The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Performance Preview: Sizing Up Cortex-X2
by Dr. Ian Cutress on December 14, 2021 8:00 AM ESTSystem-Wide Testing and Gaming
For our system wide tests, we had time to go through Geekbench 5, PCMark, and GFXBench. For workload based testing, we see performance uplifts with the S8g1, and it is a noting that here we tested PCMark with both performance mode on and off, which gave a +10% increase in the score – we’ve seen this before running PCMark on both Arm and x86 devices where turbo and favored cores can have large effects on scores. By contrast, GB5 scored the same.
In our PCMark tests, it's clear who the new ruler of the roost is.
On the graphics side, Qualcomm’s new number-less Adreno that is advertised as being ‘new from the ground up (but we won’t tell you how)’ again offers generational improvements for next year’s Android flagships. Qualcomm historically also offers better graphics performance per watt, so we’ll have to wait until we get the devices on hand to showcase that data. But overall, the gains in these tests show a large +50% performance jump over previous generation S888 graphics performance. In 2022, we'll have MediaTek’s flagship trying to aim for the same market but based on the Mali GPU, and graphics is an area that Qualcomm historically outpaces Mali designs quite easily. The only serious competitor in this space is Apple.
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kgardas - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
There are two main reason why older/second hand phone even iphone is not a good idea. (1) battery and (2) internal flash. Both getting worse and worse with the age.Glaurung - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
The amount you save buying secondhand will more than cover the cost of a battery replacement.Reflex - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
Yup. Get them a year or two down the line with iPhones and save way more than enough to replace the battery. I've never, ever had flash become a problem in a phone during it's usable lifespan, even the old iPhone 6S a friend uses performs just fine with iOS15. Not even worth considering that aspect.iphonebestgamephone - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
You can get sd870 phones from xiaomi like the poco f3 for 400$ with 256gb rom and a much bigger battery. The support still lacks, but you'll probably get 4 years or so from custom roms.bernstein - Tuesday, December 14, 2021 - link
custom roms are awesome. But they’re for the 1% only. The other 99% require a phone thats uptodate without even pushing a virtual button.iphonebestgamephone - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
Samsung it is then, though for 400$ you will only get like sd778g and 4 years support. That soc will also be good enough for the 99%.Reflex - Wednesday, December 15, 2021 - link
This, plus custom roms do not contain updated drivers and firmware to fix security issues past vendor support, they just hack the OS layer up to date.iphonebestgamephone - Friday, December 17, 2021 - link
Depends, my 2016 150$ phone has all security patches till 2021 10 01 according to snooosnitch app. though gpu drivers are from 2018. Everything works as intended too.Reflex - Monday, December 20, 2021 - link
It has the Android patches, it does not have any updates to driver or firmware security issues that have occurred since then (and there are vulns discovered all the time in that space). That's the diff. Also many of those third party Android roms significantly break the OS security model in order to run on old hardware, such as disabling checks for known vulnerable drivers.The GrapheneOS project documents a lot of what's wrong with hacked roms for older phones, and is the only third party Android ROM I would install on a device.
iphonebestgamephone - Monday, December 20, 2021 - link
Yeah its almost impossible to get those patches for specific hardware in the phone. Its usually taken from other devices with the same hardware that got the update. Graphene os severely limits phone choice though. I dont see why you wouldnt go for lineage with a wide selection.