Huawei Honor 6 Review
by Andrei Frumusanu & Joshua Ho on September 12, 2014 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Android
- Mobile
- Honor 6
We saw that the Mali T628 in the Kirin 920 is quite power hungry, but let's see exactly how much performance it delivers for that power.
The 3DMark graphics score falls in the middle inbetween the Adreno 320 and the Adreno 330. Due to the low physics score on the CPU side, the overall score is quite low compared to other flagships.
There's a similar trend going on with BaseMark X, the Kirin manages to outperform the Adreno 320 but can't touch the Adreno 330. In many cases it performs roughly at half the speed of competing flagships. Only when enabling the "Rog" mode and dropping to 720p does the GPU catch up the Adreno 330. In fact we can pretty much say that the Mali in the HiSilicon chip performs identically in 720p as the Adreno 330 does in 1080p. I'm suspecting a severe lack of fill-rate power on behalf of the Mali GPU.
This trend continues on to the GFXBench 3.0 tests. Interestingly, the performance delta is much smaller for the Manhattan test and is not that far off from the Adreno 330 as it was in the T-Rex. In 720p it catches up with the Adreno 330 on T-Rex and surpasses it in Manhattan. This again might indicate that the Mali has more ALU power and is bound by other factors in the T-Rex test. A look at the fill-rate tests confirm this suspicion, as it ends up slower than the Mali 450MP4 in the Kirin 910T:
It seems the MP4 configuration is too underpowerd to properly run 1080p content at optimal performance, its fillrate scores are quite poor and the GPU is even outperformed by architectures two generations behind.
An noticeable result is found in the accuracy tests of GFXBench: the Mali achieves consistently higher scores over the competition. While in no way noticeable, this would mean that ARM's drivers are doing a better work of rendering the intended scene.
All in all, the GPU is decidedly mid-range. If you plan on gaming a lot on your smartphone, a Hi3630 device such as the Honor 6 or Ascend Mate 7 may not deliver an experience as good as a competing device with a Qualcomm SoC.
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imaheadcase - Monday, September 15, 2014 - link
By the time you need to replace the battery you will be getting a new phone anyways..so its a moot point.Alexey291 - Monday, September 15, 2014 - link
6 months in case of one of my phones? Damn thing expanded and basically lost about 50% of its capacity (I'm being generous here). The amount of effort it took to get it through warranty process (leaving me without a phone in the meantime)... Because you know "its still working isn't it?"Never again tyvm.
Stuka87 - Monday, September 15, 2014 - link
"Takes up literally no space"Seriously? Do you understand what the meaning of "literally" is?
Alexey291 - Monday, September 15, 2014 - link
I would have long since edited it to "literally no -extra- space" (because you know that would have worked as an exaggeration and that is pretty much what I wanted to say) but alas the comment system here is poop :)But you did have a point to make didn't you? Oh no you're just being an idiot. Fair enough.
semo - Sunday, September 14, 2014 - link
So just the planned obsolescence then. Why isn't this considered outrageous? Maybe because marketing has convinced users that points 1 and 2 are actual problems (as Alexey291 has pointed out, that's not the case). Maybe you can't really make a oh la la looking phone with a removable battery like the HTC One but we don't all want or like such devices.Why can the auto industry cater to such a large number of wants/needs but the phone industry can't? They only make the same looking huge phones with sealed batteries, no Qi, no expandable storage, single SIM only, etc... It feels like there is no choice unless you want something practical and pocket friendly (a proper HTC Sensation successor would be nice)
Alexey291 - Monday, September 15, 2014 - link
Hear hear!Ethos Evoss - Sunday, September 14, 2014 - link
jesus chris people GET OVER with replacing battery stupidness ! seriously .. you looking only what that phone doesn't what it doesn't have .. it has powerfull 3000 batt jesus christ people grow upsemo - Sunday, September 14, 2014 - link
Why is that such a big problem for you? There's plenty of phones for you to choose from if you must have a sealed battery. Why can't the rest of us have a choice?Alexey291 - Monday, September 15, 2014 - link
that's until that cheap but (supposedly) powerful 3kmah battery swells and damages the phone's internal structure. Loses 50% of its original capacity. All in under 6 months.And before you say "that never happens" it happens very damn often especially in Huawei and Xiaomi phones >.>
semo - Monday, September 15, 2014 - link
And don't expect the likes of Zerolemon and Anker to offer a better/bigger battery as they generally don't support non user replaceable batteries (most users won't bother unless they can just pop the battery in).