The Snapdragon 855 Phone Roundup: Searching for the Best Implementations
by Andrei Frumusanu on September 5, 2019 8:30 AM ESTGPU Performance
Gaming performance in a smartphone is dictated by three aspects: Firstly, naturally the hardware itself and how efficient and performance the GPU and Soc are. Secondly, the hardware design of the phone and how well it was designed to dissipate heat from the SoC to the whole chassis of the device, and secondly, the software thermal throttling configurations and how the vendor has programmed the thermal behaviour of the phone, such as how hot it allows the phone to get.
The results here can be all over the place depending on the vendor implementation, and it’s amongst the more interesting tests for this article.
In the 3DMark Physics tests, we’re seeing largely a CPU load whilst the device is thermally constrained by it being heated up by the GPU load. The results we’re seeing here are very spread across the different vendors.
One result that does stand out is the Sony Xperia 1 which has some very bad throttling behaviour on the CPU, reaching only 40% of the peak performance of when the device is cold. The Black Shark 2 is also interesting as it showcases uniquely limited peak performance compared to the other Snapdragon 855 devices, possibly pointing out that Xiaomi is implementing a hard top CPU frequency cap when under GPU load.
The rest of the device vary in their sustained performance results. The best S855 device is the OnePlus 7 Pro, which is only showcasing a 15% degradation.
The two top devices are the OPPO Reno 10x, as well as the OnePlus 7 Pro which showcase nearly no throttling at all.
The Xiaomi Black Shark 2 showcases some pretty disappointing results, losing almost 45% of its performance when hot.
The 3D results continue on over the course of the GFXBench results. The OPPO Reno 10x and OP7Pro are the clear winners here in terms of sustained performance. The Xperia 1 and Mi9 also fare well, although the latter loses its edge in T-Rex which might be a throttling result of a different component such as the DRAM.
The issue with the OPPO Reno 10x and OP7Pro is that both devices get extremely hot. I’ve measured peak skin temperatures on the screen in excess of 50°C. In fact, the OPPO device actually stopped my benchmarking run via device overheating warning which is not something that you want to see in any phone; the hardware should throttle before such a warning is to occur. I’m not sure if this is a driver problem or something that both related vendors choose to deliberately implement, at least it doesn’t seem to be a cheating behaviour as I’m using modified benchmark ID APKs for our regular testing.
I mentioned in the device overview that the ZTE Nubia RedMagic 3 differs from all other phones, virtue of the fact that it’s using an actual fan in its internal design along with actual air intake and exhausts. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to measure any kind of measurable performance or temperature differences with the fan either on or off. The little unit moves just so little air that it hardly makes any difference. Similarly disappointing was the Black Shark 2, which distinguished itself by offering the worst gaming performance of the lot even though it’s supposed to be a gaming phone, essentially eliminating itself from contention as a viable smartphone option for any kind of buyer.
The rest of the phones see a 20 to 40% degradation in performance from peak. The best device for gaming amongst the Snapdragon 855 crowd was the OnePlus 7 Pro, as it was able to achieve the highest performance figures all without running into issues such as overheating warnings.
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cha0z_ - Monday, September 9, 2019 - link
Actually the exynos is more EXPENSIVE! Note 9 when released costed 1100 euros in Europe vs 1000 dollars in US, you can check the conversion yourself as 1000 euros are over 1100 dollars. The fact you got a samsung device for cheaper is nothing exclusive to you nor China - there are super big discounts in US too for the qualcomm variants.s.yu - Monday, September 9, 2019 - link
Actually I look before I buy, the SK version is the cheapest anywhere, I had the option of buying the HK version(on SD) of the same tier for ~$100 more but I decided against it thinking it's not worth the premium.A friend in the US also bought a Note 8 at the time and went for an HK version because getting it from HK is still cheaper than in the US and he preferred SD. I don't know how there are significant discounts in the US but suspect they're bound by contracts.
As for the high price in Europe that should come as a surprise to no one. Most electronics are more expensive in Europe, it's not specific to Samsung.
1nterceptor - Tuesday, September 10, 2019 - link
I agree, would be really great if we could see exy9825 vs exy 9820 vs sd855+ vs sd855. Why exy9820 and sd855 you may ask, well because of the software updates, i wonder if and how much difference does it make now after 6 months on the market and couple of firmware updates...1nterceptor - Tuesday, September 10, 2019 - link
...although, i believe exy9825 is not by any means much faster/better than the "old" 9820, it is probbably more efficient on the other hand...jrocket - Thursday, September 5, 2019 - link
Since many of these phones vary in price significantly, it would be interesting to see a "performance per dollar" value comparison.IUU - Friday, September 6, 2019 - link
Would be if it was not so trivial. I mean , if one phone costs 400 dollars and another one 800, there you have straight away your performance per dollar. All are sd 855s , so there is nothing more to consider. One could argue about camera, screen, battery life, but these are irrelevant to performance.flyingpants265 - Tuesday, September 17, 2019 - link
It says right in the article that the performance differs depending on software implementation.Wardrive86 - Thursday, September 5, 2019 - link
Excellent article as always! I would like to see which version of Android each phone has in the system performance tests to see if some of the older device performance data is up to date and also see which Opengl and Vulkan drivers each device has while testing was done...however even without that data still the best tech site there is. Thanks!Wardrive86 - Sunday, September 8, 2019 - link
For example:LG G7 Android 9 opengl driver : 331.0
Slingshot Extreme Unlimited OpenGL ES 3.1
Physics peak : 3486
Physics sustained : 3392
Graphics peak : 5467
Graphics sustained: 5326
(5 runs, 20 minutes, Room temp: 78F/25.6C)
Immediately followed by Work 2.0
Performance : 8146
Web : 6588
Video : 5701
Writing. : 9554
Photo : 15830
Data : 6314
yacoub35 - Thursday, September 5, 2019 - link
Aside from battery life, the things I would care most about in a phone comparison are:Does it have stereo speakers?
Does it have a headphone jack?
Does it use vanilla Android (or how close to vanilla is what it uses)?
Does it get all of the Android updates and security patches in a timely fashion?
How is the camera performance (speed to load the app and take a photo, image stabilization, low light performance)?
How much RAM does it have?
How much internal storage (excluding the OS) and how much expandable, if any?