Huawei P10 and P10 Plus: Performance & Battery Life Report
by Matt Humrick on May 12, 2017 7:00 AM EST
Huawei is clearly focused on improving the performance of its flagship phones. The P9 and its Kirin 955 SoC performed well in our tests and was smooth and quick during everyday use. For the P10 and P10 Plus, Huawei has tweaked the underlying hardware and software to make them perform even better for longer.
Huawei’s EMUI software includes several features to keep the system feeling more responsive. Using the F2FS filesystem for the /data partition improves storage performance, and Huawei’s new “Machine Learning algorithm” prioritizes system resources (CPU, memory, and storage) to improve responsiveness and performance for the foreground app. Huawei is also using compression to increase the amount of data held in working memory.
| Huawei P10 Series | ||
| Huawei P10 | Huawei P10 Plus | |
| SoC | HiSilicon Kirin 960 4x Cortex-A53 @ 1.84GHz 4x Cortex-A73 @ 2.36GHz ARM Mali-G71 MP8 @ 1037MHz |
|
| Display | 5.1-inch 1920x1080 IPS LCD | 5.5-inch 2560x1440 IPS LCD |
| Dimensions | 145.3 x 69.3 x 6.98 mm 145 grams |
153.5 x 74.2 x 6.98 mm 165 grams |
| RAM | 4GB | 4GB / 6GB |
| NAND | 32GB / 64GB / 128GB + microSD |
64GB / 128GB / 256GB + microSD |
| Battery | 3200 mAh (12.23 Wh) non-replaceable |
3750 mAh (14.33 Wh) non-replaceable |
| Modem | HiSilicon LTE (Integrated) 2G / 3G / 4G LTE |
|
| SIM Size | 1x or 2x NanoSIM | |
| Wireless | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2x2 MU-MIMO, BT 4.2, NFC, GPS/Glonass/Galileo/BDS | |
| Connectivity | USB 2.0 Type-C, 3.5mm headset | |
| Launch OS | Android 7.0 with EMUI 5.1 | |
| Software Version Tested | Android 7.0 VTR-L09C432B112 |
Android 7.0 VKY-L29C900B109 |
Inside the new phones is HiSilicon’s Kirin 960 SoC, which uses a big.LITTLE arrangement of four ARM Cortex-A73 CPUs and four Cortex-A53 CPUs. When we looked at the Kirin 960 earlier this year, we found that its A73 core showed higher integer IPC than the Kirin 950/955’s A72 core, but that floating-point IPC generally regressed. The Kirin 960 registered improvements to the memory subsystem too. Even though our lower-level testing produced mixed results, the Kirin 960, which is also used in Huawei’s Mate 9, performed well when running common workloads such as web browsing and photo editing.
In addition to the new CPU, the Kirin 960 also includes a significantly upgraded GPU. The Mali-G71MP8 includes twice as many cores as the Mali-T880MP4 GPU in Kirin 950/955. It’s also based on ARM’s new Bifrost architecture, which includes a number of improvements over the previous Midgard architecture that should help improve shader core utilization.
Huawei, like other OEMs, is currently struggling to procure some of the other internal components—notably NAND and RAM—which can impact overall system performance. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Toshiba have said that they are struggling to produce enough flash memory in the face of increased demand, especially for higher density modules, and issues with ramping up 3D NAND production. This shortage, which applies to DRAM as well, started in 2016 and will likely extend through the remainder of 2017.
With supplies short and component costs rising, Huawei confirmed that it is sourcing memory components from multiple suppliers and stated that it never committed to using any specific type of NAND. Indeed, P10 owners are claiming that some units are using eMMC instead of UFS NAND, along with both LPDDR3 and LPDDR4 RAM. Multi-sourcing is actually very common among smartphone OEMs, particularly larger ones such as Apple, Huawei, LG, and Samsung, for a number of different components, including NAND, RAM, display panels, modems/RF, and camera sensors. Apple has even sourced SoCs from different foundries. Problems can arise, however, if the OEM does not hold its suppliers to the same standards and allows parts from different vendors to vary wildly in performance, which, unfortunately, happens all too frequently.
Based on Huawei’s official statement, we have no way to know who its suppliers are, what components they are or are not using (LPDDR3/LPDDR4, eMMC/UFS), or how many phones are using the potentially slower components. It only said that component selection is random based on the current supply and that there is no way for consumers to know what they are buying before opening the box.
In this report, we’ll establish what components our particular P10 and P10 Plus review units use, and then run them through a series of tests to evaluate everyday performance and battery life. Huawei was able to extend the Mate 9’s battery life over the previous generation, so it will be interesting to see if this is true for the P10 as well.
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Matt Humrick - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
It looks like the idle power numbers you quote were measured with the screen brightness set to maximum, so they are not very useful. The Kirin 960 SoC does draw more power than the Kirin 950/955 as our analysis showed, though. There are several reasons for this that are specific to this SoC and are not software related.Trixanity - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
Hmm, that appears to be the case but it seems odd that both the P9 and P10 reviews would have maximum brightness and the others would not. Makes no sense to me but of course that's something to critique the author of and not you :)I don't recall there being device power consumption averages in your analysis. I would like to see how various devices do. We all see how the iPhone pulls incredible idle/standby numbers (in hours) but starts to falter during load (probably due to the smaller batteries) and we also see how Samsung generally does well in load scenarios due to reasonably efficient internals including advances in AMOLED efficiency giving them an edge while getting flak for poorly optimized software (Snapdragon variant especially) that ruins the user experience with stutters.
ePambos - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
Dear Matt, thanks for your suggestion. Haven't tried putting the P10 in Airplane mode overnight, cause I still need to have access to phone calls. But keep in mind that the P9 was operating in the very same conditions. I will try to test force-using other bands than 4G and check wether it is a signal strenght issue related to one specific band...ePambos - Friday, July 7, 2017 - link
Hi... Just an update. After the latest firmware update -which clearly stated right at the top "enchancement in battery life- I can attest to enormous difference in the battery life of my P10. Now it is directly comparable to the battery life I was getting from my P9. Latest version is VTR-L09C432B150... Is there any chance to re-run some test (including idle power consumption)? It would surely make for a pretty intereting read to see how just a firmware update affects battery life or performance...ePambos - Friday, July 7, 2017 - link
Hi... Just an update. After the latest firmware update -which clearly stated right at the top "enchancement in battery life- I can attest to enormous difference in the battery life of my P10. Now it is directly comparable to the battery life I was getting from my P9. Latest version is VTR-L09C432B150... Is there any chance to re-run some test (including idle power consumption)? It would surely make for a pretty intereting read to see how just a firmware update affects battery life or performance...rubene66 - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
I am still waiting for the complete galaxy s8 exynos review !tuxRoller - Sunday, May 14, 2017 - link
F2fs shouldn't be noticably faster than ext4 except when a program forces an fsync.The fs mount options matter more than the fs when it comes to these two.
asfletch - Wednesday, May 17, 2017 - link
Late to the party I know, but P10 just arrived in Australian stores, so I got to play with one yesterday. It does seem snappy, but I had more missed touches than I've had with any other (expensive) phone. The factory screen protectors were left on, but they're pretty thin so shouldn't have been the problem.I checked YouTube and some reviewers are also experiencing this - did you experience it at all Matt?
JohnLinc - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
This phone is very good based on performance registered12345 righttehranbarbary - Tuesday, June 6, 2017 - link
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