement and industry standard, not just what you think.
"Performance in the smartphone area is phantastic " Then prepare to kneel and bow in awe before the performance of the Exynos 7420 in S6 which is similarly priced.
"In the end I'm not sure if that was all that great of a decision for costumers as the Mate S..." I don't think cosplayers care much about anything other than the camera.
Now a days there are very impressive ads of Huawei.Its tru that Mate S is the most premium device of Huawei. </a href="https://geeksonrepair.com/">Online Computer Repair</a>
Height:149.8mm Width:75.3mm Depth:7.2mm Weight:About 156g (including the battery)
Display: 5.5", AMOLED, ONCELL, FHD
CPU: Hisilicon Kirin 935, Octa core (4*2.2GHz + 4*1.5GHz), 64-bit
Memory: ROM:32GB/64GB/128GB (This is subject to specific version in different markets) RAM:3.0GB
Camera: Main camera: 13MP OIS RGBW AF camera with dual -tone flash Secondary camera: 8MP FF BSI Camera with soft light
This is one of the best mobile phone from Huawei. Mobile application development company in India like I-SOFTINC TECHNOLOGIES always help to improve the mobile application development and its features by adding new features and technologies.
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chrone - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
and I thought this is going to be a N6P review we've all been waiting for. 😛Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
Sorry for the troll but I needed to get this out of the way! The 6P is coming up next as I finish putting it into the CMS over the next few days hopefully.chrone - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
awesome! looking forward to it :Damdwilliam1985 - Thursday, December 3, 2015 - link
thanks in advance, looking forward to it.id4andrei - Thursday, December 3, 2015 - link
Excelenta recenzie domnule Frumusanu. Nu ii asculta pe troli.Piscupescu - Thursday, December 3, 2015 - link
Corect!VnnAmed - Thursday, December 3, 2015 - link
And here I was going crazy because I thought there would be no review of N6P on Anand. Thank Tesla!Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
no it won't be because anadatech doesn't want to rwite nice things about huawei :DDDSo they will avoid this phone :DDD
s.yu - Saturday, December 5, 2015 - link
You despicable Huawei drone. I've noticed Huawei doubling down on the trolling and brainwash. There are unbelievable amounts of Huawei ads where I live and brainwash articles of Huawei all over the web.Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
ok u iphone drone :Dhans_ober - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
So how does A53 / A53e compare to A15 in real world use?vastac13 - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
Yep! Everyday I refresh my rss feeds, waiting for N6P review and when finally Anand has a notif; nope, wrong phone. :(Ashinjuka - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
'fresh feeds e're dayhans_ober - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
Power-wise, have they optimized the higher clocked A53'e' in anyway? The curves seem to overlap, so there doesn't seem to be much of a difference. Might be they're better at very high frequencies?Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
Notice that the minimum frequency on the fast cores is much higher power so that might be an indication of the difference between the two clusters. Unfortunately I can't access voltage easily on HiSilicon SoCs so it's harder to determine the capacitance difference.zeeBomb - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
No Meizu pro 5 review? :(Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
Unfortunately I seem to have lost contact with them over the last year :/zeeBomb - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
Aw Shucks! Thats some not so good news, Andrei! At least you contributed to the previous model, and your also GREATLY written deep dive with the Exynos Octa core. Honestly, all in all, no worries man! Its basically a 1080p S6 with insane audio incorporated, and a beautiful 23? MP camera to not forget...its like an iPhone + Samsung combined.s.yu - Saturday, December 5, 2015 - link
Yeah the Pro 5 is much better than anything Huawei has to offer.jjj - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
Any chance you tested perf with the memory locked at 800MHz? Just to see if there is a substantial diff in synthetic benchmarks.As for the 950, noticed in the Geekbench database that the memory score is all over the place. Integer and FP are around 1.9k and 1.6k but the memory score is from 1k to 2k .Makes yo uwonder what's going on there.
HarryATX - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
I wonder how long this review took as the hero image shows the iOS9 Review as the headline. :-)Monsri Fares - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
No lumia 950/950 XL review??I only trust your reviews Anandtech, and i won't buy the 950 until i see your tests
tipoo - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
The XL isn't out for review by anyone yet. The 950 just started getting some quick reviews, but AT as always takes a bit longer to go deeper.DukeN - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
yawnmelgross - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
This reminds me of an HTC device from the rear.jra101 - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
Why only onscreen results for GFXBench?techconc - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
Fair question, but considering the GPU performance is so poor, does it really matter? Nobody is going to buy this phone based on performance.melgross - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
I almost forgot. Why is the Galaxy missing from almost all of the tests?eaglehide - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
Why isn't there a Motorola in the the benchmarks ? Would lobe to see Motorola Turbo's pitched against these phones.krumme - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
Interesting read as usualSurprising cpu perf of the a53 implementation ! - compared to eg Krait s801 is that representative of subjective real world usage for web browsing?
tipoo - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
The 4 low power cores seem to consume more power than the high performance core cluster, they just shut off earlier. Curious.With lower core counts in use it shaves off a bit though, but I'm still not convinced big.LITTLE with the same core types is worthwhile. Radically different cores? Sure. Might have more to do with "8" being significant in China.
Exophase - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
You can't say either cluster consumes more or less power than the other because they have different power/frequency curves. The power-optimized cluster may use (marginally) more power near the top of its clock speed but you can see by 1GHz it uses significantly less. I don't know precisely how the two different clusters vary but I would guess that the power optimized cluster sacrifices much voltage/frequency scaling in exchange for much lower leakage.Since the scheduler works with a gap between the "up" and "down" transition points in order to avoid hysteresis it makes sense to have the upper end of the power optimized cluster's performance range exceed the lower end of the performance optimized cluster's. Even if it uses a little more power doing so.
From a pure DVFS standpoint the power consumption curves presented are a fairly convincing argument for why this A53 + "A53e" setup is worthwhile. Either cluster on their own is pretty clearly inferior, either the A53e cluster needing 100+mW while on at its lowest frequency or the A53 cluster incapable of exceeding 1.5GHz. Perhaps a hypothetical implementation in between the two would be "good enough", but I'd argue that if you must use Cortex-A53 cores even a couple hundred extra MHz at the upper end is highly desirable for a lot of users.
Since the utility of DVFS is a foregone conclusion at this point the only real question is if the overhead in transitioning between cores is small enough to make this work as a DVFS system (we'll put aside the extra advantages and complications of a full HMP setup). A lot of people are arguing that it isn't, but I'm not really seeing hard data to support this. I personally believe people underestimate the number of loads that either have low frequency swings in performance requirements or reach a full on steady state for long periods of time. Even on mobile devices.
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
Yes, good analysis.Please keep in mind that we might not be seeing the full curves as the vendors simply cut them off where it doesn't make sense. The 1GHz point is extremely important as a pointer as to what the actual physical difference is. Again it's a pity that I can't access the voltages on HiSilicon SoCs otherwise this would be a much easier discussion to back up, but imagine that for the perf cluster the 1GHz spot would basically be the bottom in terms of scaling voltage down at which point race to idle takes over. The other way round for the power cluster, voltages at the top frequencies there might already have reached the high end and thus not be able to go further up in frequency, but on the other side of the curve they're able to go much lower in power.
All in all I think it still makes a lot of sense in terms of implementation.
deskjob - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
Is it me or is this a blatant rip-off of the HTC One series design language?s.yu - Saturday, December 5, 2015 - link
Huawei's been copying designs from this company and that. P8 was some Sony with a little Apple and HTC, lol.fanofanand - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
At the heart of the Mate S we find the HiSilicon Kirin 935. This is the same SoC that was found on the basic model Huawei P8Chart shows 930
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
Corrected, thanks. But in truth they're both the same piece of silicon, the 935 is just a marketing name of the higher binned SoC.fanofanand - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
I just know you are a details guy. I love reading your analysis and have bought 2 phones based on your reviews. Keep up the great work and ignore the Apple/Samsung trolls :)Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
HUaaaweii smartphonee got battered as usual on this site :DDDAnanadidatechno-tech .. I CANNOT WAIT for Mate 8 review what u gonna say all about it ..
I BETTING on next batter AGAIN :DDD even it has higher specs .. you will describe all as all on bottom graphs :DDD
Don't worry I do not own huawei smartphone anymore.. will see in future.. :)
Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
You completelly forgot about Force Touch tho ..Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - link
I did not forget about it:"The big "killer" feature of the Mate S was supposed to be the touted force-touch capability, but with that variant of the phone not being released until next year ..."
That's all there is to say about something that is missing.
Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - link
it is useless anyway..remo_mein05 - Thursday, December 3, 2015 - link
Looks like a solid phone. But Huawei need to stop copying iPhone...http://theyouthjob.com/?ref=103109djgandy - Thursday, December 3, 2015 - link
Typo in conclusion - "great of a decision for costumers"Also are my eyes reading that RRP correctly? Why would anyone pay more than 400 euros for this phone? A Galaxy S6 can be had for around that and it looks like it destroys this in every way.
s.yu - Saturday, December 5, 2015 - link
Good of you to notice. It's sad seeing "high-end" Huawei crap sell.juliabrown943 - Thursday, December 3, 2015 - link
what Jeffery said I am impressed that some one able to make $8960 in one month on the computer . you could try this out.....>>>>>>>............. .earni8 dot ℭomRdVi - Thursday, December 3, 2015 - link
Thanks for the very in depth review. I am increasingly finding myself preferring the design of Huawei and some other Chinese phones, but as for hardware, specs alone do not tell the whole story. Your reviews alone go into the kind of detail about all aspects of performance that I would like when making a purchase - this review has increased that level of detail and insight even further. I only wish you were able to review more devices.Speedfriend - Friday, December 4, 2015 - link
So this consumes 3W of power at its maximum. Any body got a guess what the A9X would be consuming? I am wondering whether the reason we haven't seen a iPad Air 3 this year is that its TDP is too high?probex - Friday, December 4, 2015 - link
Cannot confirm most od the negative conclusions made in this review. Battery life is not an issue as long as you do not use the preinstalled e-mail client, which is very buggy. K9 with push runs like a breeze. The display can be adjusted and looks much more natural than Samsung's breed. Performance in the smartphone area is phantastic - only complex 3D gaming is rather poor (do you realy wonna play 3D shooters on a phome?). I think the mate s is the best Abdroid device I ever owned. And there have been many.Andrei Frumusanu - Saturday, December 5, 2015 - link
It's not a bad phone, but it doesn't live in a vacuum and has competition. If they had priced it more competitively then the conclusion would have been different.s.yu - Saturday, December 5, 2015 - link
"Battery life is not an issue as long as "That can be said for many, most not as expensive as this.
"The display can be adjusted and looks much more natural than Samsung's breed"
Samsung's can be adjusted also and can be "natural" according to measurement and industry standard, not just what you think.
"Performance in the smartphone area is phantastic "
Then prepare to kneel and bow in awe before the performance of the Exynos 7420 in S6 which is similarly priced.
snowmyr - Tuesday, December 8, 2015 - link
"In the end I'm not sure if that was all that great of a decision for costumers as the Mate S..."I don't think cosplayers care much about anything other than the camera.
geeks - Thursday, December 17, 2015 - link
Now a days there are very impressive ads of Huawei.Its tru that Mate S is the most premium device of Huawei.</a href="https://geeksonrepair.com/">Online Computer Repair</a>
jhulan - Wednesday, January 6, 2016 - link
Size:Height:149.8mm
Width:75.3mm
Depth:7.2mm
Weight:About 156g (including the battery)
Display:
5.5", AMOLED, ONCELL, FHD
CPU:
Hisilicon Kirin 935, Octa core (4*2.2GHz + 4*1.5GHz), 64-bit
Memory:
ROM:32GB/64GB/128GB (This is subject to specific version in different markets)
RAM:3.0GB
Camera:
Main camera: 13MP OIS RGBW AF camera with dual -tone flash
Secondary camera: 8MP FF BSI Camera with soft light
This is one of the best mobile phone from Huawei. Mobile application development company in India like I-SOFTINC TECHNOLOGIES always help to improve the mobile application development and its features by adding new features and technologies.