The Huawei P8 Review
by Andrei Frumusanu on June 4, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Mobile
- P8
- Kirin 930
CPU & System Performance
As mentioned in the introduction of the P8, the new Kirin 930 SoC is an octa-core A53 with one low-power quad-core cluster with a frequency range going from 403MHz up to 1516MHz, and another high-powered cluster going from 1017MHz up to 2016MHz. I was able to determine that the L2 cache size of the high-performance cluster comes in at 512KB, but due to no available rooting mechanisms for the device I couldn't manipulate the device to lock our benchmark tool onto the small cores to determine their exact configuration.
Generally, due to this being an A53 device, we shouldn't be expecting any stellar performance as ARM's little core is about 2-2.5 times slower as an equivalently clocked larger architecture such as an A15 or A57 CPU. So while Huawei ramps up the clocks quite high at 2GHz, it's still very much more of a mid-range performer.
As expected, our in-browser benchmarks put the P8 at the lower-end of the performance spectrum as it simply doesn't have enough processing power to keep up with the competition. I also tested out to see if the stock browser would have any optimizations, but it performed more or less the same as Chrome. This makes sense as compiler targets shouldn't affect an in-order architecture such as the A53 as much as larger and more complex cores as ARM's big lineup of CPUs.
While the Javascript benchmarks represent a good insight in performance when browsing websites in a browser, it's far more common for users to experience web content via third-party applications which make use of a built-in WebView frame, in which case the OS's WebKit engine is used.
PCMark is such a test, where we can analyse performance numbers more representative of daily use-cases.
In the Web Browsing test, the P8 manages to land in the middle of the crowd. We saw large performance improvements coming from the Android 5.0 Lolipop update on several of our devices, and we're still in the process of updating all devices to the latest firmware to be able to re-test them.
The system benchmark of BaseMark OS is more processing power oriented, as as such, the A53 cores don't perform as well in this test.
Again, the overall score ends up average for the P8. In every-day usage the device still manages to be quite fast even though it can't be compared to other flagship devices with stronger SoCs. HiSilicon especially seems to have some issues with fluid performance when CPU demand spikes very strongly, as one will notice small stutters throughout some apps when more heavy processing is being performed, something I often reproduce on other big.LITTLE SoCs when I disable aggressive scheduler migrations.
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Ryan Smith - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link
Yes, it is.Ethos Evoss - Friday, June 12, 2015 - link
G4 sucks ... P8 is much much betterzodiacfml - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link
I would not even consider this at the price of the Nexus 5. If looks mattered and a low light camera, then this would be compelling at $250.Ethos Evoss - Friday, June 12, 2015 - link
u seems to be brainwashed by misleading review of anadatech site ..I suggest you to read this : http://www.phonearena.com/news/Battle-of-the-shutt...
Glock24 - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link
After reading this, the Zenfone 2 looks like an even better deal than before.OOwl - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link
I had this phone for about 3 weeks a month or so ago and I did actually like it quite a bit. It was fast, responsive and I didn't really have any issues with it. I did like the build quality and I did like the screen quite a bit... I didn't like the battery life though and I thought it would be a great handset if the price would be kept lower (as at the time I didnt know what the price would end up being).A lot better than the P8 Lite tbh. The smaller Lite is a lot more responsive than most other "mid-range" handsets, however, that one would randomly crash and freeze every few days. I don't know if that had anything to do with the pre-production nature of the handset. Huawei did a pretty good job on this one :) If you want something different, this is different good, but with 499Eur price tag I don't know if I would recommend it instead of an upcoming OnePlus 2... heck, even when compared to a OnePlus One...
Ethos Evoss - Friday, June 12, 2015 - link
So what happened i didn't find out from your post what actually happened with your phone and what you done with it..??Rod_Serling_Lives - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link
I am still not very interested in the Chinese offerings. I don't think they should stop what they are doing by any means, but the "better or similar device for less money" doesn't ever seem to hold up to me. I don't approach my purchase based on complete frugality. I base it on all-around performance and that makes more sense to me in 2-3 year phone ownership than buying something that bests very little compared to the major sellers. To each their own, but I would still rather carry an Apple, LG, Samsung, or Sony flagship. This has everything to do with all-around performance. I think Xiaomi and Meizu are getting closer to my own expectations than Huawei or Oppo at this point.OOwl - Saturday, June 6, 2015 - link
All-around performance is better on the OnePlus One than on the P8. At quite the price difference especially now...Ethos Evoss - Friday, June 12, 2015 - link
no a chance xiaomi is worse they making fail phones ! oppo copies Huawei !