OPPO's Reno3 5G vs Reno3 Pro vs Reno3 Pro 5G: Why Don't We See More MediaTek Dimensity 1000 Phones?
by Andrei Frumusanu on August 10, 2020 10:00 AM ESTSystem Performance
Whilst the controlled performance tests are heavily favouring the Dimensity 1000L powered Reno3 5G, what also matters in user experience in daily usage is the overall system performance, including the device’s software stack and the SoC’s scheduler settings. In that regard, we’ve haven’t really tested a MediaTek device in several years now.
In PCMark’s web browsing test, none of the Reno3 phones showcase very convincing results as we’re seeing scores well below the average flagship device today – but that’s to be expected given these phones are targeted at the mid-range.
The writing test is a more representative workload for daily user experiences. Here both the D1000L and S765 Reno3 phones performs in line with their mid-range nature and perform extremely close to each other. The Helio P90 based global Reno3 Pro doesn’t fare well at all here as it’s a clear tier below other phones.
In the photo editing test which makes use of Renderscript and loads the GPU, the MediaTek Reno3 5G is ahead of its P95 sibling as well as the Snapdragon 765 counterpart.
In the data-manipulation score, the Reno3 phones are all performing close to each other.
In the overall PCMark scores, we achieve the expected hierarchy between the devices, although the absolute score differences are quite smaller than we would have imagined.
In the web-browser based JavaScript benchmarks, we’re seeing the Snapdragon 765 notably outperform the Dimensity 1000L chipset which oddly enough falls behind by quite a bit. I’m not too sure of why this would be, but it’s possible that these heavier workloads are more memory-bound and thus Qualcomm’s superior memory latency performance is helping it pull ahead of the MediaTek chipsets.
As we hadn’t measured a MediaTek chipset in quite a few years, I was curious as to how their scheduler performs in relation to what we know of other SoCs such as from Qualcomm, HiSilicon, Samsung or even Apple. We’re using our internal workload performance ramp test for this task:
Surprisingly, MediaTek’s Dimensity 1000L performed massively better than any other SoC on the market, scaling up from idle to maximum frequency on the performance cores in just 4.2ms. The Snapdragon 765 Reno3 Pro 5G here took a more conventional stepped ramp-up approach, reaching the maximum performance state in 78ms.
I was quite astounded to see such an aggressive scheduler behaviour on the MediaTek chipset – it seems their scheduler will wake up tasks at maximum frequency very quickly and ramp down from there, instead of ramping up performance gradually. It’s a big difference, and it’s seemingly a lot more aggressive than any other SoC on the market.
I’m still not sure how this translates into more natural workloads with intermediate load behaviours – both the Reno3 5G and Reno3 Pro 5G both performed quite similarly in subjective device usages, with the MediaTek variant only pulling ahead under more notable workloads such as installing applications.
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s.yu - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link
Reno 3 ProSheep. Whoever buys that device for the Pro moniker thinking its gonna be better has got to be pro at being sheep.mfaisalkemal - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link
Hi Andrei,I think IMG A-Series 2.5x improvement claim still impressive because at 12nm(iso node process, area and power like Helio P90) compared to snapdragon 765g at 7nm.If I multiply 2.5 times to your all GPU benchmarks, IMG A-Series ahead all snapdragon 765g scores except Aztec ruin(I hope A-Series architecture have improvement on that benchmark compared to PowerVR GM9446).
Do you know how many peak system active power(minus screen power) of Reno 3 pro(Helio p95) Andrei?
Beaver M. - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
The hardware is often excellent on these Chinese phones. No matter if Oppo, Xiaomi, Huawei, etc.But the software and its support is horrible. The customization of Android is horribly buggy and overdone, especially the power saving "features". They often offer whitelists for apps, but they actually dont work. Not even Gmail is working in the background, not to mention apps from 3rd parties. They even end background apps automatically after a few hours or days without you realizing. Imagine someone for example with diabetes using and 3rd party app for alarms...
And then of course the support ends very quickly (around 2 years) and even simple security patches often break a lot.
Sad, really. A real waste.
I had high hopes in BQ, a Spanish producer, because their support and small customizations of Android were absolutely awesome, not to say perfect. But they got bought by a Vietnamese corporation and stopped producing phones after that.
Retycint - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
Do you actually have any sources for your claims? As far as I am aware, the software support for Xiaomi flagships, at least, are pretty good. The Android version may not be updated that much but the features trickle in via MIUI updates so it doesn't really matterRetycint - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
For instance, the Mi MIX 2 released in 2017 September is still slated to receive the latest MIUI. That's literally 3 years of software support, which is something only matched by Pixel and OnePlus (and Samsung, but only their newer devices)Beaver M. - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
I had several Huawei, Honor, Xiaomi, Oppo and others.Sure, sometimes after many months a few get a security patch. Like the Honor 9 from 2017 lately, that didnt get a security patch since July 2019, and then suddenly got the May 2020 security update and some added features. But thats really nothing to be proud of. You cant really take that for granted either. It pretty much happens randomly.
sonny73n - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
Of course he does not have any evident or source to back up his claims. He’s just like other Apple sheep thinking that every “security” update is actually security update.Beaver M. - Wednesday, August 12, 2020 - link
Oh, so someone who hasnt owned anything Apple since 2008 and most likely wont ever again, is an "Apple sheep."Makes sense, sonny. :thumbsup:
Ptosio - Wednesday, August 12, 2020 - link
Which makes you wonder: what won't these manufacturers release more pure Android headsets? It shouldn't be so hard...flyingpants265 - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
Boycott this phone, Realme X is the same thing for $142 USD. Artificially limited and sold in Asia only or something.