The Xiaomi Mi Note Pro and Mi Note Review
by Joshua Ho on September 11, 2015 9:00 AM ESTSystem Performance Cont'd
Now that we've gone over some of the more CPU-bound benchmarks for overall performance, we can look at some of the more GPU-bound benchmarks such as 3DMark, Basemark X, and GFXBench 3. Of course, it's important to note that we're actively in the process of migrating to newer GPU benchmarks so for now these benchmarks are really mostly representative of OpenGL ES 3 performance rather than 3.1.
Interestingly, the GPU benchmark results show a pretty noticeable change relative to what we saw out of the One M9 at the launch of the first Snapdragon 810 phones. It's clear that some sort of driver optimization has been implemented as in every benchmark we see performance improvements well north of 5% that would be seen from purely clock speed gains. This highlights just how volatile GPU performance can be as Adreno 430 is now roughly equivalent to the T760MP8 in GFXBench and 3DMark. However, we still see the Adreno 430 lagging behind in Basemark X, which suggests the architecture of the Adreno 430 is a limiting factor in some workloads.
NAND Performance
While it’s often easy to forget about internal storage outside of capacity, it turns out that good storage performance is critical for a number of general purpose computing tasks. Mobile OSes aren’t necessarily as affected by storage performance as a desktop or laptop that is caching parts of RAM on internal storage, but even so it’s definitely possible to see the problems that result from cutting too deep here. Probably the most well-known example of this sort of cutting was the original Nexus 7 in 2012, which suffered from severe issues due to a lack of TRIM and general poor performance. In order to test mobile devices for this sort of problem, we use our standard benchmarks for testing basic read and write performance of the internal storage solution. In the case of the Xiaomi Mi Note Pro, we see a Samsung CGND3R eMMC package, while the Xiaomi Mi Note uses Toshiba’s 016GE2 eMMC solution.
In practice, neither has incredible performance, but performance is far from poor here. For the most part, the user experience effects on storage performance will be somewhat hard to notice as sufficient storage performance means that the bottleneck for any kind of lag or stutter would be elsewhere in most applications.
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valinor89 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Xiamomi is about to start trials with some products in the Us and other countries. You could end up having acces to this phone or its successor before long...Or do like the people who bought those korean screens early on and import.
I live in Europe and most of the products reviewed here are not directly avaiable to me, even less at the same relative price, 1€=1$ over here, but I still like to read about new product tendencies, at the minimun it lets me evaluate the products I can get in another light.
menting - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
How are phones any ground breaking nowadays? There have been 0 phones in the past few years that are groundbreaking, with maybe the exception of the S6 Edge with the curved screen. And if it's fair to whine about something you can't use, then 1) Verizon/Sprint customers will be whining more than 50% of the time here, and 2) Who said you can't use it? Does the lack of LTE make it unusable? BS.Yaru - Sunday, October 4, 2015 - link
You don't have to care but I very very much do. Not all of their products are only applicable to the US, some of them apply to other countries as well.Also, you can buy a Xiaomi phone from the US. Much like I can buy US phones from here. The iPhone 6+ I'm using to type this comes directly from the US (a T-Mobile to be exact). Just because Xiaomi doesn't sell it directly doesn't mean you can't buy it.
lilmoe - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
That's the worst thing one could ever do really. You should buy a product that has proper support in your country. Good luck finding parts or repairing the device. And good luck if you get a lemon.mforce - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Actually I bought an LG Optimus G made for Korea ( F180L ) which I've flashed with the ROM for E975 but keeping the modem part of the F180L .... I have all the 2G and 3G bands working perfectly here in the EU and the phone has been doign well for 2 years now.It is true that it's a risk you're going to make when buying without a local warranty but the seller might still honor your warranty if you send it back. Also yes you need to carefull look at the supported bands but some might just work out fine and be what you need in your country too.
Xiaomi does make phones which have all the right bands for the EU ( including LTE ) so I'm OK with reading reviews about Xiaomi phones such as this.... this isn't a US only website you know. Maybe folks from China read it too for instance ... Also many Xiaomi phones are available in India where they speak EN so ...
DigitalFreak - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
You just don't get it. No-one said they shouldn't review non-US phones. Just put a blurb in the beginning saying it doesn't support US bands. Why is that one simple thing so hard for people to comprehend?Pissedoffyouth - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
>I'd rather not waste my time reading a review of something that's only available in Asia/Europe.Why not? I'm a tech head, I'm happy to read reviews of droids only available on Verizon even though I'm in Europe because its great to see what competition ithere is.
menting - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
talk about being self-centered! So they'll have to say if it's going to be on Sprint and/or Verizon too I suppose?DigitalFreak - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Yeah, because I'm the only person who reads through a review only to find out they won't be able to use the device.BMNify - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Anandtech is an International website with only 40% of the readership coming from USA and Xiaomi already caters to the largest smartphones markets that is China, India, Brazil, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines. So, your redneck 'Murican pride is misplaced here.