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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tuxRoller - Friday, September 6, 2019 - link
?Qualcomm is unusually good in this area.
MrCommunistGen - Thursday, September 5, 2019 - link
Interesting overview. I like that there are a lot of explicit comparisons between devices -- which is admittedly the purpose of a piece like this.I know you already do a lot of work for reviews and there's a LOT of data with a roundup with this many devices, but I have a request:
Battery Capacity Normalized Battery Life.
It would help illustrate platform efficiency vs battery size.
StormyParis - Friday, September 6, 2019 - link
What about with a case...pse - Friday, September 6, 2019 - link
Hi, Andrei, excellent article, as usual. One question, perhaps I missed this in the article, but are the figures for the S10+ Snapdragon and Exynos the ones from the original S10 article, or have you retested it with the latest updates?Cheers!
edsib1 - Saturday, September 7, 2019 - link
It doesnt look like you are using the phones various gamespace modesMy Oppo Reno 10x Zoom scores like your, but in gamespace mode it gets scores around 25% higher.
Performance - 10564
Web Browsing - 8257
Video Edit - 6429
Writing - 13638
Photo - 22386
Data - 8118
antifocus - Sunday, September 8, 2019 - link
Very nice to see more Chinese manufacturers coverage.tygrus - Monday, September 9, 2019 - link
I would like to see more user controls to limit performance and allow better battery life. Some games hog CPU & GPU for no reason (static city/castle not fps), if I can force them to 15fps instead of 60fps then may be I can avoid the pocket warmer/fire-starter. Change peak MHz of the big cores or set an average power used over short to long term (30 seconds / 5 minutes / 1 hour). I don't want sudden power saving once battery is <20%. Better option if I can set the aim for 12 hours use at the start of the day and have the device limit power from the beginning. More RAM can enable users to keep more apps & data in memory to avoid the slower app startup cycles. I thought 3GB RAM would be great 4 years ago but that was quickly used up by larger OS updates & larger apps. An older phone had just 8GB storage which was swallowed up OS and a few apps.It's frustrating that not all the phones you mention are available in Australia & other countries. Grey imports are possible but do you risk getting a 2nd hand phone with no warranty? OnePlus models and Samsung Galaxy S10e with 8GB RAM are not available in Australia.
peevee - Thursday, September 12, 2019 - link
"Differences in system performance between devices with the same hardware chipset basically boil down to one aspect: software."You forgot Flash and RAM choice.
peevee - Thursday, September 12, 2019 - link
"Finally, in the overall score, the ZTE RedMagic 3 comes at the top alongside the Galaxy S10"In your list it is S10+. These are very different devices, and you cannot infer the performance of S10 from S10+.
peevee - Thursday, September 12, 2019 - link
GPU "performance" - test after test of OFF SCREEN "performance". Does anybody play off screen? Show the real thing, so everybody would see the real cost of those useless extra-invisible pixels, and real advantage or lack of thereof of "90fps" and "120fps" - COMBINED with the battery life effects of all these!