Sony may launch cheap quad-core Android smartphones in 2013, testing chips by MediaTek

4. TylerGrunter (Posts: 1543; Member since: 16 Feb 2012)

They are not old, in fact they are as new as the A15. But they are underperformers, check my comment below.

7. hung2900 (Posts: 965; Member since: 02 Mar 2012)

I read it and I don't know what you wanna tell us.
This phone is budget-friendly and a quad-core A7 is perfect.
Not many apps need multi-threading, but the OS itself needs it, coz Android renders parallelly. Multi-threading helps the OS smoother and more energy sufficient. And Cortex A7 is superb in saving battery.

8. TylerGrunter (Posts: 1543; Member since: 16 Feb 2012)

It means that most of the applications run in a single thread mainly, so 4 cores with very low perfomance each one doesn't actually help the phone to run smoother. It's better to have 2 cores with higher performance each.
If you check the CPU of your phone it mainly gets stressed when starting an application. And 4 A7 are not going to do a good job at that moment. Two A9s with a bit of a higher clock are a better solution for that. In other words: not always is better to have more cores.
And due to the fact that you have 4 cores they only will be battery savvy if you can shut them down individually. So we'll have to wait for that.
My comment is that for the low end market there are better solutions that this, and that Mediatek is just pulling a market stunt to sell "quad-cores" when dual cores would make a better work for it. So that people should not put their hopes too high just cause it has "quad-core" in it, as it won't have the power of the quad cores we are used to.

5. Captain_Doug (Posts: 1035; Member since: 10 Feb 2012)

I assume the reason for picking them is that they are super cheap. However these processors will probably get amazing battery life. They are the low battery life processor that would pair with A15's in a big.LITTLE setup. All claims of performance are eradicated once the word cheap comes into play.

6. TylerGrunter (Posts: 1543; Member since: 16 Feb 2012)

Fully on mark! What Mediatek is looking for with this is to add the marketing stunt "quad-core" to their list. But that's doesn't mean they'll provide a good experience to users or that it's the best solution.
As per batery life it will depend on the implementation, if they are able to dinamically switch off some of the cores it will be fantastic. But if they don't having all the time 4 cores sipping battery it may not be a good idea, even if they are just A7. The phones/tablets that will use the big.LITTLE will probably have much bigger batteries than the cheap ones that use this SoCs.

12. Darkerm (Posts: 319; Member since: 31 Jan 2012)

It this Chipset MTK MT6589 Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 with GPU PowerVR Series5XT
better than my Xperia S Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon Dual-core 1.5 GHz with Adreno 220?

13. TylerGrunter (Posts: 1543; Member since: 16 Feb 2012)

Around the same, the A7 and the Scorpion have similar DMIPs/MHz (similar performance at the same clock speed, 2.1 and 2.0)
So the MSM8260 has better single threated performance (as it is clocked higher) while the MT6589 has better multi threaded performance (as it has two times more cores).
For the GPU they should be also quite similar, but I personally bet on the PowerVR, even they have not really given any real data on it... So I can't be sure.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4940/qualcomm-new-snapdragon-s4-msm8960-krait-architecture

In other words: you can argue one way or the other based on personal preference :P
But the MT6589 shold be much more battery friendly as it's built on 28nm, while the MSM8260 is still on 45nm. So I would chose it over the Qualcomm. Remember that you are talking about a 2 years old chip (Qualcomm S3 series)...

14. Darkerm (Posts: 319; Member since: 31 Jan 2012)

Thanks for your nice and short but detailed Reply.
Yeah, my Xperia S it battery hungry but I don't care cuz I can play HD games with Adreno 220 .
BTW, can you tell me the different of "MSM8260 and MSM8260A (which got Adreno 225 GPU)" ?

whic GPU is better Mali 400 mp (Quad core) or Adreno 220?

15. TylerGrunter (Posts: 1543; Member since: 16 Feb 2012)

MSM8260 is an Qualcomm S3 (2010 chip) built in 45 nm with Scorpion cores and Adreno 220.
MSM8260A is Qualcomm S4 (2012) built in 28 nm with Krait cores and Adreno 225.
So the second one is around twice as powerful as the first one (225 doubles the 220 performance and krait cores + higher clock nearly doubles the CPU too)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapdragon_%28system_on_chip%29

For the GPUs it actually depends on the clocking.
Mali 400 @233 (SGSII) >= Adreno 220 @266
Mali 400 @400 (SGSIII) >= Adreno 225 @400

They are very similar the ones I put in the same lines, in general Mali is better for printing pixels and 2D (it has more pixel shaders, 4 in fact as that´s what they call "cores") and Adreno better for 3D (as it uses unified architectur and has therefore more vertex shaders)

16. Darkerm (Posts: 319; Member since: 31 Jan 2012)

Now a days gaming generally means 3D. So Adreno is better than Mali in 3D gaming?

17. TylerGrunter (Posts: 1543; Member since: 16 Feb 2012)

Yes and no.
Adreno 225 is better than Mali-400? Yes, for the reason you just said.
But between Adreno 220 y Mali-400 I would take the second, as it has more power to move pixels, and the 220 it's a bit short there, specially for high resolutions.
You can never really say an statement "Adreno is better than Mali", you have to tell which model you compare with and even for what pourpose.
EG: Mali-604 > Adreno 320 > Adreno 225 > Mali-400MP4 @400 > Mali-400MP4 @250 > Adreno 225
And so on. I could add the PowerVRs to the list.
Note: you can see the benchmarks here
https://glbenchmark.com/result.jsp?benchmark=glpro25&test=448&order=score&data-source=1&version=all&base=gpu