Home Reviews Hardware & Performance Moving to the hardware section of Xiaomi Mi 9 review, if you don’t count the Lenovo Z5 Pro GT 855 version released by PPT in 2018 (sold at the end of January and is out of stock for a long time), Xiaomi Mi 9 is the world’s first smartphone to feature the Snapdragon 855, before Samsung Galaxy S10 and the others. Other combination includes: 6GB + 128GB 8GB + 128GB 12GB + 512GB (Battle Angel Edition/Explorer Edtion) Sadly, the SD slot has been abandoned. About Snapdragon 855 The Snapdragon 855 mobile platform is the world’s first commercial mobile platform that fully supports multi-gigabit 5G connectivity. It is highly committed to the mission of “opening a new era for mobile terminals for the next decade”. The Snapdragon 855 is built on a 7nm process and uses a Kryo 485 CPU (based on Cortex A76 optimized customization). Although the CPU cluster of the Snapdragon 855 still uses the “4+4” upper and lower cores layout, the large core cluster has a “1+3” design. Here we have a large core with a maximum frequency of 2857MHz and a large 512KB L2 cache. Meanwhile, the remaining three large cores have a maximum frequency of 2439MHz and are equipped with 256KB L2 cache. Therefore, we must acknowledge that Kyro 485 is perhaps one of the core performance enhancements of SD 855. Compared with the previous Kryo 385 of the SD 845, the performance has improved by 45%. On the GPU side, the Snapdragon 855 integrates the new Adreno 640, but the Adreno 640’s performance improvement is relatively conservative compared to the CPU segment. Compared with the Adreno 630 on the previous SD 845, it has a 20% improvement. Also Read: Snapdragon 855 VS Kirin 980 VS Exynos 9820 – Duel of titans Fortunately, there is a 7nm process, so that its energy consumption performance is only slightly behind the Apple A12. According to Anandtech’s test results, its GPU power consumption has dropped from 5W of the Snapdragon 845 to 4.44 watts. Furthermore, it also supports Vulkan 1.1, High Dynamic Range (HDR) and PBR to enhance the gaming experience. The parameters and theoretical performance of the Snapdragon 855 are roughly the same, but the manufacturer’s post-adjustment and adaptation optimization are also very important. So here goes the ultimate question. What’s the performance of this SoC on Xiaomi Mi 9. Let’s check out the benchmarks in this Xiaomi Mi 9 review: Note: These tests were conducted on the Standard version of Mi 9. Which incorporates 6GB RAM and 128GB storage. <strong>AnTuTu Benchmark Test (To Check Overall Performance)</strong> Intro: The world’s first mobile phone/tablet hardware performance evaluation tool can comprehensively examine the performance of various aspects of the equipment, including user experience, and visualize the ranking. It supports multiple mainstream platforms, running points can be compared across platforms. The test comprises CPU, GPU, Memory, UX, and finally the total performance. Mi 9 scored nearly 370,000 points marking it as a high-end performance. It’s faster than 100% of the smartphones right now making it the fastest till date. You know the benchmark results always vary. The 12GB RAM Battle Angel version will perform slightly better. <strong>GeekBench Test (To Check CPU Performance)</strong> Intro: Cross-platform CPU performance testing tools can accurately reflect the device’s CPU single-core, multi-core performance. Test load simulation of real-life application design, the result is more meaningful, but also to measure the GPU graphics computing performance. It’s a detailed test comprising of Single-core and Multi-core performance. The single core performance (3,500 points) slightly ahead of the Kirin 980 (3,395 points). However, the current single core performance can’t compete with that of Apple A12 (4800+ points) and the Exynos M10 architecture of Exynos 9810 (4568 points). The twist comes in the multi-core performance where Snapdragon 855 is way ahead of all the SoCs including Apple A12 and Exynos 9810, with a score of nearly 11,000+ points. <strong>GFXBench Test (To Check GPU performance)</strong> Intro: The cross-platform, cross-API 3D benchmark software accurately reflects the graphics performance of the device’s GPU. Multiple test scenarios can fully examine the OpenGL ES graphics performance of the device and perform battery life tests. GFXBench offers OnScreen and OffScreen test methods. When the screen is running with the native resolution of the device screen, the off-screen display is unified to 1080p resolution, facilitating cross-device comparison. As we said earlier, the absolute performance of the Adreno 640 is relatively conservative, only about 20% higher than the Adreno 630. Nevertheless, looking at the result, we can see that the graphics performance of the Snapdragon 855 is still fully compressed even if it has not been greatly improved. <strong>PCMark Test (To Check Daily Usage Performance & temperature)</strong> Intro: PCMark is a test software that considers the overall performance. This performance can accurately reflect the processing performance of the daily use of the smartphone, multiple daily test scenarios, such as web browsing, video editing, document writing, picture editing, etc. It should be noted that PCMark’s lean-to-energy ratio is higher, which means that the higher the score of the mobile phone the more balanced power consumption and performance it is. In the PCMark test, it scored around 9049 points, thanks to the highly optimized 7nm SoC and 4.44 watts power consumption. <strong>Androbench test (To Check Memory Performance)</strong> Intro: AndroBench is a benchmark application that measures the 4K random storage performance of Android devices, including internal or external storage. Mi 9 has a high storage speed (UFS Storage 2.1) and the writing speed is above most high-end devices In short, the CPU performance has definitely improved much while a little difference is seen in the GPU section. The Snapdragon 855 has been greatly optimized with the MIUI 10 (improvements will be done in upcoming updates). However, the main point is that this new SoC is highly power-efficient which keeps us wondering what will be the battery life of Mi 9 (discussed in Battery Section). Continued on Page 4 (Camera & Samples)
