The Huawei Mate 30 Pro Review: Top Hardware without Google?
by Andrei Frumusanu on November 27, 2019 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Kirin 990
- Mate 30 Pro
GPU Performance & Power
In terms of 3D gaming and GPU performance, we expect the Kirin 990 and the Mate 30 Pro to do quite well. The GPU itself is not only a large step up from the MP10 configuration on the Kirin 980, but also larger than Samsung’s Exynos 9820 MP12 implementation. Huawei also claimed to be able to achieve better performance than the Snapdragon 855, which seems quite plausible. The remaining question is how power efficiency ends up and how the Mate 30 Pro’s thermal management is able to sustain the performance of the chipset for prolonged durations.
On the 3DMark Physics test which is actually a CPU benchmark within a 3D workload, we see that the Mate 30 Pro is showcasing some extremely high results, actually taking the top spot amongst all devices in the market. The benchmark should be mainly memory intensive and the Cortex A76’s strong prefetchers as well as the Kirin 990’s strong memory subsystem would be a possible explanation for the top performance results.
Switching over to the graphics workload, the Mate 30 Pro makes a very large leap compared to previous generation Huawei flagships, but falls short of some of the better Snapdragon 855 devices as well as Apple’s newest iPhone 11 lineup.
In GFXBench Aztec, the Mate 30 Pro takes an ever so slight lead ahead of Snapdragon 855 devices, but still falls short of Apple’s new architectures.
GFXBench Aztec High Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power) |
||||
Mfc. Process | FPS | Avg. Power (W) |
Perf/W Efficiency |
|
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Warm | N7P | 26.14 | 3.83 | 6.82 fps/W |
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Cold / Peak | N7P | 34.00 | 6.21 | 5.47 fps/W |
iPhone XS (A12) Warm | N7 | 19.32 | 3.81 | 5.07 fps/W |
iPhone XS (A12) Cold / Peak | N7 | 26.59 | 5.56 | 4.78 fps/W |
Mate 30 Pro (Kirin 990 4G) | N7 | 16.50 | 3.96 | 4.16 fps/W |
Galaxy 10+ (Snapdragon 855) | N7 | 16.17 | 4.69 | 3.44 fps/W |
Galaxy 10+ (Exynos 9820) | 8LPP | 15.59 | 4.80 | 3.24 fps/W |
The power characteristics of the chip are quite good and clearly a step ahead of both the Snapdragon 855 and Exynos 9820, sporting higher performance as well as lower absolute power.
GFXBench Aztec Normal Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power) |
||||
Mfc. Process | FPS | Avg. Power (W) |
Perf/W Efficiency |
|
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Warm | N7P | 73.27 | 4.07 | 18.00 fps/W |
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Cold / Peak | N7P | 91.62 | 6.08 | 15.06 fps/W |
iPhone XS (A12) Warm | N7 | 55.70 | 3.88 | 14.35 fps/W |
iPhone XS (A12) Cold / Peak | N7 | 76.00 | 5.59 | 13.59 fps/W |
Mate 30 Pro (Kirin 990 4G) | N7 | 41.68 | 4.01 | 10.39 fps/W |
Galaxy 10+ (Snapdragon 855) | N7 | 40.63 | 4.14 | 9.81 fps/W |
Galaxy 10+ (Exynos 9820) | 8LPP | 40.18 | 4.62 | 8.69 fps/W |
We see similar results in the Normal 1080p variant of the benchmark.
GFXBench Manhattan 3.1 Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power) |
||||
Mfc. Process | FPS | Avg. Power (W) |
Perf/W Efficiency |
|
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Warm | N7P | 100.58 | 4.21 | 23.89 fps/W |
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Cold / Peak | N7P | 123.54 | 6.04 | 20.45 fps/W |
iPhone XS (A12) Warm | N7 | 76.51 | 3.79 | 20.18 fps/W |
iPhone XS (A12) Cold / Peak | N7 | 103.83 | 5.98 | 17.36 fps/W |
Mate 30 Pro (Kirin 990 4G) | N7 | 75.69 | 5.04 | 15.01 fps/W |
Galaxy 10+ (Snapdragon 855) | N7 | 70.67 | 4.88 | 14.46 fps/W |
Galaxy 10+ (Exynos 9820) | 8LPP | 68.87 | 5.10 | 13.48 fps/W |
Galaxy S9+ (Snapdragon 845) | 10LPP | 61.16 | 5.01 | 11.99 fps/W |
Mate 20 Pro (Kirin 980) | N7 | 54.54 | 4.57 | 11.93 fps/W |
Galaxy S9 (Exynos 9810) | 10LPP | 46.04 | 4.08 | 11.28 fps/W |
Galaxy S8 (Snapdragon 835) | 10LPE | 38.90 | 3.79 | 10.26 fps/W |
Galaxy S8 (Exynos 8895) | 10LPE | 42.49 | 7.35 | 5.78 fps/W |
In Manhattan 3.1, what does change is that the device’s power usage goes up from 4 to 5W. Such a change usually happens when the GPU and SoC is able to achieve a higher utilisation of the silicon. Still, it’s slightly ahead of the Snapdragon 855 in terms of performance and efficiency.
GFXBench T-Rex Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power) |
||||
Mfc. Process | FPS | Avg. Power (W) |
Perf/W Efficiency |
|
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Warm | N7P | 289.03 | 4.78 | 60.46 fps/W |
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) Cold / Peak | N7P | 328.90 | 5.93 | 55.46 fps/W |
iPhone XS (A12) Warm | N7 | 197.80 | 3.95 | 50.07 fps/W |
iPhone XS (A12) Cold / Peak | N7 | 271.86 | 6.10 | 44.56 fps/W |
Galaxy 10+ (Snapdragon 855) | N7 | 167.16 | 4.10 | 40.70 fps/W |
Mate 30 Pro (Kirin 990 4G) | N7 | 152.27 | 4.34 | 35.08 fps/W |
Galaxy S9+ (Snapdragon 845) | 10LPP | 150.40 | 4.42 | 34.00 fps/W |
Galaxy 10+ (Exynos 9820) | 8LPP | 166.00 | 4.96 | 33.40fps/W |
Galaxy S9 (Exynos 9810) | 10LPP | 141.91 | 4.34 | 32.67 fps/W |
Galaxy S8 (Snapdragon 835) | 10LPE | 108.20 | 3.45 | 31.31 fps/W |
Mate 20 Pro (Kirin 980) | N7 | 135.75 | 4.64 | 29.25 fps/W |
Galaxy S8 (Exynos 8895) | 10LPE | 121.00 | 5.86 | 20.65 fps/W |
Finally, in T-Rex, the results are in line with the Snapdragon 855, although this time around it doesn’t manage to pass the competitor.
Overall, the Kirin 990 and the Mate 30 Pro are good performers. In general, I’d say Huawei and HiSilicon were able to match and sometimes slightly beat the Snapdragon 855 in terms of performance all while maintaining good efficiency. In my prolonged testing I saw the phone max out at a peak skin temperature of 45°C which wasn’t too bad. What was odd though is that this hotspot was very pronounced towards the top side of the phone’s frame – so when you’re gaming in landscape mode this going to be always touching your palm or fingers when holding the phone.
Whilst the results are good in context of the competition this year, there’s the issue that we expect the next generation of Snapdragon and Exynos devices to easily be able to top the Kirin 990, and of course it’s still far behind what Apple devices are able to showcase in terms of performance as the A12 and A13 were able to sport outstanding generational increases.
58 Comments
View All Comments
Alistair - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
"Count" me ;)prisonerX - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
Curved screens are ugly, distracting and generally idiotic.invinciblegod - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
The curved screen is the worst part about my Note 9, cases don't protect properly and it just looks ugly to me.StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
My Note 8 has the same screen as the Note 9. Can't say the curvature bothers me... But then I also have a Galaxy Note 10+ and it actually bothers me there.It was less pronounced on older devices and had no case issues with my Note 8.
yetanotherhuman - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Yes. Curved screens are simply a ploy to make phones more easily damaged, and remove the possibility of having a well-fitting screen protector or case. Curved screens, forget 'em.GXCoder - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
K990 5G's GPU frequency is also 600MHz. Suppliers of screen are LG,BOE and SamsungA5 - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
Having to play panel lottery with a flagship phone is kind of a dealbreaker if the Google stuff isn't already.s.yu - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
A three-way lottery, at that.Sttm - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
Huawei should try and sell it to the Iranians, now that they are US banned, might as well go back to selling to Iran...Oh wait Iran turned off the internet to brutally repress their people, so no one needs a Mate Pro.
airdrifting - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
Huawei sells to all over the world, including entire Europe and India. There is no international law says you can not sell phones to Iran, US can whine and moan all she wants but Huawei is free to do business with whoever they want because they are not a US company. The world is bigger than US, even if US bans Huawei (not because Huawei sells to Iran but rather Huawei is ahead in 5G technology), there is still rest of the world buying Huawei 5G. It's also pretty ironic and a slap to the face to a country which promotes free market when itself is doing the opposite. But I guess it's all okay because there are plenty of pathetic brainwashed losers in the US thinking they are the center of the world.