Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is on a roll.
Not only is the brand experiencing a big resurgence over the last year, it also has the big guns to match the hype.
Last year when we looked at Antutu’s monthly ranking of the best performance smartphones globally, Xiaomi was dominant with 4 devices making the top 10. The same was the case a month later.
A year since we first had a look at Antutu’s list, things have not changed.
As of the end of August, 4 Xiaomi smartphones made the top 10, once again.
As it was the case in the two months that we highlighted the list last year, gaming phones rule the roost.
August 2018 saw the first generation Mi BlackShark top the list before handing over the reins to the Asus ROG Phone the next month. The latter’s successor, the Asus ROG Phone 2, tops the August 2019 rankings.
The Mi BlackShark 2, in comparison, is a distant 9th on the list, as can be seen in the figure below.
The drop can be partly explained by the chipsets in use on either device.
The Mi BlackShark 2 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855. The ROG Phone 2, on the other hand, rocks a Snapdragon 855+. It goes without saying that the latter is the superior one of the two chipsets, though barely.
The Snapdragon 855 and 855+ are both octa-core processors. What sets them apart, though, are the clock speeds of some of the cores as well as the graphics. The 855+ has a single high-power core that maxes out at 2.96GHz while the 855’s most superior core tops out at 2.84GHz. On the graphics front, both chipsets integrate Adeno 640 graphics. Where they part, as already noted, is the clock speed. The 855’s card tops out at 585MHz. The 855+ blasts it at 672MHz.
Those differences in clock speeds for both the processor cores and the graphics, combined with the customizations made by each company result in the wide gap witnessed when they’re put head to head. Though that doesn’t exactly explain the Mi 9’s place thanks to the many factors involved. This is also your cue to be in a better position to contextualize this information.
Joining the BlackShark 2 in the absence of a Pocophone is the device that many have billed as the Pocophone 2, the Redmi K20 Pro from Xiaomi’s subsidiary. Not surprisingly, it is joined by another identical device, the Mi 9T Pro. The Mi 9T Pro is just the Redmi K20 Pro by another name. The names can be confusing but their ranking on Antutu’s list isn’t with one being 3 places ahead of the other, just enough margin for error as can be expected of benchmarking data.
Asus’ highly-rated ZenFone 6 is the list leader’s follow up both by name as well as by its place – it’s second!
OnePlus and Samsung, with two devices each on the list, help keep other smartphone brands and their 2019 offerings at bay. As we enter the holy months of tech launches, we can expect that to change in coming days. Especially with those new iPhones. And the upcoming Huawei (especially since we’ve heard good things about those Kirin 990 chipsets) and Google devices.
