The most powerful phones of 2020 compared

Better, stronger, faster. That is the mantra. And let’s not forget – more efficient! We had an idea of ​​the performance and efficiency of the best smartphones of 2020 back in 2019 when Arm introduced the Cortex-A77. At the same time, the company presented the Mali-G77-GPU.

At the end of the same year, Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon 865 based on the Cortex-A77 and its own Adreno GPU. Our first performance figures with the G speed test showed that the Snapdragon 865 can be up to 20% faster than the Snapdragon 855.

And so the stage was ready. The new Snapdragon was announced and several companies had committed to using it in their 2020 devices. The question was still about Samsung’s newest Exynos processor – could it beat the Snapdragon? What about Huawei, could it mess things up? And what about the option of a reinforced Snapdragon 865 Plus?

Now that 2020 is over, let’s take a look back at the top performing phones of the year and see if anyone managed to take away Qualcomm’s crown in the Android arena.

Snapdragon 865 and Snapdragon 865 Plus

By far the fastest phone of 2020 was the Asus ROG Phone 3. The phone launched in mid-2020 was equipped with the slightly faster Snapdragon 865 Plus. On the average of several successive test runs of the speed test G, the ROG Phone 3 achieved 1 m 22 s. A clear winner of several seconds compared to the rest of the field. The ROG Phone 3 also did well in other benchmarks such as Geekbench and AnTuTu.

The next 10 devices were all very close to each other, only 1.5 seconds separated them all. The crown for second place actually goes to the OnePlus 8 Pro with 1m 29s. Next up is its sibling, the OnePlus 8T, with 1: 29.4 seconds and a surprising result for the Realme X50 Pro 5G with 1: 29.5 seconds. Four of the next six places go to Samsung devices. First the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra and then the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 with a score of 1 m 29.5 and 1 m 30 s respectively. This is followed by the Vanilla OnePlus 8 (1 m 30.1 s), the Sony Xperia 5 II (1 m 30.5 s) and then the Poco F2 Pro (1 m 30.5 s). The top 10 are rounded off by the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus with a time of 1m 32.2s.

By far the fastest phone of 2020 was the Asus ROG Phone 3.

All of this means that the Snapdragon 865/865 Plus will dominate the Android performance charts in 2020. We also see that many of the results are close together. Consumers should therefore consider other features such as camera, internal storage, display, battery life, and design when choosing a 2020 flagship.

Exynos and Kirin

You will be forgiven for thinking that Qualcomm is the only manufacturer of mobile processors for Android devices. While it may seem so at times, let’s not forget Samsung and Huawei. Samsung continued its two-processor strategy in 2020. If you live in North America, devices like the S20, Note 20, etc. all use the Snapdragon 865. However, if you live in Europe, India, the Middle East, or Africa then you are getting the same devices but Exynos chipsets. We’ve found time and time again in 2020 that there is a significant performance gap between Snapdragon and Exynos processors.

For example, the Exynos 990 version of the Samsung Galaxy S20 manages a speed test G runtime of 2 m 8 s. This is significantly slower than the Snapdragon 865 devices. The main problem seems to be the GPU. Snapdragon processors use Qualcomm’s proprietary Adreno GPU, while the Exynos 990 uses the Mali GPU, specifically the Mali-G77 MP11. While the Mali is a good GPU and can handle most, if not all, Android games without any problems, the Adreno comes out on top in terms of performance.

The thing to remember when playing is that it is the game developer’s job to provide smooth gameplay, often at the expense of other things like details, textures, lighting, etc. This means it is without pixel peeping it is difficult to see the features enabled or disabled to achieve high frame rates. Also, the “high settings” on one device are likely to be different on another handset. These settings often relate to the detected hardware. The game developer will not offer any settings that affect the gameplay.

Some had hoped that switching to 5 nm would give the Kirin 9000 a boost.

Isolating just the CPU scores for the G speed test shows that the Exynos 990 version of the Note 20 Ultra achieves 45.5 seconds, compared to 40.5 seconds for the Snapdragon version. While the Snapdragon version is still ahead of us, it’s not as drastic as the 30% overall difference.

The story is similar to that of the Huawei Mate 40 Pro using the Kirin 9000. While some had hoped that switching to 5 nm (compared to the Snapdragon’s 7 minutes) would give the Kirin 9000 a boost, its reliance on the Mali GPU meant it didn’t. t competitive. It’s faster than the Exynos 990, but still only manages 1m 47s. It’s worth noting that Huawei ships its devices with performance mode disabled by default. However, switching the phone to performance mode results in a better time of 1 to 40 seconds at the expense of battery life.

What about mid-range processors like the Snapdragon 765G?

A notable feature of 2020 was the rise of the Snapdragon 700 series. Google went for the Snapdragon 765G in the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a 5G and the 730G in the Pixel 4a. OnePlus has also released a mid-range device based on the Snapdragon 765G, OnePlus Nord. LG, Nokia and Motorola also released Snapdragon 700 series devices in 2020.

There are two reasons for the increased visibility of the 700 series in 2020. The first is performance. The Snapdragon 765G offers a performance comparable to that of Qualcomm’s 2018 flagship processor, the Snapdragon 845. The 765G is not quite on the same level as the 845 in terms of graphics, but it is still a good all-rounder. For example, the OnePlus Nord achieved 2 m 21.4 s in the G speed test, while the Galaxy Note 9 2 m 18.1 s, which is a difference of only 2%.

The other reason is 5G. The Snapdragon 765G supports 5G, including DSS (Dynamic Spectrum Sharing), mmWave and sub-6 GHz. This means that it offers a theoretical maximum download speed of 3.7 Gbps. Putting that into a device at a competitive price is so compelling that Google decided to use it in the Pixel 5.

Don’t you forget the Apple A14?

Beyond the Android ecosystem, it’s worth checking out the iPhone 12 and Apple’s new processor, the A14 Bionic. If you put the iPhone 12 in contact with the Asus ROG Phone 3, the iPhone 12 wins in 1: 3 seconds. The main prizes were in the CPU and Mixed areas of Speed ​​Test G. The iPhone 12 scored 32.5 seconds versus 36.9 seconds for the Asus.

The Apple A14 uses a hexa-core CPU configuration with two high-performance cores and four efficiency cores. The same CPU core designs were also used for the Apple M1 processor used on the new MacBook Air, new 13-inch MacBook Pro, and MacMini (2020). My tests of the M1 processor in the MacBook Air showed that the new processor had the fastest single-core performance of any Mac computer ever.

Looking to 2021

So far, the lead up to 2021 has mirrored the lead up to 2020. Arm announced its new CPU designs earlier this year: the Cortex-X1 and Cortex-A78. Qualcomm also announced its new processor, the Snapdragon 888. He will use the Cortex-X1 and Cortex-A78 together with the next generation Adreno GPU from Qualcomm. First Snapdragon 888 benchmarks show an improvement in the CPU of 25% and a GPU increase of at least 35%.

As in previous years, several smartphone companies have pledged to use Qualcomm’s new processor, including Xiaomi and OnePlus. Here is a list of all the verified Snapdragon 888 phones and brands. Samsung is not on the official Qualcomm partner list. However, it is rumored that Samsung will continue its two-processor strategy in 2021 with the Snapdragon 888 and Exynos 2100 in the Galaxy S21.

Will Asus top the Android charts again in 2021? How narrow can the gap be with Apple’s SoCs? Let us know what you think in the comments.