The Snapdragon 855 Phone Roundup: Searching for the Best Implementations
by Andrei Frumusanu on September 5, 2019 8:30 AM ESTBattery Life
While not strictly related to the performance or the Snapdragon 855 chipset itself, it’s also interesting to see how the different devices end up in terms of their battery life. In this approach we can identify how efficient the non-SoC components of a device are.
The Galaxy S10+ continues to dominate here, most likely due to Samsung’s newer generation OLED panel that seemingly might be employing a newer and more efficient emitter generation compared to all other phones in the comparison. Another aspect of the Galaxy S10 that is different to the other devices in the comparison is that it’s using Broadcomm’s BCM4375 WiFi 6 (802.11ax) chipset rather than Qualcomm’s own WiFi 5 chipset for most of the rest of the devices.
Sony’s Xperia 1 suffers from its 4K panel screen and the fact the DDIC has to work a lot harder to drive it, whilst devices like the G8 and Mi9 suffer from either an inefficient screen or simply a smaller battery capacity. The OnePlus 7 Pro in 90Hz mode has to make a battery compromise, while the remaining the devices are doing quite well, but just aren’t as power optimised as the S10+.
PCMark shifts the results around a bit. In this case, the same factors as on the web test play a role, however the SoC power efficiency has a bigger impact here as the CPU is a lot more active. Devices as the OPPO Reno 10x take the lead because they’re also showcasing the worst performance in PCMark due to the more relaxed scheduler and DVFS setting.
Overall still, all Snapdragon 855 devices except for the Xperia 1 are doing well in this test.
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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!