The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 Review
by Andrei Frumusanu on December 2, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Mobile
- Ascend Mate 7
- HiSilicon
GPU Performance
The graphics processing unit in the Kirin 925 remains unchanged from the one in the Kirin 920. It's the same ARM Mali T628MP4 running at 600MHz. What did change though, is the software. HiSilicon no longer employs such an aggressive GPU governor logic for the DVFS scaling, but adopted this time a more linear approach that scales from one frequency to the next, making it much less aggressive than the one found in the Honor 6.
In 3DMark 1.2 Unlimited, we see no change compared to the Honor 6, as one would expect. The Physics score, which is dominantly CPU-bound, is more or less also unchanged. The Physics score here is rather low because the GTS mechanism limits the load onto the A7 scores, which have less performance headroom than the A15 cores. I don't see this as too much of a problem in real-world usage as the A7 cores should be able to handle most existing games without much issue, and it's in my opinion even a good thing as it brings down platform power down by quite a bit to avoid using the A15 cores.
Checking in on BaseMark X 1.1, the Mali continues to be underwhelming. The MP4 configuration of the T628 is simply not enough to be able to compete with Qualcomm and Imagination's current high-end GPUs.
In GFXBench 3.0, the Mali is again dragging its feet and is barely capable of competing here. A lack of fill-rate performance is what is limiting it in the T-Rex benchmark, and a bottleneck in ALU power is what is stopping the Mali from performing better in the Manhattan test.
The biggest change I've seen between the Mate 7 and the Honor 6 is the way the GPU throttles. I've mentioned that I've had a hard time to get the Honor 6's GPU to throttle at all, and thus it performed quite well in our performance degradation metric. The Mate 7 seems to have changed its thermal policies and brings with it one of the worst scores we've every seen. It throttles very fast and limits itself to roughly half the frequency, resulting in only 8.8fps from the 15.8fps instant performance score. The result is that the Mate 7 performs much better in the GPU battery test, but before we get to that, let's characterize the screen of the Mate 7 so we can get a good notion of what we should expect in terms of battery life.
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MantasPakenas - Thursday, December 4, 2014 - link
Wow. I guess this is as direct confirmation that Sony hasn't provided them a device for review as we can get. I just wonder if they've also been asked for one specifically, which they probably were.No wonder Sony continues to underperform with their handset business despite making some great devices. Their marketing can't be excused for not having a review at Anandtech as soon NDA lifts.
Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, December 4, 2014 - link
I've tried reaching out to Sony as being one of the newer European editors (Sony has a much stronger presence here) but sadly they haven't gotten back to me in 3 months.It's a pity.
Dribble - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
/me looks for nexus 9 review - nope still not hereIt's not just Sony!
Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
I have feeling they picking phones which they wants to slag and make crap from..ayejay_nz - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
I second this, thanks a lot for the review.I was hoping this device would provide similar battery performance to the Mate 2, alas : [
Might have to get a 6+, however the fact that the Lightning SD Card Adapter doesn't work with it is extremely frustrating. A $750 - $950 smart phone that can't download photos quickly because of some stupid software switch that makes the adapter incompatible, sigh. May have to use a WiFi SD card or Reader : [
Ethos Evoss - Saturday, December 6, 2014 - link
That we ALWAYS know then u are wisiting anadtech :D THE MOST WEIRD website on the planet..I bet everybody there has iiiphhhonees 6 and pluses there.. and they having even sex with them ..@DDD
banks1990 - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
"The dimensions figure at 139.6 x 69.7 x 7.9mm"Almost the same size of a Huawei Honor 6 eh?
bernstein - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
interesting! this phone is smaller than its screen, which measures ~73x130mm.obviously its completely wrong... the mate 7 measures 157 x 81 x 7.9 mm :)
Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
My apologies - yes I initially started off the same table for the specs.tipoo - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
That much throttling with that little performance is...Kind of impressive, in a way? Well, that all turns me off from this phone anyway.