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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Pissedoffyouth - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link
Bus width, sorry.Kepe - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link
Android 5.0 is called Lollipop, not Lolipop (every time you mention it, you misspell it). But thanks for the article, I thought the performance wouldn't have been as bad as it seems to be. The phone is way overpriced. It's a shame really, as the camera seems to be very good.Kepe - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link
"The P8's gamut remains too large and veers off from the sRGB targets in the blue and green spectrums."According to the chart above this text, the blue colors seem to be very accurate. It's the red and green that are not accurate.
Ranger101 - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link
It's easy to see the standards of written articles dropping everywhere you look on theinternet, just more annoying when it's a website you visit frequently. Do you guys @
Anandtech bother to read through the articles before you publish? A simple spell
check perhaps?
If English isn't Mr Frumusanu's native tongue this would go a long way towards explaining
the kinds of errors we find in this article. Sadly it seems native english speakers/writers, such as Mr Cutress, are just as prone to said errors in their pieces.
This is sheer carelessness and creates the impression of falling standards at Anandtech.
I don't recall nearly as many errors under the tenure of Mr Lal-Shimpi.
Just a couple of the points from this article:
"Huawei started Ascend P-line" should read as "the Ascend P-Line."
"I regard the Kirin 920 as quite of an embarrassment" should read as "quite a bit of an
embarrassment.
Rod_Serling_Lives - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link
Anandtech gives us the most in-depth reviews on modern technology and you are having a tizzy over spelling and small grammatical errors. Your corrections are valid, but your tone is condescending and unnecessary. Maybe, you should fill out an application for Editor.Ethos Evoss - Friday, June 12, 2015 - link
What is unnecessary is this in ATOM-DEPTH review !Ethos Evoss - Friday, June 12, 2015 - link
Exactly I noticed this and + their new invented words e.g. ;app-icon framing throughout :DDDBA5620 - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link
very usefully post, i just bought a P8 days ago http://www.dhgate.com/product/huawei-p8-sliver-201... and not see anything wrong yet, and cheap.Ethos Evoss - Friday, June 12, 2015 - link
u purchased it to expensive .. the phone cost much lesshttp://www.aliexpress.com/item/Original-HUAWEI-P8-...
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HUAWEI-ASCEND-P8-5-2-OCT...
SoC-IT2ME - Friday, June 5, 2015 - link
Is the LG G4 review in the works?