All some of you guys do is complain. What is it about HTC 10 that you don't know yet? This to me is a much more interesting review, a different product.
Besides, why don't you use Joshua's Twitter account to ask for an update instead of hijacking a different product's review section?
I think it's fair to question a former great review site's inability to produce reviews lately. They do after all have comment sections to hear from the few readers they have left.
The phone has been out for several months and still no review. Other newer phones have been released and reviewed and yet the HTC 10 review is still pending.
How are people supposed to make in informed choice on which phone to get when Anandtech doesn't release one of the better phones of 2016.
You've got all the benchmarks and photo/video comparisons and yet you still withhold releasing the review. Some people might start to think that you are paid to deliberately delay the review so that people will buy other phones instead of the HTC 10.
So. it is perfectly reasonable to ask about the HTC 10 review each time a newer phone is reviewed. There should be no reason the HTC 10 review is delayed by 3 months and counting.
I agree completely, I seriously feel they got paid off, the 10 is quite honestly a far more important and relevant product than say, this(no offense to Meizu). And quite possibly one of very best phones released this year and here we are waiting for their review.
Now just wait for the review talking about how great was Apple's choice on killing the 3.5mm jack
The system perf results depend more on Meizu's ROM and config not on the SoC itself,you are blaming the SoC because you haven't seen it in other devices. This device is often slower than devices with the A72s at 2.1GHz and that's entirely on Meizu.
Not and ideal test but look at 360 N4 (2.1GHz) vs LeEco (2.3Ghz) vs Meizu Pro 6 vs MI 5 with SD820 https://youtu.be/oDkfpnxzOMA?t=385 Not only Meizu is slow but they are far more aggressive in keeping the A72s offline. Even so your benchmarks are off.
This is a product review and only shows how well Meizu implemented the SoC in this particular phone. As you said, the PRO 6’s performance depends heavily on its software configuration. I consistently (I think) said PRO 6 instead of referring to the SoC when discussing performance, and I did specifically mention the role software plays on the first page: "but this depends on how Meizu prioritizes the A72 cores. If the PRO 6 places more emphasis on reducing power consumption by placing more threads on the middle-tier A53 cluster instead of migrating them to the higher performance A72 cluster."
We would need to do further testing, and see how the X20/X25 performs in more than one phone, before we could pinpoint its true performance potential in a proper SoC deep-dive article.
Later in the review to some extent but when i made the first comment (sorry for the spam,no edit) i was at "Unfortunately, Meizu’s use of the Helio X25 and its deca-core CPU does not translate into a better user experience."
The device itself is about looks and pressure touch for a certain type of buyers. The SoC is interesting as 2.1-2.3GHz versions are half the price of a SD820 and that's why we see it in 135$ and up phones.
The exact line you quoted mentions Meizu's use of the X25, strongly hinting that Meizu is to blame for the poor SOC performance. The preceding paragraphs almost go out of their way to not mention the X25 by name. It's pretty clear from that alone that the author believes Meizu may be hampering the SOC's performance with their own poor software configuration.
The line i quoted blames Meizu for the SoC choice., thus the SoC. Unless you interpret the term"use " in a way you can only do after seeing this conversation. The author himself doesn't know how specific this is to Meizu. Anyway Meizu didn't had a choice. They are in conflict with Qiualcomm over how they charge for patents and never liked them much anyway while the Exynos doesn't support CDMA2000.
The Helio X20/X25 does not compete with SD 820, neither with price nor performance. Nor efficiency (I'd argue that's impossible with planar 20nm). And I don't think it was meant to compete (it also for instance only has lte cat 6 vs cat 12 for the SD 820, not that I think this really makes much of a difference). The SD 650/652 though should be way closer in all relevant categories - price, performance, efficiency, features. (Personally I'd take a SD 650 over a X25 any day, because it appears to be a bit more efficient - I have no idea which one is cheaper though.)
The X20/X25 is supposed to be Mediatek's flagship SoC but it can barely compete against a cheap low-end chip like the SD650 in the Redmi Note 3. I don't know if it's Meizu's poor kernel tuning configs or if the X20 has a suboptimal 3-cluster setup. To me, that mid range cluster seems redundant when an efficient A53 cluster should be the main processing cluster with fast A72 cores being used for bursty tasks, for a fast race-to-idle.
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 with the X20 was just launched in China. I'd like to see a comparo between an X10 Note 3, SD650 Note 3 and X20 Note 4 - as they're all from the same manufacturer, software and tuning should be similar so any differences would be down to the SoC.
LOL. This cracked me up. I don't know why. Maybe there's too many devices coming out there, and we have little time to spend on each mediocre device. Personally, when it comes to actually buying an Android, it should be a Nexus or nothing at all. I can't even accept that Android 7.0 is not coming to Nexus 5 which is still flagship performance to me (I just don't like its battery life though).
See, thats the thing. Nexus phones have poor battery life. Google needs to enforce something closer to 6-7 hours of SoT, not this 3.5 hour BS theyve been doing.
Also, blame qualcomm for the lack of 7.0. They refuse to make GPU drivers for the SD80x line for 7.0.
Funny, there're now so many keywords which make me stop reading phone reviews: Usually I manage to get all the way to the ridiculous display size but in this case the CPU is the clear no-go.
Because they're cheap and are good value, if you don't mind doing some tinkering to get Google Play onboard and aren't worried about the lack of warranty coverage. Some people don't want to spend $700 outright on the latest Samsung flagship when a $150 Xiaomi would do.
The price of flagship phones is now beyond what I consider reasonable, or necessary. It feel like a Conroe moment in smartphone tech, all the cpus are fast enough for what most people do.
AND - we want dual sim phones too.
I've done six countries this year, and I'm tired to having to keep / charge / carry two dam phones.
My Samsung A9 Pro has a Snapdragon 652, 6" screen, dual sim, seperate miroSD slot, and cost half the S7 Edge. Oh, and it has a 5000mAH battery too.
Thanks, It's interesting to have a first-rate review of a different phone, for once. More useful than an umprteenth review of some flagship: those are already reviewed a lot, and of interest to a lot fewer people. It'd be great to see more such reviews. I'm moving steadily downmarket (used to buy at 500€, then 400€, now 300€) and with the devices' rapid progress, I have never been happier. It's hard to find trustworthy reviews of Chinese midrangers though. I'd like to experiment outside of Honor and Xiaomi; or confirmation than Xiaomi is a Wise CHoice, especially now that htey're releasing "World" version f theire devices with moar bands supported.
can I make that power A72 cluster work? for example activate those cores during gaming with....QMC+ or something like that. and second question is.....is this problem can cure with an update?
I've been wondering, how do phones keep vsync on at odd frame rates like say 40fps, I believe on PCs you run at either 60 or 30 fps or less when using vsync, you turn it off and all of the frames in between and above are available but you'll experience tearing.
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48 Comments
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osxandwindows - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Where is the HTC10 review?arsjum - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
All some of you guys do is complain. What is it about HTC 10 that you don't know yet? This to me is a much more interesting review, a different product.Besides, why don't you use Joshua's Twitter account to ask for an update instead of hijacking a different product's review section?
MrSpadge - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
+1I'm really getting tired of all those guys asking (demanding?) a review of some other product. As if the current one was not worth talking about.
theduckofdeath - Monday, August 29, 2016 - link
I think it's fair to question a former great review site's inability to produce reviews lately. They do after all have comment sections to hear from the few readers they have left.Arnulf - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Hey, stop complaining!Notmyusualid - Saturday, August 27, 2016 - link
Hold on to your internet ladies!The guy is likely asking for the review, as Anandtech is THE place for smartphone reviews, and he is obviously interested in making said purchase.
Not too difficult to understand, no?
jtang97 - Sunday, August 28, 2016 - link
It's a valid question.The phone has been out for several months and still no review. Other newer phones have been released and reviewed and yet the HTC 10 review is still pending.
How are people supposed to make in informed choice on which phone to get when Anandtech doesn't release one of the better phones of 2016.
You've got all the benchmarks and photo/video comparisons and yet you still withhold releasing the review. Some people might start to think that you are paid to deliberately delay the review so that people will buy other phones instead of the HTC 10.
So. it is perfectly reasonable to ask about the HTC 10 review each time a newer phone is reviewed. There should be no reason the HTC 10 review is delayed by 3 months and counting.
Dennis Travis - Tuesday, August 30, 2016 - link
Where is the iPhone 3GS review? :D Grin I have been waiting for years for it! hahahahhahafanofanand - Wednesday, August 31, 2016 - link
Don't be silly, all Apple product reviews are copy and paste jobs from the last review. "Best ever, no reason to buy anything else" etc. ad nauseam.Fidelator - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
I agree completely, I seriously feel they got paid off, the 10 is quite honestly a far more important and relevant product than say, this(no offense to Meizu). And quite possibly one of very best phones released this year and here we are waiting for their review.Now just wait for the review talking about how great was Apple's choice on killing the 3.5mm jack
Shadow7037932 - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Never coming lol.jjj - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
The system perf results depend more on Meizu's ROM and config not on the SoC itself,you are blaming the SoC because you haven't seen it in other devices.This device is often slower than devices with the A72s at 2.1GHz and that's entirely on Meizu.
jjj - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
The GPU perf is off too, this device should be hitting 40FPS in T-Rex not 30.jjj - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Not and ideal test but look at 360 N4 (2.1GHz) vs LeEco (2.3Ghz) vs Meizu Pro 6 vs MI 5 with SD820 https://youtu.be/oDkfpnxzOMA?t=385Not only Meizu is slow but they are far more aggressive in keeping the A72s offline.
Even so your benchmarks are off.
Lodix - Sunday, August 28, 2016 - link
Which is the floating app that the guy uses to monitor se CPU ?Matt Humrick - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
This is a product review and only shows how well Meizu implemented the SoC in this particular phone. As you said, the PRO 6’s performance depends heavily on its software configuration. I consistently (I think) said PRO 6 instead of referring to the SoC when discussing performance, and I did specifically mention the role software plays on the first page:"but this depends on how Meizu prioritizes the A72 cores. If the PRO 6 places more emphasis on reducing power consumption by placing more threads on the middle-tier A53 cluster instead of migrating them to the higher performance A72 cluster."
We would need to do further testing, and see how the X20/X25 performs in more than one phone, before we could pinpoint its true performance potential in a proper SoC deep-dive article.
jjj - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Later in the review to some extent but when i made the first comment (sorry for the spam,no edit) i was at "Unfortunately, Meizu’s use of the Helio X25 and its deca-core CPU does not translate into a better user experience."I do consider PCMark as very software dependent too. Check out this Meizu with just A53s http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/mobile/Meizu+m1...
And In GFXBench i think they list some kind of average https://gfxbench.com/device.jsp?benchmark=gfx40&am...
The device itself is about looks and pressure touch for a certain type of buyers.
The SoC is interesting as 2.1-2.3GHz versions are half the price of a SD820 and that's why we see it in 135$ and up phones.
Cinnabuns - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
The exact line you quoted mentions Meizu's use of the X25, strongly hinting that Meizu is to blame for the poor SOC performance. The preceding paragraphs almost go out of their way to not mention the X25 by name. It's pretty clear from that alone that the author believes Meizu may be hampering the SOC's performance with their own poor software configuration.jjj - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
The line i quoted blames Meizu for the SoC choice., thus the SoC. Unless you interpret the term"use " in a way you can only do after seeing this conversation. The author himself doesn't know how specific this is to Meizu.Anyway Meizu didn't had a choice. They are in conflict with Qiualcomm over how they charge for patents and never liked them much anyway while the Exynos doesn't support CDMA2000.
JoeMonco - Saturday, August 27, 2016 - link
No, you're simply going out of your way to be offended.mczak - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
The Helio X20/X25 does not compete with SD 820, neither with price nor performance. Nor efficiency (I'd argue that's impossible with planar 20nm). And I don't think it was meant to compete (it also for instance only has lte cat 6 vs cat 12 for the SD 820, not that I think this really makes much of a difference). The SD 650/652 though should be way closer in all relevant categories - price, performance, efficiency, features. (Personally I'd take a SD 650 over a X25 any day, because it appears to be a bit more efficient - I have no idea which one is cheaper though.)serendip - Saturday, August 27, 2016 - link
The X20/X25 is supposed to be Mediatek's flagship SoC but it can barely compete against a cheap low-end chip like the SD650 in the Redmi Note 3. I don't know if it's Meizu's poor kernel tuning configs or if the X20 has a suboptimal 3-cluster setup. To me, that mid range cluster seems redundant when an efficient A53 cluster should be the main processing cluster with fast A72 cores being used for bursty tasks, for a fast race-to-idle.serendip - Saturday, August 27, 2016 - link
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 with the X20 was just launched in China. I'd like to see a comparo between an X10 Note 3, SD650 Note 3 and X20 Note 4 - as they're all from the same manufacturer, software and tuning should be similar so any differences would be down to the SoC.colinstu - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
So mediocre performance and basically the worst battery life. Got it.zodiacfml - Monday, August 29, 2016 - link
LOL. This cracked me up. I don't know why. Maybe there's too many devices coming out there, and we have little time to spend on each mediocre device.Personally, when it comes to actually buying an Android, it should be a Nexus or nothing at all. I can't even accept that Android 7.0 is not coming to Nexus 5 which is still flagship performance to me (I just don't like its battery life though).
TheinsanegamerN - Monday, August 29, 2016 - link
See, thats the thing. Nexus phones have poor battery life. Google needs to enforce something closer to 6-7 hours of SoT, not this 3.5 hour BS theyve been doing.Also, blame qualcomm for the lack of 7.0. They refuse to make GPU drivers for the SD80x line for 7.0.
Daniel Egger - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Funny, there're now so many keywords which make me stop reading phone reviews: Usually I manage to get all the way to the ridiculous display size but in this case the CPU is the clear no-go.tipoo - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
That's a pretty elegant way to do the antenna lines.Meteor2 - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
I'll be shot down... But I really like the Octane benchmark. Please include it in reviews!Eden-K121D - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Great review Matt.Basically yuck phonezeeBomb - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Meizu Pro 6...not marginally different from the 6, but the next two Meizu flagships are going to be killer (and very Sammy influenced)DParadoxx - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
I don't know of anyone with any interest in these Chinese phones. I'm not sure why AT keeps reviewing them.serendip - Saturday, August 27, 2016 - link
Because they're cheap and are good value, if you don't mind doing some tinkering to get Google Play onboard and aren't worried about the lack of warranty coverage. Some people don't want to spend $700 outright on the latest Samsung flagship when a $150 Xiaomi would do.Notmyusualid - Saturday, August 27, 2016 - link
^ This!The price of flagship phones is now beyond what I consider reasonable, or necessary. It feel like a Conroe moment in smartphone tech, all the cpus are fast enough for what most people do.
AND - we want dual sim phones too.
I've done six countries this year, and I'm tired to having to keep / charge / carry two dam phones.
My Samsung A9 Pro has a Snapdragon 652, 6" screen, dual sim, seperate miroSD slot, and cost half the S7 Edge. Oh, and it has a 5000mAH battery too.
Colour me impressed.
kmmatney - Sunday, August 28, 2016 - link
I'd rather buy a used Galaxy than one of these, but it's good to see these reviews so you know what your are getting.rms141 - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
So, the reviewer is going to totally ignore that this thing is a complete iPhone 6S ripoff?mdriftmeyer - Saturday, August 27, 2016 - link
And not at all compare performance because we already know the entire Android platform takes a bath next to iOS on tests.zeeBomb - Monday, August 29, 2016 - link
Still had the design before the iPhone 7...so Apple ripped off Meizu!StormyParis - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Thanks, It's interesting to have a first-rate review of a different phone, for once. More useful than an umprteenth review of some flagship: those are already reviewed a lot, and of interest to a lot fewer people.It'd be great to see more such reviews. I'm moving steadily downmarket (used to buy at 500€, then 400€, now 300€) and with the devices' rapid progress, I have never been happier. It's hard to find trustworthy reviews of Chinese midrangers though. I'd like to experiment outside of Honor and Xiaomi; or confirmation than Xiaomi is a Wise CHoice, especially now that htey're releasing "World" version f theire devices with moar bands supported.
StormyParis - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
It'd also be great to have a chance to correct typos ^^ Sorry.Lodix - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link
Very well done review Matt, very completed and deep :)ruthan - Saturday, August 27, 2016 - link
No proper GPU reviews, but more and more phone, im disgusted..fanofanand - Wednesday, August 31, 2016 - link
I would like to see additional in-depth reviews of the 460/470, 1060 etc. but disgusted?Duto - Saturday, August 27, 2016 - link
Another Chinese BOTPHONE, Meh...Duto - Saturday, August 27, 2016 - link
422$ with a Mediatek?, no way, 200$ the most for this botphone, actually, not even that, better to wait for a real phone.fanofanand - Wednesday, August 31, 2016 - link
Overpriced garbage in a shiny package.LanxyT - Tuesday, September 6, 2016 - link
can I make that power A72 cluster work? for example activate those cores during gaming with....QMC+ or something like that. and second question is.....is this problem can cure with an update?Fidelator - Wednesday, September 14, 2016 - link
I've been wondering, how do phones keep vsync on at odd frame rates like say 40fps, I believe on PCs you run at either 60 or 30 fps or less when using vsync, you turn it off and all of the frames in between and above are available but you'll experience tearing.How do phones avoid tearing at say, 40 fps?