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  • SydneyBlue120d - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I'd like to see some mobile speed test compared with Snapdragons and Intel modems :)
    Great review as always, included the Lorem Impsum in the video recording video page :P
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Cellular tests are extremely hard to do in non-controlled environments, it's something I'm afraid of doing again as in the past I've found issues with my past mobile carrier that really opened my eyes as to just how much the tests are affected by the base station's configuration.

    I'm editing the video page, will shortly update it.
  • jjj - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    When you do the GPU's perf per W, why use peak not hot state average? And any chance you have any hot perf per W per mm2 data, would be interesting to see that.

    Have you checked if the Pto with max brightness throttles harder and by how much?
    Hope LG can sort out power consumption for their OLED or they'll have quite some issues with foldable displays.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    It's a fair point, it's something I can do in the future but I'd have to go back measure across a bunch of deices.

    What did you mean by Pto? The power consumption of the screen at max brightness should be quite high if you're showing very high APL content, so by definition that is 2-3W more to the TDP, even though it's dissipated on a large area.
  • jjj - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    The Pro question was about the SoC throttling harder because of the display, could be and should be the case to some extend, especially if they did nothing about mitigating it but was curious how large the impact might be in a worse case scenario. - so SoC throttling with display at min power vs max power.
    Also related to this, does heat impact how brightness is auto-adjusted?
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    The 3D benchmarks are quite low APL so they shouldn't represent any notable difference in power. Manhattan for example is very dark.
  • jjj - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I suppose you could run your CPU power virus while manipulating the display too, just to see the impact. The delta between min and max power for the display is so huge that you got to wonder how it impacts SoC perf.
  • Chitti - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Nothing about speakers and sound output via USB-C and in Bluetooth earphones ?
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I'll add a speaker section over the weekend, the Mate 20 Pro's speakers have a good amount of bass and mid-range, however there's some lacking presence in the higher frequencies, as well as some obvious reverberations on the back glass panel. Covering up the USB-C port where the sound is coming from muffles things hard, so this is a big no-no in terms of audio quality when you have it plugged in.

    The Mate 20 just has the bottom mono speaker, which is a disadvantage in itself. Here there's some lack of bass and mid-range, with a very tinny bottom firing sound.

    The USB-C headphones are good, but lacking a bit in clarify / lower high frequencies. They're ok but definitely not as good as Apple/Samsung/LG's included units.
  • jjj - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Went over the review quickly, is there anything on the proprietary microSD and storage (NAND) in general, just point me to the right page if possible.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Nothing on the nanoSD, I don't even have any way to test it. As for storage, again I'm not posting any results in the review because the tools are broken/misleading. If it's any worth, both phones are leading in terms of Androbench performance.
  • Chitti - Saturday, November 24, 2018 - link

    Andrei, its almost 10 days.
    U didn't upload it yet 😓.
  • s.yu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Samsung's body + Apple's notch, a popular opinion on the net.
    For the record Huawei's always "taking note" of somebody's design, they copied Sony's Omnibalance back with the P8, especially with that power button, moving on they've been closely following Samsung's design (S6,S7,S8) until the P20, in which they copied Apple, with the latest Mate20Pro, it's both, altogether.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I don't really agree with this (Beyond the P20's looking similar to the iPhone X), Huawei always had quite distinct designs in its phones, especially on the Mate series.
  • s.yu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Well for the P8 Huawei's own slide mentioning a "balanced design" following Sony's use of "Omnibalance" as well as the obvious resemblance in design did give them away, Huawei's Mate 9 Pro's a facelift of the S6/S7, and their subsequent so-called "Porsche Design" versions as well as the corresponding "Pro" versions all suspiciously follow Samsung's move in design philosophy from the S7 onwards. Then Apple's IPX and all...
  • levizx - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    Well, that's quite a bold regarding P8, P8 looks nothing like SONY. By your logic, any phone that claims "slim" or "premium" would be clones.

    How else would you design a phone with 16:9 curved display with 3 years old technology, I'd like to see you try.

    You have to be very stupid to think Mate 10/P20 series looks anything like S7/S8/iPhone being non-curved with front/back fingerprint readers.
    So your logic is essentially - curved display: copying Samsung, non-curved display: copying Samsung, notch with fingerprint reader and triple camera: copying iPhone.
  • s.yu - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    That's some weak trolling.

    Let me tell you now how exactly the P8 looks like Sony's Xperia Z released earlier:
    1. It's very boxy for its release date, compared to its peers only Sony of that era used such a design philosophy though Sony stuck to it for the many years to come while Huawei went on to copy Samsung the subsequent generation starting from Mate 9 Pro.
    2. Sony's machine-milled power button was iconic in their Xperia Z and Z1, then Huawei came over, slightly changed the shape and stuck it onto an equally boxy body with suspiciously similarly named design philosophy.

    How else would *I* design? That's not my problem, I'm not a team of engineers paid to innovate on a smartphone design after all, but HTC and Samsung both had unique solutions at the time, especially Samsung's S6 was an ingenious generational leap which pioneered the trend of glass-sandwich-metal bodies until this day.

    When Huawei wasn't so obviously copying, well of course you know what happened, the unsightly Mate S, Mate 8 and Mate 9.

    The Mate 9 Pro's screen was curved, together with the home button it's a straight Samsung S6E/S7E ripoff under a façade of "Porsche Design". At least get your basic facts straight before you troll.

    I didn't say that the Mate 10 was a Samsung/Apple copy, you put that in my mouth. Not every Huawei is a copy, just that they copy somebody almost every generation, which also shows from their highly inconsistent, rapidly shifting design language, because they "borrow" from different opponents each year.

    The P20 is a thorough IPX clone, up there with the Mi8, there's no doubt about that.
  • Quantumz0d - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Agreed.

    Press don't care unfortunately and that makes the marketing work. How else Huawei could gather all that. Look at Pixel 3XL its the best android phone according to press. Less features is more nowadays and you should pay more for the super cloned designs and submitting your ownership as well.

    And it's China and their famous pro local IP theft game, no one can win there except their own.
  • levizx - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    What a stupid and racist troll. So in your mind Pixel XL is not a clone, but all Huawei phones are?

    Mate 10 Pro looks more like LG V30 than anything else, and they are only 2 months apart, no chance of copying at all.
  • s.yu - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    Look at you grasping at straws like that, the Mate 10 Pro may not be a copy, but Mate RS was a clear Samsung copy.
  • Lord of the Bored - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    It just looks like a piece of colored glass to me. I'm not convinced there's enough design to copy in the current pocket computer market.
  • wheelman26 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    "Huawei is the only Android manufacturer that is able to take advantage of full vertical integration of silicon and handsets." - There's also Samsung.

    "Huawei’s first phone to push beyond 1080p" - In 2015 the Huawei-Google Nexus 6P had a 1440x250 display.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Samsung isn't vertically integrated, S.LSI has to compete with Qualcomm, and the mobile division doesn't seem to care much about what silicon is inside.

    As for the 6P, fair enough and true, but that wasn't by Huawei's decision to feature it.
  • Lolimaster - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Maybe because Huawei are only using in-house SOC vs Samsung with their fail Exynos line.
  • s.yu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    lol, Samsung should just license Andrei's scheduler already ;D
  • Quantumz0d - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    "Imitation is the best form of flattery" well I still have to read up on the Kirin but this one. It really is bad statement from AT. Its like one doesn't care about how the uniqueness of anything matters its a shame tbh, free pass just like Pixels.

    Great times we live nowadays. Phones costing over $1000 planned obsolescence and lack of ownership (BL unlock) and lack of usefulness is best.
  • Speedfriend - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Am I reading it correctly that the A12 hits 5W+ at times versus the Kirin at 1.5-3.0 range. Does that mean that Apple is having to dissipate more heat. And in many benchmarks, the A12 has higher W than the A11 despite a move to 7nm, is this a trade off Apple is deciding to make in order to drive performance?
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Correct, yes, and yes.

    As long as the performance increase is bigger than the power increase, efficiency will still go up. Thermals in this case is just a secondary metric.
  • iwod - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    This is bad because A12 is using more power, and I cant imagine I can get any performance improvement next year. I guess there is only so much could be done?
  • Lew Zealand - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    The A12 is using less power. It uses more instantaneous power but uses that higher power for a much shorter time to get the work done, so it uses less power overall for the same task and therefore the phone needs to dissipate less heat overall.
  • FunBunny2 - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link

    "the phone needs to dissipate less heat overall."

    not necessarily. IFF the following time period of lowered power draw is sufficient to dissipate that heat as well as the 'heat debt' from previous spike. the laws of thermodynamics can't be changed just because one wished them to.
  • melgross - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I don’t know how the 980 is outstanding when it does edge past Android SoCs, most of the time, but it’s a really lousy performer compared to the A12. Again, Android devices, and even parts, are being rated on a curve. If you give the A12 a grade of 100 on each rating, the the 980 is no more than a 70, and often a 50, or even a 40. That’s not outstanding, even if it’s much better than the really bad 970 from last year.
  • tuxRoller - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    In spec, the 980 has the best efficiency of all soc.
    Your statement would hold of we were only concerned with the greatest performance.
  • zanon - Monday, November 19, 2018 - link

    What? Doesn't look like that. The SPEC graphs show total energy consumption in J on the left and performance on the right. To get efficiency you need to divide the two right? It's not just absolute energy it's how much energy it takes for each unit of performance. In those tests it's showing the A12 takes 212 J/perf in the first and 107 in the second. The 980 is 368 and 157 respectively. Watts is energy over time, if one SoC can finish a given task faster then the total energy is less even if the peak is more. On a desktop or even tablet there may be cases of more sustained performance (although a high burst chip could just down clock or simply flat out offer better performance and just suggest plugging in), but phone workloads tend to be pretty bursty. Race-to-sleep isn't a bad strategy.
  • Wilco1 - Monday, November 19, 2018 - link

    The graph is very clear - 980 beats all other SoCs on efficiency. The energy bar is the total energy in Joules, so power in Watts (J/s) multiplied by time to finish (s), giving total Joules.
  • tuxRoller - Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - link

    Int: 9480J
    Fp: 5337J
  • s.yu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I don't really agree about using performance mode for benchmarks, unless battery tests were also run on performance mode.
    Obviously if you use performance mode your device will be more snappy, at the cost of battery life, but since they're not governed under the same mode, the battery and performance benefits are mutually exclusive, you can't have both, so you literally can't have the snappy experience under performance mode for the time length determined by a non-performance mode battery test, therefore testing it this way is not representative of real world experience.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Everything, including the battery tests, were in performance mode. Huawei pretty much recommended it to run it like this. It's actually more of an issue that it's not enabled out of the box, and many reviewers actually fell for this new behaviour.
  • s.yu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Oh! In that case it's not a problem. I saw another site testing everything in non-performance mode and some people were complaining..
  • s.yu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    ...but I'm still curious if changing the app signature would make a difference.
  • Titud - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    It would be interesting to see a review of the BOE screen because many of the LG screens are defective and the devices with LG screens are being replaced by devices with BOE screens.

    Anyway, great review.
  • melgross - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    While Apple and Samsung screens would be considered if they performed this way, it seems to be normal for LG’s OLEDs. Last year, the screens were pretty terrible too.

    With Apple investing $2.7 billion in LG for the purpose of improving g their OLED screens so that Apple can have a second OEM for them, I wonder how that’s working out. No way Apple would use these screens. But my Apple watches have been using LG screens with Apple tech. They’re fine.
  • kbohus - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Andrei,
    would you be so kind as to check the advertised dual-frequency Galileo GNSS capability? Easiest way is with GPSTest app by barbeauDev from Google Play.
    For more info pls see https://medium.com/@sjbarbeau/dual-frequency-gnss-...
    Thanks for the great review!
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    It doesn't run dual-frequency. The post you linked also includes data from a Mate 20.

    The L1+L5 support was in regards to the Hi1103 as far as I'm aware: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13298/hisilicon-ann...

    The Mate 20's come with a BCM4359 WiFi chipset, not the Hi1103.
  • SydneyBlue120d - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    So they lied in the presentation?
  • MyFluxi - Thursday, November 22, 2018 - link

    the mate 20 pro defo has the Hi1103, see ifixit tear down
  • pixelstuff - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Regarding notched displays (or lack thereof), I think the LG V35 is one of the best looking phones out there. Phone makers should strive to copy that look. Anyone that complains about the V35 bezels being too big is just being a moron.
  • guizt - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Some LG panel Mate 20 Pro have serious green tint issue. Does your model affected by it?
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I'm aware of the issues, but my panel doesn't have it.
  • colts187 - Monday, November 19, 2018 - link

    Hey Andrei I know you've seen the green screen issues on the LG panels. What do you think could be the cause of it? I'm curious of your opinion since Huawei apparently doesn't want to bring it up lol.
  • id4andrei - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Have to say, did not expect Huawei of all companies to correctly ape FaceID. I thought that Android OEMs would not be able to compete as Apple bought the OG Kinect company for that. That's serious talent.
  • s.yu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I'm beginning to think Huawei's making this watercolor texture their new hallmark. They can't solve the texture problem with their 1/1.7" 40MP flagship so any smaller modules are intentionally crippled? LG is bad though, LG's the only company delivering consistently worse texture than Huawei.
    I remember the Mate20P outperforming P20P in terms of texture from samples elsewhere, yet here the tables turn. Very bad QC and a bad lens sample? Or maybe the P20P is a surprisingly good copy, from impression it usually smears more than this.
  • Don Hrle - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Is performance mode capable of sustained system and gaming performance? I've seen in other review saying phone is prone to significant heating and throttling then.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    All the results here are in performance mode.
  • iwod - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I like it where we finally come to the conclusion, OLED isn't power efficient. I just wish we have better LCD tech so we don't have to live with PWM Display.

    How much does actual Mate 20 / Pro cost in retail? Surely those are listed prices and they are not going to really sell it at those price right? Those are crazy Apple price range.
  • iwod - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    And I hate to say this.... I like the Mate 20 Camera quality photos then the iPhone XS. I really really dislike some of the tone and colouring Apple decided to use with its Camera.
  • Chitti - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Mate 20 Pro on Smart or 1080p or 1440p ?
  • Chitti - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    And what about the In display FPS, even it consumes battery.
    1hr more battery life if it's disabled.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    It wasn't active at the time of the battery tests.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    1440p.
  • Javert89 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Perhaps the most interesting part is missing :( how is working (performance and power) the middle cluster at 1.92 ghz? Same performance of 2.8ghz A75 at half power usage?
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I couldn't test it without root.
  • ternnence - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    try syscall(__NR_sched_setaffinity, pid, sizeof(mask), &mask)
  • ternnence - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    FYI,https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7467848/is-it-...
  • pjcamp - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    If it weren't for Huawei's aggressively belligerent stance against unlocked bootloaders . . . .
  • name99 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Andrei, can you please explain something that I just do not understand in any of these phone reviews (Apple or Android).
    The die shots always show 4x 16-wide LPDDR4 PHYs. OK, so 64-bit wide channel to DRAM, seems reasonable.

    Now the fastest normal LPDDR4 is LPDDr4-2133, which in any normal naming scheme would imply 2,133MT/s. So one transaction, 8 bytes wide, gives us guaranteed-not-to-exceed of 17GB/s.
    But of course Huawei's Geekbench4 memory bandwidth is ~22GB/s. Maybe Huawei are using slightly faster LPDDr4-2166 or whatever, but the details don't change --- the only way the numbers work out is if the "maximum bandwidth" of the DRAM is actually around 34 GB/s.

    Which implies that EITHER
    - LPDDR4-2133 does NOT mean 2133MT/sec. (But that's what common sense would suggest, and this recent AnandTech article on DDR5
    https://www.anandtech.com/show/13605/sk-hynix-deve... )

    OR

    - somehow there is 128-bits of width between all the high-end phone SoCs (either 2 independent 64-bit channels [more likely IMHO] or a single 128-bit wide channel).

    Can you clarify?
  • anonomouse - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    It’s 2133MHz IO and it’s DDR, so 4266MT/s. Each LPDDR4 channel is 16 bits. Hence the common listing of LPDDR4X-4266.

    Usually these are advertised/listed at the MT/s rate so DDR4-2666 has an IO clock of 1333MHz. Main difference being that DDR4 has a 64 bit channel width.
  • name99 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    But then look at the article I gave, for DDR5
    https://www.anandtech.com/show/13605/sk-hynix-deve...

    This includes sentences like "The new DDR5 chip from SK Hynix supports a 5200 MT/sec/pin data transfer rate, which is 60% faster than the 3200 MT/s rate officially supported by DDR4."
    which strongly implies that a DDR4-3200 is NOT running at 6400 MT/s.

    WTF is going on here? Micron lists their LPDDR4, for example, as LPDDR4-2133, NOT as LPDDR4-4266?
  • N Zaljov - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link

    I fail to see any issues with the current naming convention, apart from being confusing asf.

    "Micron lists their LPDDR4, for example, as LPDDR4-2133, NOT as LPDDR4-4266" - of course they are: https://www.micron.com/parts/dram/mobile-ddr4-sdra...

    Although there seems to be a typo in the specs of their partlists, which can be confusing, but they are clearly listing their LPDDR4(x) as LPDDR4-4266 (or, typoed, LPDDR4-4166), with an I/O clk of 2133 MHz and an actual memory clockspeed of around 533,3 MHz (on-demand modulation will keep the clock of the memory arrays somewhere between 533,25 and 533,35, depending on the load).
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    The DSU's interface is limited at 2x 128bit per ACE interface to the memory subsystem/interconnect (32B/cycle in each direction) times the frequency of the DSU/L3 of which we aren't certain in the Kirin 980, but let's take the S845 which runs at 1478MHz IIRC: ~47GB/s. Plenty enough. We don't know the interconnect bandwidth from the DSU to the memory controller. The memory controllers themselves internally run at a different frequency (usually half) but what matters is talking about the DRAM speed. The Kirin 980/Mate 20's run on LPDDR4X at 2133MHz, or actually 4266MT/s because it's DDR. That's a peak of 4*16*4266/8=34.12GB/s.

    The actual answer is a lot simpler and more stupid. Geekbench 4's multi-threaded memory test just caps out at 2 threads, so in reality there's only ever two CPUs stressing the memory controller. Beyond this I've been told by some vendors that it doesn't scale in the test itself.

    My conclusion: Ignore all the GB4 memory tests.
  • name99 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Andrei you are concentrating on the wrong thing. I don't care about the inadequacies of GB4's memory bandwidth test, or the device uncore, I care about the DRAM part of this.

    I understand you and anomouse are both claiming that LPDDR4-2133 means 4266 MT/s.
    OK, if that's true it's a dumb naming convention, but whatever. The point is, this claim goes directly against the entire thrust of the anandtech DDR5 article from a few days ago that I keep referring to, which states very clearly that something like DDR4-3200 means 3200MT/s

    THAT is the discrepancy I am trying to resolve.
  • ternnence - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    name99 , for mobile,LPDDR4x has 4266 spec , however desktop DDR4 rarely could get such frequency. So it is not LPDDR4-2133 has 4266MT/s, it is LPDDR4-4266 has 4266MT/s
  • ternnence - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    FYI,https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/dram/lpddr4x... you could check this site.
  • name99 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    FWIW wikipedia sees things the same way saying that
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR4_SDRAM
    eg DDR4-2133 means 2133MT/s

    This follows the exact same pattern as all previous SDRAM numbering. Up to DDR3 the multiplier was 2 (DDR), 4(DDR2) or 8(DDR3); with DDR4 the multiplier stays at 8 but the base clock doubles so from min of 100MHz it's now min of 200MHz.

    But these are internal details; the part that matters is that most authorities seem to agree that DDR4-2133 means 2133MT/s, each transaction normally 64-bits wide.

    Now there are SOME people claiming no, DDR4-2133 means 4266 MT/s
    - https://www.androidauthority.com/lpddr4-everything...
    claims this (but couches the claim is so much nonsensical techno-double-speak that I don't especially trust them)
    - so do you and anonomouse.

    So, like I said, WTF is going on here? We have a large pool of sources saying the sky is blue, and a different pool insisting that, no, the sky is green.
  • anonomouse - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I never claimed that DDR4-2133 means 4266MT/s. I am instead claiming that there is no LPDDR4-2133.
  • anonomouse - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I think the discrepancy here is just that you/they are mixing the naming conventions. DDR4-3200 means 3200MT/s. After an admittedly brief and cursory search, I don't see any references to Micron using the term LPDDR4-2133. I instead see every indication that they have LPDDR4 running at 2133MHz. Perhaps people here and there are mixing up the terminology, but when in doubt may as well just look at the actual memory clock or bandwidth being listed as that's ultimately what's importantly.
  • name99 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Yeah, I think you are correct. After looking in a few different places I think the following are all true:
    - The DDR4 guys tend to talk about MT/s and give the sorts of numbers I gave
    - The LPDDR4 guys tend to talk about Mb/s per pin (same as MT/s, but just shows a different culture) and tend to be working with substantially higher numbers.

    I *THINK* (corrections welcome) that
    (a) the way LPDDR4 is mounted (no DIMMs and sockets, rather it's direct mounting, either on the SoC as PoP, or extremely close to it on a dedicated substrate), allows for substantially higher frequencies than DDR4.
    (b) one's natural instinct (mine, and likely other people's) is that "of course DDR4 runs faster [fewer power concerns, etc]" so when you see LPDDR4 running faster (at say "4266") you assume this has to mean some sort of "silent" multiplication by 2, and what's actually meant is the equivalent of DDR4-2133 at 2133MT/s.
    (c) It certainly doesn't help that Micron at least is calling the 4266MT/s LPDDR4 as having a "2133MHz clock". I have no idea what that is supposed to mean given that the DDR4 "clock" runs at 1/8th transaction speed, so for DDR4 the clock of a 4266MT/s device would be 533MHz.

    So I think we have established that the actual speeds ARE 4266MT/s (or so) for LPDDR4.
    Left unresolved
    - these are generally higher than DDR4? Meaning that, sooner or later, PC users are going to have to choose between flexible RAM (DIMMs and sockets) or high speed RAM (PoP mounting, or superclose to the SoC on a substrate --- look at the A12X)?

    - Why is Micron calling something like LPDDR4-4266 as having a 2133MH clock? What does that refer to? I would assume that, like normal DDRx, the "low frequency clock" (what I've said would be 533MHz) is the speed for control transactions, and the 8x speed (4266Mb/s per pin) is the speed for bulk data flow?
  • ternnence - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    where do you get this "Micron lists their LPDDR4, for example, as LPDDR4-2133, NOT as LPDDR4-4266?"? just check Micron official site, they mark LPDDR4-4266, not LPDDR4-2133, to their 2133MHz ram.
  • ternnence - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    ddr means double data rate. 2133MH equals ram operates 2133 per second. but one operate produce two data output. MT/s equals million transfer per second. so LPDDR4-4266= 4266 million transfer per second = 2133 million Hz
  • name99 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    The Micron datasheets, for example, numdram.pdf,
    https://www.micron.com/~/media/documents/products/...
    do exactly this.
  • name99 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Please don't treat me like a child; read my comments and treat me accordingly.
    DDR as a rate (transactions) DOUBLE the clock was only relevant to the transition from SDR to DDR.
    What do you think is the difference between DDR and DDR2, or DDDR2 and DDR3, or DDR3 and DDR4?

    Part of the problem seems to be that no-one can agree on what "clock" actually refers to.
    There are at least two clocks of interest - the internal DRM clock, and the external bus clock.

    As far as I can tell:
    - DDR doubled the transfer rate over the external bus. (External bus, internal clock the same, just like SDR). Internal clock is ~100..200MHz
    - DDR2 runs the external clock at twice the internal clock.
    - DDR3 runs the external clock at 4x the internal clock. (still running from ~100 to 266MHz)

    - At DDR4 I'm no longer sure (which is part of the whole reason for this confusion).
    The obvious assumption is that the external clock is now run at 8x the internal clock; but that does NOT seem to be the case. Rather what's defined as the internal clock is now run twice as fast, so that the internal:external multiplier is still 8x, but the internal clock speeds now range from ~200 to ~400MHz.

    Meanwhile, is LPDDR following the same pattern at each generation? I haven't a clue, and can find no useful answer on the internet.
  • anonomouse - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I think the discussion of internal/external clock ratios is somewhat orthogonal to your originally posed question: the clock that is being advertised is the IO clock for the LPDDR4 modules, since they're telling you what the peak bandwidth of the module is. Commands are on the same clock but SDR instead of DDR and each command takes multiple cycles. Don't quite see what is so confusing about the 2133MHz clock though, since the way they are describing it is entirely accurate and is no different from previous practices. DDR4-3200 has a 1600MHz IO clock too.

    Also worth remembering that while pin speed is higher, individual LPDDR4 channels are 16bits vs 64bits, so it's not like the actual bandwidth is necessarily higher. This phone has 4-channels to get 34.1GB/s, which is the same bandwidth you'd get from a 2-channel DDR4-2133 system, but much more feasible to scale up capacity/channels/clocks on DDR4.
  • frostyfiredude - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    Look, I have no idea where you're going with all the internal clocks and DDR4, DDR3, etc differences so I'm not commenting. But, here are the facts on the Mate 20 Pro:

    The DRAM - Memory controller interface is clocked at 2133Mhz.
    Due to being of the DDR family, 2 bits are transferred per clock.
    Together, this mean 4266Mbits/s transfer rate per pin.
    Finally its a 64-bit bus, meaning 64 data pins. 273024Mbits/s aggregate bandwidth.
    That breaks down to 34.1GB/s.
    In standard DIMM form on your favourite PC parts store, this is advertised as DDR4-4266 or PC4-34100.
  • ternnence - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    closer from ram to cpu core, higher frequency ram could get. HBM is another example.
  • eastcoast_pete - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    @Andrei: thanks for this in-depth review! I wonder how S.LSI takes your pessimistic take on their M4; it seems they have a hard time backing away from their in-house design that doesn't seem to cut it. Also, I appreciate that you're live-updating the review with additional information; I trust reviews that add and update their findings as new data become available much more than the one-and-done style.
    Question: Did you have a chance to ask Huawei along those lines: "What is your commitment to OS updates, how quickly will you make them available, and for how many years?". Having been burned by Huawei a few years ago (promised OS update never arrived), I am still a bit once burned, twice shy. These devices are pricey, and if Huawei wants to take on Apple at Apple prices, they should mirror Apple's commitment to provide OS updates for several years.
  • rayhydro - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I'm using the mate 20 now, and I can confirm it has the same stereo setup as the mate20pro. maybe your unit's top tweeter is faulty ?
  • rayhydro - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I tested both side by side in the stores, both model's stereo speakers sound pretty much the same or extremely similar to my ears. I opted for mate 20 due to it's smaller notch and headphone jack :D
  • lucam - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I still think Mali GPU is a garbage GPU
  • Lolimaster - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    To put it simply, at the same year, they're 1 year behind.

    Mali G76 MP10 ~ Adreno 540 (a bit faster on the mali side, maybe)
  • lucam - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    Adreno is always been better. Still think Imagination has the best solution tho
  • Sam31840 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I m confused ! Most websites consider that the mate 20 is excellent for photography, but according to anandtech review the results are not that good and below Pixel 3, iPhone X, etc. Who is right !
  • s.yu - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    There are too many amateurs posting BS out on the web, Andrei examines samples very carefully and writes responsibly, a very rare feat in this day.

    In fact for almost all the reviews out there who provide full samples, either they cannot completely endorse the Huawei flagships(caveats are always ugly sharpening and extremely excessive NR, sometimes other instabilities and artifacts), or if they can, their conclusions can be disputed by closer scrutiny of their own samples provided. In which case they're either paid ads(which Huawei does both openly and secretly, a lot) or they don't actually have the necessary experience and/or training to be evaluating image quality.

    Not to mention the sea of digital crap on youtube which have no merit whatsoever and only serve to mislead people more ignorant than the uploaders are.
  • shompa - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link

    most reviewers dont even have screens with 10bit uncompresses P3 wide color gamut. I never understood how all these reviewers with wrong color screens can do any real test of digital photography. There is a huge difference between what "looks good" and what have correct colors. Heck; 99%+ of Win PCs have screens with compressed/wrong colors. 2017 I could not find a single PC laptop with a color correct screen, something Apple had since 2015.
  • s.yu - Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - link

    In terms of assessing color, that is. Many already make enough mistakes regarding detail retention/noise reduction, DR, that's hardly anything to do with the screen.
  • Sam31840 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    " The regular Mate 20’s camera is largely unimpressive and struggles to differentiate itself much from the competition. "
  • melgross - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    I find that a lot of sites really understand so little about photography that their conclusions are useless. Anandtech is better than most. I prefer professional photo sites in this, but not all bother with smartphones, and if they do, it’s usually just the Apple, Google and Samsung models.
  • s.yu - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    I fully agree. DPR stayed out of the whole business by only uploading a few samples without a full review or comparison, most other sites are only good for their full size samples for personal comparison. Those without full size sample are almost totally useless.
  • Lolimaster - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    When the mate20X?

    Even the 5.8" screen of my S9 (actually 5.25"~ for 16:9, new wide phones only grew in vertical area) seems a bit on the small side.
  • Lolimaster - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    Those screens of the Mate 20 should never leaved the factory and marked as defective.

    It's sad how people pay over $700 for a phone just to get a shitty screen. Companies are happy, people don't complain in mass from the main thing they will see everyday on their device.
  • mayankleoboy1 - Friday, November 16, 2018 - link

    OT
    linux kernel 4.20 has a 30% hit on Intel CPU's due to the STIBP mitigation
    https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&...
  • tuxRoller - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    First, these phones are, at best, based on 4.14.
    Second, 4.20 is at least a month from release.
    Third, what's Intel got to do with an article about a Huawei phone?
  • GreenReaper - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link

    They backported it to stable, too; but I agree, it's a little off-topic.
  • tuxRoller - Monday, November 19, 2018 - link

    OK. Not sure what happened to my comment...
    4.19 will, (very) likely, be the next base for aosp. So yes, currently that's stable. Of greater issue is that I see this patch being reverted (though something is going to get pulled). That was why I mentioned that 4.20 still has a month (or more) until it's released.
  • Beararam - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    https://threader(dot)app/thread/1051204370543648770

    ?
  • Sanyogita - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    I know NOMU has been working on rugged phones for a long time, and this time the new product looks great and has a high level of protection.
    https://nomu.hk/
  • stanere - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    >also finally Huawei’s first phone to push beyond 1080p

    honor 8 pro and mate 9 pro had 2560x1440 screen
  • asfletch - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link

    Yep - and the Mate 10, which Andrei clearly has access to (official specs: https://consumer.huawei.com/au/phones/mate10/specs... Rest of the review was great, but odd oversight there.

    Incidentally, does Mate 20 not have the CABC issue? I remember the Mate 10 (LCD) suffering from it.... It's unfortunate about Huawei's CABC/calibration issues, because when I actually look at the Mate 20 in stores here, the screen is superficially very impressive. I don't know whether it's the lamination process or glass treatment or something, but IMHO icons/text really look 'printed on' in a way which eludes most other phone screens. M20 Pro has similar quality in this regard to my eyes, but I can't deal with curved screen edges.

    (As an aside, a flat Galaxy S9 would have been my ideal phone and I was disappointed when the S9 Active was cancelled. These Mates and other top contenders are just huge).
  • Dan86 - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    Looks impressive, but, we shouldn't be buying Chinese crap, made by stealing intelectual property, cloning the note 9, and to make everything worst they will spy on you and store your data in a country were privacy doesnt exist due to the government power over companies, do you really want to buy this phone ???
  • halcyon - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    Why shouldn't we? All companies steal IP (read Snowden's revelations, how NSA backdoors are used for industrial espionage). Chinese are not different. And USA/NSA read all your emails, SMS, listen on your phone doors and backdoor your Android phones.

    Just buy a phone that you are happy with. Leave the nationalistic politics for everybody else to decide (many nationalities, many points-of-view).

    I'd buy Huawei Mate 20X, IF they allowed bootloader unlocking AND IF it was availabe in the 8GB/256GB model outside China (it is not).

    The nano memory card is a proprietary joke at 128GB (current) max size, imho.

    And lack of 3.5mm headphone on the Mate20Pro totally kills it for me.

    Spying I couldn't care less about - there's nothing I can do abou it, whether on Samsung, Pixel, LG, Xiaomi or other device. Only if I buy a fully unlocked, rootable phone where I install LineageOS custom ROM (with crap camera drivers) can I *maybe* avoid some snooping. Even then, all the Google apps spy on me.

    So, choose your poison, but don't expect that others are not poison too.
  • shompa - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link

    Dear Dan86. You are what's called a real racist. BTW: you know that every single phone is MADE in China? There are no fabs in US/EU. Intellectual property is a construct. You should ask why all this stuff is not made in your country (and I can give you a hint: it have nothing to do with the workforce like the politicians/companies says)
  • AkiraAkimoto - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    Andrei will it be ok for me to translate this article into Chinese and post it on some of the Chinese forums with your name and original web link (this page) on it?
  • s.yu - Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - link

    lol, many media outlets in China already use Anandtech's content, those who mention the source are already the decent ones.
  • AkiraAkimoto - Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - link

    shameless and use partial of the content to support their "paid of view"
    thats how most chinese media work lol
  • Lukas Dvorok - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    Excellent and really retailed review. Thank you. Pitty that you haven't been able to test also unit with BOE display and Mate 20X.
  • dudedud - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    So right now there's no reliable way to compare this kirin NPU against Apple's?

    And i hope that you could add the A55' SPEC scores too in the near future
  • ianbergman - Saturday, November 17, 2018 - link

    I've only had my Mate 20 Pro for a couple of days, but interestingly, I don't see any of the display issues mentioned. And really crossing my fingers I don't! I still remember the horror of the Pixel 2 XL's hue shift. So far everything else is great - need to live with it a while to get a sense of battery in real world situations, speakers and voice quality, etc.
  • ianbergman - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link

    If anyone knows of a great well to tell if I have an LG panel or not - would appreciate it! CPU-Z and other similar hardware info tools can't seem to tell
  • Lukas Dvorok - Monday, November 19, 2018 - link

    Device Info HW application. Right on first page when you open app. Something called like touch device or so. I got LG, now I got replacement with BOE.
  • zeeBomb - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link

    Andrei dropping us with that GREAT REVIEWS!!!
  • Lukas Dvorok - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link

    Hello, will reducing resolution on Mate 20 PRO to FHD+ mitigate higher power drain caused by dual MIPI lane? Thank you
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link

    No, at least I don't think it actually would turn off the second MIPI interface.
  • Javert89 - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link

    I wonder how much Apple advantage in memory bound tests is due to bigger caches. Will be interesting to see the single 2.84 ghz A76 in SD8150, maybe equipped with 1024/2048kb L2
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link

    Bigger caches and better memory subsystem.

    512KB is the maximum L2 size on these cores.
  • Javert89 - Monday, November 19, 2018 - link

    Did not believe they were such constrained. Wonder why ARM chosen to limit A76 cache to 512KB if they wanted to target notebooks
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, November 19, 2018 - link

    Well Skylake also has a 256KB L2 and Zen is also comparable at 512KB L2's.
  • vbigdeli - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link

    Please publish best mobile phones for holiday..just like an article for gaming laptops.
  • WPX00 - Sunday, November 18, 2018 - link

    I think this is the first time we're seeing the Note 9's 9810 results here on AT, and they seem to be a major improvement over the S9?
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, November 19, 2018 - link

    I'll be publishing a Snapdragon vs Exynos Note9 article soon.
  • salbashi - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link

    Did Anandtech notice any benchmark mode on Mate 20 or Mate 20 Pro this time around?
    Cause that would be Huawei caught cheating again right after P20 and P20 Pro
  • cha0z_ - Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - link

    There are indeed major improvements (tested by me) and the note 9 should be the phone representing the exynos 9810 as it performs vastly better. Especially when we talk about phones like iphone xs max (tho A12 makes fun of all the current SOCs, but that's beside the point) or mate 20 pro - they are note 9 size, not s9 size. Then the cooling comes, the tweaked software for sustain not peak performance (fun fact, note 9 is SLOWER in most tests vs s9+, but guess what - it sustains) and kernel improvements about the SOC control. Note 9 currently is a lot better, still weak SOC compared to sd845/A12 tho. :)
  • cha0z_ - Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - link

    I don't like how the best phone samsung made this year is not here (the note 9). That phone has a lot bigger body vs s9 and 3 times bigger heatpipe that is also better (the body of the phone heats, but the SOC is not throttled. Actually note 9 in heavy use is hotter than the s9+ but sustains better ;) ) + it's tweaked not for peak performance, but sustained performance + samsung DID improve the kernel and the control of the exynos 9810. I am sure all the factors will lead to noticeable difference compared to the s9 exynos tests from the start of the year.

    I know that you are tired of the exynos 9810, we all know that chip is far worse than the rivals, but still it would be better to show it in it's best light instead of the all negativity. Comparing in a single table a phone twitce smaller than the other and drawing conclusions about the SOCs inside is plain wrong.
  • eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - link

    @Andrei:Any statement from Huawei on how long they will continue to provide OS updates for, and how quickly after Google releases them? With prices approaching 1000 dollars/euros/pounds, the old "release and abandon" would be a bit too much. Thanks!
  • abufrejoval - Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - link

    It doesn't get any better: Here you have all the hardware to turn into a credible workstation with sufficient compute, gaming and even inference power to do 90% of what normal PC users would need with UPS, storage and a high resolution touch screen included at pocket size and laptop budgets....

    But you simply cannot get the power onto a screen large enough to work with all day (Miracast is really doesn't have acceptable fidelity)

    And they simply won't let you take control over what could be a very personal and very portable workstation, because they deny you control over the computer you purchased (no rooting).

    All that power in a form factor that precludes putting it to work just drives me knocking my head into the wall!
  • whyamihere - Thursday, November 22, 2018 - link

    If possible do you think you could look at the power consumption of a BOE screen on the Mate 20 pro. I'm wondering if the battery issues you saw on the pro model had to do with the LG screen, as LG screens on the pro model seem to have issues such as really bad green tint that gets worse over time.
  • Jalk44 - Thursday, November 22, 2018 - link

    A: it's not the first QHD phone by Huawei,that's was the mate 9 pro

    B: it's also not the first phone with both front and back full curved glass, that would be the mate rs
  • MyFluxi - Thursday, November 22, 2018 - link

    hey, can you do a screen battery test with the BOE screen and also a general review on the boe screen. some saying that the vibrancy is less on the BOE but the uniformity is better
  • ballsystemlord - Friday, November 23, 2018 - link

    Hi. Your local S+G corrector here. Todays mistake is an obvious one, the word "if" should be substituted by the word "is".
    "Here acceleration if facilitated through the HVX DSPs."
    --
    "Here acceleration is facilitated through the HVX DSPs."
    I lightly read the last 3 pages. I got tired of reading everything.
  • salbashi - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link

    Did Anandtech notice any benchmark mode on Mate 20 or Mate 20 Pro this time around?
    Cause that would be Huawei caught cheating again right after P20 and P20 Pro.
  • Davidsic - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link

    Hello, my first Mate 20 Pro had the same brightness anomaly you are talking about (LG screen) and my second one that i recieved yesterday have the same issue and it's a BOE screen !
  • AlexTi - Sunday, March 17, 2019 - link

    Mate 20 having Qi wireless charging possibility seems to be a mistake in specifications. The one I've just bought definitely lacks it (model number HMA-L29), and specs on Huawei website do not include this feature for non-Pro Mate 20.
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    You may want to download the <a href="https://mxplayerdownload.co/mx-player-pro-apk-free... Player Pro</a>, I highly suggest it since It perfectly works for me. I loved watching movies and me getting the ability to download it free and can be viewed offline in my spare time is easy. All you need to do is have the app on your device and its guaranteed that you'll get to enjoy movies anytime.

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