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  • LiverpoolFC5903 - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    I was hoping for an Exynos 8 series chipset. Ah well. This is pretty much a downgrade in all aspects.
  • close - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    I wanted to say that at least they upgraded the design but then I realized the Pro 5 had the same "look at me, I'm an iPhone" design.
  • LiverpoolFC5903 - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    Its not a bad looking handset to be fair yto Meizu. It IS iphonesque for sure. Seems like a popular design choice considering the fact that even HTC used it for their A9.
  • jjj - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    Is it? http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/...
    Anyway, the Exynos doesn't have CDMA2000 and they need it to cover all 3 carriers in China.
  • LiverpoolFC5903 - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    Yep single threaded performanceis higher as expected due to the A72 cores. However, the A57s are no slouches either. The real life gradient in performance wont be significant in a Cpu context.

    However, the overall performance should be better in the Pro 5 due to the presence of DDR4 memory, far more powerful GPU and 4 big cores instead of two.

    Having said that, the mediatek *may* have better battery life due to the the A72 cores which are more efficient than the A57s. Also, there is only two of them and the A53 cluster clocked a 2 ghz will be able to handle almost all tasks apart from extreme stuff, which means more savings.

    But some of these advantages are offset by the use of an older 20nm process as opposed to the 14 finfet used by Samsung for the Exynos, so not sure what the real world power usage will be like.
  • jjj - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    What matters is how much the X25 throttles. If it doesn't throttle, it will be great, even on the GPU side.The 7420 and even 8890 or SD820 throttle really really hard in actual gaming in sessions longer than 10mins. The GFXBench long term perf test is not really showing how hard these GPUs throttle and how a power management aimed at wins in benchmarks makes things so much worse than they should be. If on the GPU side they got good power management and they prioritize the small CPU cores,sustained perf should be competitive. Sounds crazy for MP4 cores to match MP12 but i've seen the Exynos 8890 at 261MHz down from 650MHz in Real Racing 3 (on FRandroid they did a Mate 8 vs Galaxy S7) This is a big if, it might be really hard for this SoC to not throttle but if they pull that off, it would be exciting.
    The DDR4 part is not that simple. You got higher BW but more relaxed timings so higher latency with DDR4. Then , one must ask if the extra bandwidth is needed. Additionally some apps like bandwidth, some low latency,some don't care at all. Sure DDR4 is more power efficient. One should also factor in the memory controller since heat there matters but no idea how DDR4 compares with DDR3 there.
    Anyway, we'll see how it throttles, at 100mm2 on 20nm the X20/25 can be cheap enough to enable some nice devices.
  • tuxRoller - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    Do you have a reference to the testing data which shows this throttling?
    I'm not doubting you, btw, as I've already seen that all the big SOCs throttle their GPUs when run for extended periods.
  • jjj - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    http://www.frandroid.com/marques/samsung/347416_pe...
    The article is not perfect and it's in french. Bits not to be missed are that they claim the S7 renders the games at 1080p (not convinced it does since the perf seems way too low for that) and in one of the games no AA enabled on the S7. They don't measure the FPS after it hits bottom ,they list average but there are some graphs that give you an idea and they do mention the clocks.
    Also seen SD820 at 214MHz down from 624MHz in NBA2k16 with 1080p screen while the Kirin 950 was at 600MHz, down from the listed 900MHz. End result being similar perf. But that was on some Chinese site and i can't find a link.
    This kind of data is next to impossible to find, for some crazy reason nobody makes the effort to test.If people would start testing maybe we would see better power management at least, those big GPUs could do better if not pushed so hard for benchmark wins.
  • tuxRoller - Thursday, April 14, 2016 - link

    It looks like a cherry picked game that is highly CPU bound. They even say that there is a stronger cpu freq to fps relationship than to GPU.
    This would mean that the a72s are either more efficient than mongoose (maybe) or the mate 8 has better cooling.
    Imho, the problem is that the mongoose cores have relatively poor IPC, and Samsung makes up for that with very high clocks, but the quadratic relationship better power and frequency means that they can only stay at such frequencies for a relatively short period. HOWEVER, the S7 outperforms the S7 edge by staying at higher clocks for longer. That just shouldn't be possible given the larger volume of the edge. That's why I think the test is bogus. Even the testers can't explain it.
    Regardless, those games were CPU limited so the temperature, this the frequency, of the GPU was never an issue.
  • pgari - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    But they also downgraded the price
  • hyno111 - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    They use "USB 3.1 Gen 1", which means USB 3.0.
  • solipsism - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    But does that translate into actual throughput for reading and (mostly) writing data to the NAND beyond what USB 2.0 speeds offer?
  • jjj - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    No mention of the 10 LED flash, that's the most interesting bit as nobody else does it.
    The GPU is at 850MHz for the X25 while the X20 is at 780MHz not 700MHz- they updated the specs since launch. http://mediatek-helio.com/x20/

    On the SoC side you might be rushing when saying that efficiency decreases. 2+4+4 vs 4+4 is pretty different and you got the A72 upside. Hope you get your hands on it and take a look at how it throttles.
    Any chance you might be able to share if you've seen the Adreno 530 bellow 214MHz in gaming? That's the lowest i have seen it so far, wondering if it goes even lower.
  • ToTTenTranz - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    Are you sure there's no WiFi ac, only n?

    Well.. at least they adjusted the price accordingly..
    The 64GB Pro 6 could be an attractive phone if found at 350-400€ in euroland.
  • Ian Cutress - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    Can confirm, press materials show a/b/g/n, no ac.
  • jjj - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    The official specs do list ac http://www.meizu.com/products/pro6/spec.html
  • Ian Cutress - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    Confirmed with MEIZU direct. It should be 802.11ac.

    It's worrying how many non-ac devices still exist that this isn't automatically flagged as erroneous in the press materials.
  • jjj - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    The Mediatek Helio P10 ( A53 at up to 2GHz) doesn't have integrated ac and plenty of budget devices lack ac. The Meizu M3 Note that recently launched at 799CNY doesn't have it. To be fair , at a global level , how many users have wifi ac, most users don't even know what that is. Public and enterprise wifi should have very low penetration for 5GHz. I was assuming that even 100-150$ China phones have it by now but a few months ago realized that's not the case and many lack wifi ac.
  • halcyon - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    eMMC 5.1 (not UFS 2.0) = downgrade
    2560mAh battery (vs old 3050mAh) = downgrade
    NO microSD slot = downgrade

    Decent mid-leaguer, but disapointing.
  • jordanclock - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    Plus a regression from DDR4-3200 to DDR3-1866. That's a serious drop in memory bandwidth from 25.6GB/s to 14.9GB/s. The GPU might be lower core count but I feel like a 40% drop in bandwidth is going hit it hard.
  • asfletch - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    Did they explain what "HiFi Lite" is? Sounds like yet another downgrade from the Pro 5 (which by all accounts had excellent audio). What a perplexing release... Wish they'd just done Pro 5 hardware in smaller form factor. I would have paid good money for that.
  • jjj - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    Cirrus Logic CS43L36
  • fanofanand - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    RAM specs don't appear to be accurate in the chart. They had DDR4/3200 in the old phone, and went with DDR3/1866 in the new one?
  • fanofanand - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    They went from UFS to EMMC? From a 14 nm SOC to 20 nm? Smaller battery? What in the hell is going on there?
  • asfletch - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    Seems 'brave' to go down to 2560mah in a 5.2" phone when every other flagship release (Mi5, P9, S7, HTC 10) has gone up to 3000mah this year. Huawei and Xiaomi even managed to do it while keeping their phones as slim or slimmer.
  • Eden-K121D - Thursday, April 14, 2016 - link

    Hardly anyone in the mainstream markets outside china is gonna buy this over Mi 5 or even last years S6/Edge
  • Bateluer - Wednesday, April 13, 2016 - link

    Except for the ugly single button on the front, its pretty nice looking. What LTE bands does it support?
  • zodiacfml - Thursday, April 14, 2016 - link

    Looks like a downgrade to me. More likely, they have better margins on this.
  • nandnandnand - Thursday, April 14, 2016 - link

    Did it drop 802.11ac?

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