The popular benchmark platform for mobile devices, AnTuTu has published its Q1 2015 performance reports for smartphones. The list is showing the top-10 devices pass through its test. The results from the processors coming from Samsung and MediaTek are very good, but it’s also raising questions about the latest high-end processor from Qualcomm.
The average AnTuTu scores are showing that the Samsung Galaxy S6 (Edge) is at the top of the list, followed by the HTC One M9 and a range of last year’s high-end devices. Samsung made a very good choice by using their own 14nm FinFET Exynos 7420 in its latest flagship.
The MediaTek MT6569 is powering the Meizu MX4, and the devices manages to stay in the top 5 of devices in Q1 this year. The MT6569 is built with four Cortex-A17 and for A7 CPU cores, combined with a PowerVR Series6 GPU. The SoC’s from MediaTek are clearly capable of taking on the big SoC brands these days.
However, what is maybe the most interesting thing about the list is the “bad” performance shown by the Snapdragon 810 from Qualcomm, which is found inside the HTC One M9 and the LG G Flex 2. While the HTC One M9 is showing an increase of the power over the Snapdragon 805, the G Flex 2 is at the bottom of the list and is showing almost the same performance as the Snapdragon 801 inside the Oneplus One.
While we didn’t expect the Snapdragon 810 to match the power of the Exynos 7420, we anticipated a clearer gap between the chip from Qualcomm and the older 28nm Snapdragon 805.
Benchmarks are always a semi-accurate reflection of the real performance, but we are thinking that the heating problems that the Snapdragon 810 has, is holding back the performance to keep it away from overheating. As the chip is going to the highest settings for a benchmark, and the 810 has overheating problems. Qualcomm could choose to throttle it back sooner than you would expect.
Further, the AnTuTu GPU performance tests is revealing a result that is much more in line with the specifications standing on its specification sheet. The Exynos 7420’s Mali-T760 MP8 GPU shows a slight advantage over the Snapdragon 810’s Adreno 430, which is showing some improvements compared with the Snapdragon 805 GPU: The Adreno 420 and in the 801 placed GPU, the Adreno 330. It is looking like the Snapdragon 810 is underperforming on his CPU side, which is lining up with the rumored overheating problems on the 810.
As we are looking at the list, we don’t have anything to complain about the performance on the HTC One M9, but that isn’t something we can say about the LG G Flex 2.
While you can’t make a conclusion out of the scores, because the real performance is always different. But the results are disappointing, and that can cause further doubt over the current and upcoming devices with the Snapdragon 810 as SoC. Rumors such as the switch between the Snapdragon 810 and 808 for the LG G4, isn’t going to help either.
Even if that chip isn’t used much, Qualcomm is still the most dominant SoC manufacturer in the high-performance smartphone market, for now, 7 out of 10 devices in the list are using a chip coming from Qualcomm. We will see what this year is going to change to SoC manufacturer market. Maybe this year is the year that new manufacturers such as MediaTek and Samsung can grab some of the market of Qualcomm.
