System Performance

Performance may be a rather nebulous thing - there are a number of factors that affect the performance of a smartphone in everyday tasks. One of the single most important components to overall performance is the SoC (System on a Chip). This one package will usually contain the CPU, GPU, DRAM interface, a number of fixed-function blocks, various DSPs, and other processing engines. Usually, DRAM itself is also mounted on top of the SoC package in a package on package (PoP) configuration. In order to test this and more in a smartphone, we rely on a set of benchmarks that are accepted within the industry that can reasonably represent smartphone performance. Of course, the state of the art in benchmarking is always changing, but we can say with reasonable confidence that if a smartphone or tablet performs well in our benchmarks that the SoC will be a good foundation for a smooth experience. Of course, if an OEM then decides to run unoptimized Android UIs on top of this SoC then any performance advantage could be wasted. In the case of the Mi Note, we’re looking at a relatively standard Snapdragon 801 with 3GB of LPDDR3, while the Mi Note Pro uses a more powerful Snapdragon 810 with 4GB of LPDDR4.

Kraken 1.1 (Chrome/Safari/IE)

Google Octane v2  (Chrome/Safari/IE)

WebXPRT 2013 (Chrome/Safari/IE)

It's interesting to look at these results as we can basically see the differences that result from browser optimizations. It's also important to note here that the Xiaomi Mi Note was run with the Performance mode turned on as otherwise the CPU governor would be far too conservative for good performance. Unfortunately though, it looks like the Performance mode (as opposed to Balanced) is extremely aggressive, setting all cores online and to only use the 2.5 GHz state. Xiaomi needs to provide a more appropriate performance governor for everyday use. It's worth noting here that all benchmarks can be run without the performance governor, but the software will offer to turn it on if it detects a benchmark.

Fortunately, it seems the Mi Note Pro doesn't have these sorts of strange governor settings and performance is in line for what we'd expect from a Snapdragon 810.

Basemark OS II 2.0 - Overall

Basemark OS II 2.0 - System

Basemark OS II 2.0 - Memory

Basemark OS II 2.0 - Graphics

Basemark OS II 2.0 - Web

In Basemark OS II we see that performance is roughly estimated to be equal to the Galaxy S6. It seems that most of this is coming from the NAND benchmark aspect and browser optimizations as in the System subtest the Mi Note is around the same level as the Exynos 5433. The graphics subtest shows performance is identical to the One M9, which suggests that the 30 MHz bump in clock isn't going to be particularly helpful.

PCMark - Work Performance Overall

PCMark - Web Browsing

PCMark - Video Playback

PCMark - Writing

PCMark - Photo Editing

At this point it's pretty fair to say that the Snapdragon 801 is a known quantity when it comes to performance, but when it comes to the Snapdragon 810 it's still in some level of flux. For the Mi Note at least, this is mostly interesting at an academic level as a pure 2.5 GHz 4x Krait comparison relative to the Snapdragon 810. Overall, it looks like the Mi Note Pro is about the same performance as the G4, which makes sense because the governor usually only allows two A57s to stay online in all but the most extreme loads. However, performance has a wide relative variation in cases where the OEM has either invested a lot of time in optimizing their build of Android or not as much. It looks like web browsing is a major point of optimization for the Mi Note Pro as it is competitive with the Galaxy S6 in that test, but in areas like the writing subtest Xiaomi is falling behind somewhat. I suspect this is mostly a software optimization problem as PCMark is extremely sensitive to changes in Android version as seen in the Note 4 and Note 4 Exynos which are surpassing the Mi Note due to an OTA update to Lollipop despite the Mi Note's use of a performance governor.

Overall, performance of Snapdragon 810 in these mostly CPU-bound tasks is acceptable. We can still see some performance gains over Snapdragon 801 and 805 but relative to the Exynos 7420 competition things aren't quite as rosy. Of course, we can talk about software optimization but in Basemark OS II the Mi Note only squeaks by due to a high NAND performance score rather than a strong showing in any SoC performance test. In PCMark we see a similar story of some tests where the Mi Note Pro is doing well, but others where it falls short to give an average score overall. Whatever the case, it's clear that the Mi Note Pro does have a good amount of performance on tap. The Mi Note is also clearly capable of being a strong performer as seen in the performance mode benchmarks, but the balanced governor mode needs to be much better to exploit that performance. Both phones should have enough CPU performance to do pretty much any everyday task.

Display System Performance Cont'd and NAND Performance
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  • prisonerX - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    Why would anyone care about that?

    Did you just discover that China is a communist/authoritarian?
  • sonny73n - Sunday, September 13, 2015 - link

    WTF is wrong with you people? Is capitalist better than communist? How about Saudi Arabia - our "ally"? Stop mixing politic and nationality with tech. FYI more than 80% of products in the U.S. are made in China that included the beloved iPhone. Oh iPhone which costs ~$210 to make but priced at $650. How's that capitalism for you? So please keep the politic bs and racial comments at CNN, Fox or whatever fake news site you like. This is a tech site for God's sake.
  • Yaru - Sunday, October 4, 2015 - link

    I'm not a big fan of the a Chinese government and some of their internet policies.......but so what? It's a review of a product not some geopolitical analysis.

    Also while it's nowhere near the same level, the US government DO give subsidies companies (though tech industry isn't one of them). All goventments gives out subsidies to one degree or another.

    Also, where do you think a lot of tech companies manufacturer their products? Those savings from the cheap labor, where do the profits goes? Back to US tech companies.
  • Penti - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    I don't see what's up with all the whining, these devices are not sold in Europe by retailers and distributors or by operators. Through their sales in China it's one of the big five brands though. Nobody whines when it comes to Oppo or OnePlus reviews.
  • soccerballtux - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    'for those who don't spend their whole lives reading about this'--LOL

    another good review, thanks. impressive phone...bit worried about where my data gets stored (Chinese Clouds are polluted with government eyes), no microSD, and thankfully this doesn't have NFC or Qi so I'm less tempted to purchase, but wow does that have a refined look or what...
  • Penti - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    I only saw local and Google as options in the pics. I'm pretty sure you can use it without a MI account, and thus nothing syncing to the "MI Cloud".
  • BMNify - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    Mi cloud is opt-in and Xiaomi has migrated its Mi cloud servers to Singapore and India for the International customers and it is handled by Amazon Web Services, here is the link to AWS itself talking about Mi cloud: https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/xiao...
  • Penti - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    I'm pretty sure they have removed the option to sync app data to MI Cloud any how. No need to sync contacts, calendar or photos to the Mi Cloud if you don't want to either.
  • aces170 - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    AT nice to see a review of a xiaomi phone, with the usual in depth perspective. You do have a lot of readers here in India, and we are glad you covered for the region. I don't understand the north American contempt for anything Chinese, especially since everything they use is made in China. Xiaomi is a good brand so far, as Joshua pointed out having the attention to detail that is lacking in Android world. I think you could have covered the audio bit more in detail as note pro shines in that department.
  • Margalus - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    Most of it was not contempt for anything Chinese. Most of the complaining is simply because you have read thru lots of pages of details and reviews before you find out that this phone will not work with any carrier in the USA. That is the problem. Somebody asked for them to put a sentence in saying this at the beginning and then the comments fill up with arrogant Europeans screaming about "muricans" and their entitlement attitude. This is, and always was an American website. So if they start reviewing things that won't work in America, it's pretty simple to just say that at the beginning so that people don't waste their time reading about something that they can't use.

    They can also do the same if they review something for America that won't work in Europe or Asia so that people from those areas don't have to waste their time if they don't want to.

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