On May 24 of this year, Qualcomm officially released the next-generation 7-series mobile platform processor; Snapdragon 710. Earlier it was reported that this will not be available until the 3rd quarter. Surprisingly, in less than a week, on the 31st Xiaomi announced Mi 8 SE at the new product launching event and that was the world’s 1st Snapdragon 710 equipped Smartphone. The strength of this “closer-flagship” chip, in the end, we may wish to find out through the Mi 8 SE.
New Snapdragon 710 with 800 series of genes
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 chip used by the Xiaomi Mi 8 SE, it is a new mobile platform processor with the Snapdragon 800 flagship gene. It is a 10nm process with Kryo 300 series CPU, Adreno 600 series GPU, Spectra 250 ISP, Hexagon 685 DPS, X15 LTE baseband and etc that are all derived from the 800 series processor. Qualcomm data shows that compared with Snapdragon 660 and 710, the performance of CPUs is increased by 20% while GPU performance is increased by 35%, application opening speed is increased by 15%, AI performance is improved by 2 times, and overall power consumption is reduced by 30%.
The Kryo 360 core with the same architecture as the Snapdragon 845
The Snapdragon 710 features a new Kryo 360 core based on the Cortex-A75 depth customization, two Kryo 360 high-performance cores, clocked at 2.2 GHz, and no gameplay. 6 Kryo 360 Energy-Efficient Cores that use less power for casual use. The CPU performance is increased by 20% compared to the Snapdragon 660, and the energy efficiency ratio is increased by 25%.
Its Geekbench’s single-core performance was measured at 1877, as compared to Snapdragon’s 660 single-core is 1605. The Xiaomi 8 SE equipped with the Snapdragon 710 was also clearly ahead of the 600 SoC series of Snapdragon.
Compared to the Snapdragon 660 shared L2 cache, the Snapdragon 710 added an independent L2 cache to each Kryo 360 core. At the same time, it added an 8-core shared L3 cache, and the data exchange efficiency between cores was improved. In addition, the Snapdragon 710 also joins the system cache to carry data sharing between the CPU and other IPs such as GPUs and ISPs. By providing each core with an L2 cache, sharing an L3 cache among 8 cores, and all IP sharing system caches, the Snapdragon 710 can greatly increase the response speed of the operation and the APP can open faster.
The Snapdragon 710 does not use the common 4 small + 4 big cores. Little architecture, but by the combination of 2 large + 6 small, through the dynamic technology, the size of the core can be the independent switch, arbitrary combination, greatly enhance the calculation the flexibility of force deployment provides more accurate control of power consumption and optimizes power consumption performance from the ground up.
Currently the only 6-series Adreno graphics processor
The Snapdragon 710 equipped with the new Adreno 616 graphics processor. Following the Adreno 630 of the Snapdragon 845, the current 6-series Adreno GPU supports Vulkan API and Unity game engine.
Qualcomm official data show that compared with the 660, the Snapdragon 710 GPU graphics rendering speed increased by 35% and power consumption was reduced by 20 %. In the GFXBench 4.0-Manhatas 3.1-1080p off-screen test, the Snapdragon 710 has a 53% increase in graphics score over the 660; in the Antutu 7.1-refinery test, the Snapdragon 710 has significantly advanced from 660 up to 60% or more. Qualcomm’s official data is 35%.
Specific to the performance of the game, using Game players to tour “Jade to survive: stimulate the battlefield” for the actual measurement.
Xiaomi Mi 8 SE’s game screen settings can choose the highest quality “HDR HD”, frame rate “super high” option (maximum frame rate 40fps), anti-aliasing, which is the level of privilege to open. The comparison Snapdragon 660, due to the highest quality can only choose “HD”, and the number of frames can only stay at “high”, that is, Smartphone equipped with Snapdragon 660’s can not achieve the optimal picture quality hardware requirements, and the highest the frame rate can only be 30fps.
Xiaomi Mi 8 SE on the left and Snapdragon equipped phone 660 on the right
After the game was measured, the average frame rate of Xiaomi Mi 8 SE was 38.7fps, while the Snapdragon 660 phone could not open the 40fps ultra-high frame rate mode, and the average frame rate could only reach 28.6fps.
New Spectra 250 Dual ISP
Snapdragon 710 equipped with a new Spectra 250 dual ISP, in the camera and video processing capabilities, than the Snapdragon 660 is not a small increase. This is also the second Spectra 200 series ISP following the Snapdragon 845 Spectra 280. Support hardware accelerated multi-frame synthesis noise reduction technology, support 4K video recording.
Xiaomi Mi 8 SE equipped with Snapdragon 710, uses a dual-camera combination of 12MP + 5MP camera to perform UltraHD video capture of 30 frames at 4K resolution, video noise reduction technology is supported, and 4K video recording power consumption is reduced by 40%.
2×2 Dual WiFi Faster Signals Better
In addition, the Xiaomi Mi 8 SE adopts a 2×2 MIMO dual-antenna design. The only feature of this flagship phone is that it has almost no function in the Xiaomi Mi 8 SE. Compared with single-way WiFi, the theoretical speed of dual-way WiFi is 100% faster, and the coverage of WiFi signals is better. In the case of two-way mobile phones, both hands hold a better stable WiFi signal.
At present, smartphones mainly have 2 schemes: 1×1 single antenna and 2×2 dual antenna. The 2×2 dual antenna has dual receive channels 2RX and dual transmit channels 2TX. The 2 antennas transmit and receive 2 data streams at the same time, effectively doubling the throughput and having a faster download speed than a single 1×1 antenna.
Double AI performance
Xiaomi Mi 8 SE equipped Snapdragon 710 to support Qualcomm artificial intelligence AI Engine, Kryo 360 CPU, Adreno 616 GPU and 845 same 1200MHz Hexagon 685 DSP multi-core heterogeneous AI computing solution, Snapdragon 710’s overall the AI performance is almost twice that of the 660.
According to AI Mark’s observations, the Xiaomi Mi 8 SE equipped with Snapdragon 710 and its scored close to the Snapdragon 845, but the gap with the 660 did not reach 2 times that of the Qualcomm. The reason for this is that Qualcomm’s AI is a multi-core AI computing solution consisting of a combination of DSP, CPU, and GPU, while AI Mark is only calling DSP to perform tests. The increase in AI computing power brought by CPU and GPU upgrades is in AI Mark. It will not be reflected. This can be confirmed by the proximity of the Snapdragon 710 score to the Snapdragon 845. After all, the Snapdragon 710 uses the same Hexagon 685 DSP as the Snapdragon 845.
AI Mark scores 1201, close to the 845 score, far beyond the 660 score
Based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 AIE engine, Xiaomi 8 SE has a number of useful AI features:
- 1, AI scene camera, supports up to 25 kinds of labels, 200 + scene recognition while taking pictures can identify pets, food, scenery and other targeted optimization.
- 2, love the students, portable AI voice assistant, whether it is schedule reminder or smart home control, and then the complicated operation is a word thing.
- 3, AI smart objects, take a photo can be a key to buy the same star, foreign language menu, real-time translation, support English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Western, Indian 7 languages real-time translation, the United States, Europe, Japan, The British and Korean five currencies are converted by one key.
- 4, AI sleep optimization, through the use of machine learning to establish user habits model, during the sleep limit the background process is not commonly used, turn off Bluetooth and other unnecessary network connections, precise control of power consumption, to avoid heavy power consumption at night.
Antutu points and Battery Life
Antutu benchmarking points, Xiaomi Mi 8 SE obtained 174,000 points, while Snapdragon 660’s flagship phone get 146,000 points. The 20% performance improvement of the CPU single core is indeed reflected in the Antutu, and the GPU score is increased by as much as 50%.
As for power consumption performance, 5 hours of overweight battery life test, Xiaomi Mi 8 SE 3120mAh battery power performance surpassed the battery’s larger 3400mAh of the phone that powered by Snapdragon 660, which brought with the Snapdragon 710’s 10nm process and the latest architecture design and energy efficiency is not unrelated.
After 30 minutes of music playback, 30 minutes of 4K video recording, 30 minutes of Bilibili online video playback, 30 minutes of Weibo browsing, 30 minutes of WeChat video calls, 30 minutes of navigation, and 1 hour of King glory and 1 hour of vibrato, 3120mAh battery of Mi 8 SE, the final remaining power is 11%, while the battery’s larger 3400mAh that equipped with Snapdragon 660 phone has only 6% of its remaining battery capacity. The smaller battery capacity of the Xiaomi Mi 8 SE is even longer lasting.
Especially in the 30 minutes of 4K video recording and 1 hour of the King Glory game, the power consumption of the Snapdragon 710 was significantly stronger than that of the Snapdragon 660.
So as a conclusion Snapdragon 710 has similarities to Snapdragon 660 in terms of processing power. While it has similarities to Snapdragon 845 in other features like GPU, display, and camera. We will not be surprised to see the next batch of cheap flagship devices that show off this SoC to keep costs down and at the same time not cut too many corners.