The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 Review
by Andrei Frumusanu on December 2, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Mobile
- Ascend Mate 7
- HiSilicon
CPU Performance
Let's a better look at the Kirin 925's performance in terms CPU power. Again, this SoC is merely a slightly higher clocked Hi3630 as we've already benchmarked on the Huawei Honor 6. The basic hardware remains the same - a 1.8GHz quad A15 cluster with 2MB of L2 and a 1.3GHz quad A7 cluster with 512kB of L2 cache. The setup is running on an HMP (Heterogeneous Multi-Processing) hardware implementation running on a Linaro GTS (Global Task Scheduling) software stack on the Linux kernel. Memory is provided by 2GB of LPDDR3-1600 memory in this unit, with a higher 3GB variant available.
First, we take a look at our browser suites, testing general Javascript performance inside Chrome.
As expected, the Mate 7 doesn't differ too much from the Honor 6. The slight 100MHz boost on the A15 cluster brings it a few slight percentages above the Kirin 920. Again we see the big.LITTLE configuration and the A15 in general being extremely well-performing in these tests, being at the forefront of Android performance and only being beaten by Apple's own chip architectures. It's safe to say that the CPU has no issues at all in delivering an excellent and fast web-browsing experience.
WebXPRT has behaved weirdly on the Mate 7, it consistently scores less than the Honor 6 even although they employ the same chip. I'm not too sure as why this happened. My assumption is that there might be some software regressions in Huawei's OS libraries, but it's weird to see WebXPRT being the sole test unit to suffer from this effect. Because the CPU is running at a higher clock and voltage, we might be seeing some problem with throttling as WebXPRT tends to run much longer than the previous benchmarks.
Let's continue on with BaseMark OS II, a benchmark which tries to measure several aspects of a system.
The System and Web tests in BaseMark are mainly CPU limited. We see a similar ordering as in the Javascript benchmarks, with the Kirin leading the Android devices behind Apple's iPhones.
The memory benchmark is performing very weakly here. As a reminder, BaseMark is also testing the NAND performance in the memory sub-test, and not the main memory.
Like on the Honor 6, the Mali is having big issues with BaseMark OS II's Graphics benchmark and ends up below even Qualcomm's last generation's GPU. This, in conjunction with the lower memory score brings the overall BaseMark score further down.
Again the Mate 7 performed worse than the Honor 6. We're starting to see a trend here where longer lasting performance tests perform worse on the Mate 7, again I suspect a throttling issue here. Before we dwell more deeply into that, let's revise the performance of the Mali T628MP4 again.
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tipoo - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Really appreciate you guys reviewing some of the more niche phones! I was interested in this as well as the Oneplus, both got reviews I never expected.beehofer - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Nice but I'm wondering what Anandtech has against Sony? Why no Z3 or Z3C reviews. Hmmmm.Moizy - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
They review the phones manufacturers provide for them. So if no Sony phones are being reviewed, that means Sony isn't giving them any phones to review. Perhaps you'd like to send them a Sony for them to review?beehofer - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
If only I had the resources for that :)NeoteriX - Sunday, December 7, 2014 - link
...then maybe you should think again before jumping to conclusions and spouting your mouth off with accusations.techcrazy - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
Do they really need a manufacturer to provide them phones? AnandTech Has enough money to buy any particular cellphone. Sony Xperia Z3 and Z3 compact are considered one of the best android phones of the year. AnandTech is my favorite tech review site, seeing they're not reviewing one of the best phones of the year is really disappointing. Unless Sony specifically asked them not to review their products i think AnandTech should review Xperia Z3 lines products. At least I really want to see them review Z3 Compact.JarredWalton - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
While I'm sure AnandTech could afford to buy a device on occasion for review (and we've done so in the past), ultimately that doesn't work out -- there's always another device some people will want us to review. "Hey, you bought XYZ; it's not fair that you didn't also buy and review UVW, ABC, QRS, ...." Buying and reviewing (or not reviewing if it's not worth the time?) every product just can't be supported in a realistic manner I don't think.Fundamentally, there's also the question of reviewer throughput -- how many people are needed to review every potentially interesting device? And can AnandTech afford to pay them? We have coverage of most major categories, but simply increasing the amount of content on a site doesn't linearly increase the site revenues, so there's a balancing act. And you still need quality content, not just a deluge of "me too" stuff.
mkozakewich - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
This isn't just "potentially interesting," though. Sony has released some new and different stuff, but it's barely even mentioned. I sometimes forget they're making high-end devices.I don't know how feasible it would be to borrow handsets if someone in your area is willing to lend theirs to you.
garretelder - Thursday, December 4, 2014 - link
The The Huawei Ascend Mate 7 is far from one of the better phones if you ask me! /Garret http://www.topreport.org/phones/Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
dont understand what u mean .. do u have it ? u even didnt hold it in hands .. and u judging ..