Oh no, Samsung chipsets
Our (imaginary) directors had quite a quarrel trying to approve part 3. Mainly because of production issues, testing issues, and whatever senseless reasons they’re trying to state to us. Thankfully, with just a bit of forcing to, they finally approved the third and penultimate season of this honorable review.
For this part, we will be discussing the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chipset inside. Oh, it’s the Accelerated Edition by the way but we determined that this means nothing versus a regular SD7G1 chipset aside from extra marketing points. We also forgot to mention that this sub-25K phone has 12GB RAM and 512GB storage (no way to expand the ROM though). 512GB is not something you would find outside of sub-60K flagships. Even our Reno only had 256GB.
BENCHMARKS
On AnTuTu, the chipset scored 700K points which are higher than what this chipset normally scores. In GizChina, for example, they reported that this chipset is weaker than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G at around 550K points. Though, do note that they’re using an older version of AnTuTu and Honor did overclock this chipset slightly. Normally, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 is clocked at 2.3GHz for its main Cortex-A710 cores but for the Honor 90, these cores are clocked to 2.5GHz which could explain the better scores. The same goes for Geekbench by the way.
However, using an app called CPU Throttling Test, we can measure accurately how much this chipset throttles within a 15-minute period. For those who don’t know, Throttling happens when your chipset (in this case, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1) slows itself to save resources and maintain temperature. By the way, we tested this in a cool environment, in a mall and the chipset still throttled to 86% of max performance further showing the terrible thermal management of Samsung-made chipsets.
GAMING/ACTUAL PERFORMANCE:
Starting first with casual use; we found no problems opening and closing apps, as well as multi-tasking. You can resize a window (for example Facebook Messenger) while playing the game and the phone had no problem running two apps at the same time. Though, the phone has a tendency to force close other apps when not in use for a while, especially when there are other apps in the background which bothered us a bit especially with online games like Mobile Legends because the game has to go through the loading screen again. We suggest not leaving your gaming apps for longer than 10 minutes or this will happen to you.
For the Honor 90, thanks to its enormous 512GB storage, we were able to download Play Store’s largest and most demanding games, including Genshin Impact and Diablo Immortal. Again, the phone uses a modified version of the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chip, one that’s clocked to 2.5GHz as opposed to the usual 2.3GHz.
For our tests, each game ran as we expected a midrange phone would and may struggle with some titles. For instance, Genshin Impact actually defaults to Low at 30fps but we modified it a few times. The first was Low at 60fps. Because the chipset throttles a lot, it is not able to use its full potential. The phone gets particularly hot quickly too. Within an hour, we can feel the heat coming out of it, and by “heat” we mean, noticeably hot, despite the phone having a cooling system. Our next test was Medium at 60fps. The game ran much worse here and it constantly stuttered and lagged. However, our colleagues suggested turning off Anti Aliasing, which is the gameplay test you’re seeing above. This seems to be the way, as now the game is comfortable and smoother to play, though the heat problems remained.
This heating is the same throughout Diablo Immortal. Using its recommended settings, the game has mild frame skipping too. It’s not the smoothest gameplay and there are times that dialogue won’t sync with the characters’ voices. Diablo Immortal is at least playable on this phone but don’t expect anything more.
We are surprised to see that there is no “Ultra” in Mobile Legends and the maximum is High with High Frame Rate enabled. Mobile Legends is not that much of a demanding game and it’s not a shocker that this ran well with the phone and it did not fire up as much as the latter two games.
By the way, you can play Real Racing 3 and War Thunder smoothly and efficiently on this phone. War Thunder is not demanding yet so even sub-25K midrangers can run them fine. This is in its Maximum Settings with 120fps by the way. We did not see anything weird happening with both Real Racing 3 and War Thunder and the phone did not struggle to both of them.
The Honor 90 is not the most ideal phone for gaming (the POCO X4 GT is a much better option for that) but at least it can handle most popular titles at the bare minimum. It gets the job done, to say the least. For most of our tests, “Medium-High” settings are the way to go with anti-aliasing at low or completely disabled.
Also for all of them, sounds and music do not chip or stutter and remained consistent through our long gaming sessions.
BATTERY/CHARGING:
The Honor 90 comes pre-supplied with a 66W Fast Charger with a USB-C cable. The connector for both the cable and brick is coloured orange, one of the most unique ones we’ve seen used, aside from the Wiko T50’s purple connector.
If you’ve seen our TikTok video, we mentioned how the phone went from empty to full in one hour. For a 66W rating and 5000mAh battery, this feels a little slow but they are standard for many midrangers and still considered fast by several media outlets and casual users.
As always, we’re using PCMark 3.0 to determine battery endurance. By the way, the phone will turn itself off after a minute when the battery is at 2%. We believe this is a great measure to prevent a battery from depreciating quickly. The chipset already throttles a lot and we’re afraid that the phone may not age well due to this factor.
Going back, after the phone reached 20% charge, PCMark reported that its battery can last for nearly 10 hours, plus the additional 1 hour and 54 minutes when the phone is completely drained. This is not impressive nor is it disappointing since most of our midrange phones last for about 11-12 hours on average. This score is similar to the TCL 10 5G which is also a similar-calibre midrange phone.
In theory, running performance mode may be ideal especially if you’re playing games since the battery drain is not too high versus standard mode. Power-saving mode automatically enables dark mode (if you haven’t already), turns off haptic feedback, closes background apps, and lowers brightness to efficiently save as much juice as possible.
The phone does have a decent chipset, no? However, not good enough to go against MediaTek’s 8000 series but good enough against their Dimensity 1300 series. Well, since the phone is out now for pre-ordering, this article may give you an idea of how the phone actually performs. Tune in next time as we talk about the phone’s only speaker and finally conclude this long honourable journey.
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