The Mate 20 & Mate 20 Pro Review: Kirin 980 Powering Two Contrasting Devices
by Andrei Frumusanu on November 16, 2018 8:10 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Mobile
- Kirin 980
- Mate 20
- Mate 20 Pro
Battery Life - Contrasting Two Models
The Mate 20 comes with an LCD screen and a 4000mAh battery. The screen is slightly larger in area than that of the Mate 20 Pro, who in turn uses an OLED screen, but also features a slightly larger 4200mAh battery.
The Kirin 980 of both phones should provide great efficiency, although I have to note that my units of the Mate 20 Pro seemed to have a worse binned SoC, as active system power consumption (normalised for screen and idle) in SPEC was about 8-9% higher than on the Mate 20.
In the web browsing test, we see the regular Mate 20 post some new record battery life results, with a staggering runtime of 13.5h. Here we finally see Huawei replicate the results of the Mate 9, which similarly had a very efficient screen. The efficiency of the SoC also augments the phone above that of other devices.
On the Mate 20 Pro, we see the previously discovered screen panel issues come back to haunt it. Even though it has a larger battery and a smaller screen than the Mate 20, the more expensive phone fares worse off in the test. Unfortunately the large base power handicap of the phone along with slightly worse luminance efficiency is the main cause of the results.
In regards to the Mate 10 results: The actual battery life of devices on the stock firmware should be better, unfortunately I haven’t been able to get to get back to this version as my units have a variant that unlock the memory controller to its full speed (and reduces battery life).
In PCMark, we see a similar regression on the part of the Mate 20 Pro – the regular version is achieving excellent results. Here the test is favourable to OLED devices, as evidenced by the P20 Pro leading all our results, however again this increase base power consumption of the Mate 20 Pro costs it a lot of lifetime which ends up it having much reduced battery life compared to where the SoC and battery capacity should have been capable of.
Overall, there’s two conclusions here in regards to battery life:
The Mate 20 is just an outstanding device and is currently showcasing absolutely leading battery life. Most devices with such runtimes are lower or mid-range phones with large battery capacities. In the high end, the Mate 20 is essentially in a tier of its own as it achieves this excellent battery life result while also showcasing the best performance of an Android device.
The Mate 20 Pro’s result and conclusion is a bit more muted. Its battery life isn’t bad, but falls short of expectations. Here the 4200mAh battery serves as no more than to just compensate for the inefficient display.
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name99 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
Andrei you are concentrating on the wrong thing. I don't care about the inadequacies of GB4's memory bandwidth test, or the device uncore, I care about the DRAM part of this.I understand you and anomouse are both claiming that LPDDR4-2133 means 4266 MT/s.
OK, if that's true it's a dumb naming convention, but whatever. The point is, this claim goes directly against the entire thrust of the anandtech DDR5 article from a few days ago that I keep referring to, which states very clearly that something like DDR4-3200 means 3200MT/s
THAT is the discrepancy I am trying to resolve.
ternnence - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
name99 , for mobile,LPDDR4x has 4266 spec , however desktop DDR4 rarely could get such frequency. So it is not LPDDR4-2133 has 4266MT/s, it is LPDDR4-4266 has 4266MT/sternnence - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
FYI,https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/dram/lpddr4x... you could check this site.name99 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
FWIW wikipedia sees things the same way saying thathttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR4_SDRAM
eg DDR4-2133 means 2133MT/s
This follows the exact same pattern as all previous SDRAM numbering. Up to DDR3 the multiplier was 2 (DDR), 4(DDR2) or 8(DDR3); with DDR4 the multiplier stays at 8 but the base clock doubles so from min of 100MHz it's now min of 200MHz.
But these are internal details; the part that matters is that most authorities seem to agree that DDR4-2133 means 2133MT/s, each transaction normally 64-bits wide.
Now there are SOME people claiming no, DDR4-2133 means 4266 MT/s
- https://www.androidauthority.com/lpddr4-everything...
claims this (but couches the claim is so much nonsensical techno-double-speak that I don't especially trust them)
- so do you and anonomouse.
So, like I said, WTF is going on here? We have a large pool of sources saying the sky is blue, and a different pool insisting that, no, the sky is green.
anonomouse - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
I never claimed that DDR4-2133 means 4266MT/s. I am instead claiming that there is no LPDDR4-2133.anonomouse - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
I think the discrepancy here is just that you/they are mixing the naming conventions. DDR4-3200 means 3200MT/s. After an admittedly brief and cursory search, I don't see any references to Micron using the term LPDDR4-2133. I instead see every indication that they have LPDDR4 running at 2133MHz. Perhaps people here and there are mixing up the terminology, but when in doubt may as well just look at the actual memory clock or bandwidth being listed as that's ultimately what's importantly.name99 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
Yeah, I think you are correct. After looking in a few different places I think the following are all true:- The DDR4 guys tend to talk about MT/s and give the sorts of numbers I gave
- The LPDDR4 guys tend to talk about Mb/s per pin (same as MT/s, but just shows a different culture) and tend to be working with substantially higher numbers.
I *THINK* (corrections welcome) that
(a) the way LPDDR4 is mounted (no DIMMs and sockets, rather it's direct mounting, either on the SoC as PoP, or extremely close to it on a dedicated substrate), allows for substantially higher frequencies than DDR4.
(b) one's natural instinct (mine, and likely other people's) is that "of course DDR4 runs faster [fewer power concerns, etc]" so when you see LPDDR4 running faster (at say "4266") you assume this has to mean some sort of "silent" multiplication by 2, and what's actually meant is the equivalent of DDR4-2133 at 2133MT/s.
(c) It certainly doesn't help that Micron at least is calling the 4266MT/s LPDDR4 as having a "2133MHz clock". I have no idea what that is supposed to mean given that the DDR4 "clock" runs at 1/8th transaction speed, so for DDR4 the clock of a 4266MT/s device would be 533MHz.
So I think we have established that the actual speeds ARE 4266MT/s (or so) for LPDDR4.
Left unresolved
- these are generally higher than DDR4? Meaning that, sooner or later, PC users are going to have to choose between flexible RAM (DIMMs and sockets) or high speed RAM (PoP mounting, or superclose to the SoC on a substrate --- look at the A12X)?
- Why is Micron calling something like LPDDR4-4266 as having a 2133MH clock? What does that refer to? I would assume that, like normal DDRx, the "low frequency clock" (what I've said would be 533MHz) is the speed for control transactions, and the 8x speed (4266Mb/s per pin) is the speed for bulk data flow?
ternnence - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
where do you get this "Micron lists their LPDDR4, for example, as LPDDR4-2133, NOT as LPDDR4-4266?"? just check Micron official site, they mark LPDDR4-4266, not LPDDR4-2133, to their 2133MHz ram.ternnence - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
ddr means double data rate. 2133MH equals ram operates 2133 per second. but one operate produce two data output. MT/s equals million transfer per second. so LPDDR4-4266= 4266 million transfer per second = 2133 million Hzname99 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link
The Micron datasheets, for example, numdram.pdf,https://www.micron.com/~/media/documents/products/...
do exactly this.