nubia Z5 mini Xiaomi 2S and Huawei Ascend P6 are four core Android phones with high attention in China. Z5 mini has excellent photo taking ability, Xiaomi 2S Both the fever performance of P6 and the ultimate appearance design of P6 represent their competitiveness. What sparks will the comparison between these three mobile phones bring?

Specification comparison:

In terms of configuration, Xiaomi is relatively strong and uses four cores Snapdragon 600 1.7G processor. Z5 mini supports three networks 3G in network support, which is a unique selling point. P6 is relatively weak in configuration.

Note: Xiaomi 2S has two versions: WCDMA and CDMA2000, as well as 16G and 32G capacities.

P6 is available in three versions: China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. The supported networks and specifications are slightly different.

Xiaomi 2S WCDMA 32G and P6 mobile versions are used in the evaluation.

appearance

The three mobile phones have quite different styles in appearance. Xiaomi 2S has a silver logo and "Three King Kong" on the front. The Z5 mini adopts a completely black design. When you turn off the screen, you can only vaguely see the dark red color of the home key. The front of Ascend P6 has only one brand logo ▼

The back of Xiaomi 2S is a bright plastic back cover, while the back of Z5 mini has a certain sanding effect, and the back of P6 is a brushed metal ▼

The fuselage of Xiaomi 2S and Z5 mini is slightly thick, reaching 10.2mm and 10.3mm respectively. Both of them can remove the rear cover. Huawei Ascend P6 is the thinnest mobile phone on the market before the deadline, only 6.18 mm. Of course, this record will soon be broken by vivo X3 ▼

In terms of cameras, Xiaomi 2S (32G) and Z5 mini both use 13 million cameras, while P6 uses 8 million pixel cameras, all of which have led fill lights ▼

All three mobile phones are equipped with a speaker at the back of the body, Z5 mini and P6 are at the bottom, and 2S speaker is at the left of the camera ▼

The headphone connectors of Z5 mini and Xiaomi 2S are on the top of the machine ▼

The headphone hole of P6 is set at the lower left side of the body in a very unusual position, which means that it will cause inconvenience when using the direct plug earphone ▼

As for the body material, Z5 mini and 2S both use the form of removable back cover, while the latter can replace the battery. The purpose of the former is to insert SIM card and TF card ▼

Screen display

The three mobile phones all use IPS and full fit technology. Of course, the LCD panel itself will be different. From the perspective of screen expressiveness, the three mobile phones are at an excellent level in terms of convenient color performance (left P6, middle Z5 mini, right Xiaomi 2S) ▼

When it is displayed in black, it can be seen that all three have a certain degree of light leakage (left P6, middle Z5 mini, right Xiaomi 2S) ▼

When displaying bright colors, P6 is restored well (upper 2S, middle Z5 mini, lower P6) ▼

Original drawing ▼

In red, Z5 mini performs better in flower details than the other two, while P6 is closer to the original picture (upper 2S, middle Z5 mini, lower P6) ▼

Original drawing ▼

When discussing the three screens, it is not necessary to make a deep comparison in terms of color temperature and saturation. This is because the three mobile phones have relevant settings for screen color to choose from, so the test only represents the color performance by default. Different screen batches and user settings will cause great changes in the results.

Xiaomi 2S supports the adjustment of color temperature and saturation ▼

Z5 mini has three image enhancement modes, which also affect color temperature and saturation ▼

P6 provides adjustment of color temperature, and the adjustment range is quite large ▼

For the current mainstream IPS technology screens, we will be satisfied with the performance of the visual angle. Of course, the three phones are no exception. Even the diagonal angle comparison will not have too much distortion (left P6, middle Z5 mini, right Xiaomi 2S) ▼

Screen visibility test under sunlight ▼

In terms of screen fineness, all three use 720P screens. The size of Xiaomi 2S screen is 4.3 inches, and the PPI reaches 342, while P6 and Z5 mini are 4.7 inches, and the PPI is 312, which exceeds the "retina" standard. From the actual effect, under normal use, the three screens are fine enough ▼

UI

I believe everyone is familiar with the MIUI of Xiaomi 2S. After upgrading the latest V5 version, the MIUI has improved in both function and appearance. Because of its excellent performance, it has been transplanted to many other mobile phones. For those who have used Huawei mobile phones, the Emotion UI is also very familiar, and P6 has also been updated to version 1.6, which has improved in many details. Z5 mini also uses a customized Android system. In the past, we saw a customized system based on Android 4.1 on Z5, but this time it is based on Android 4.2.2.

The secondary menu (left Xiaomi 2S, middle Z5 mini, right P6) ▼ has been canceled for the three UIs of the system launcher

Unlocking interface. The unlocking interface of MIUI V5 supports four-way unlocking shortcuts by default, while the Emotion UI 1.6 supports the function of sliding left and right to take photos and unlock. Of course, the two UIs can change themes and different unlocking interfaces. Nubia's UI is unlocked by long press, and also integrates the Android 4.2 unlocking function. You can quickly access music and photos (left Xiaomi 2S, middle Z5 mini, right P6) ▼ by sliding left and right on the edge of the screen

For the drop-down bar, MIUI uses two labels to separate the contents of the drop-down bar, namely, system notification and full screen switch. Although it is still Android 4.1, it has the same idea as Android 4.2 drop-down bar. Although both Nubia and Emotion UI are based on Android 4.2.2, the logic of the drop-down bar is the same as that of Android 4.1, which places notifications and shortcuts on the same page. In addition, it is worth mentioning that Nubia also places shortcuts at the bottom, which is convenient for single hand operation (left Xiaomi 2S, middle Z5 mini, right P6) ▼

Task management. All three support one click task cleaning. P6 has the details of available memory in addition to the task screenshot preview, while MIUI V5 and Nubia lack preview and memory information (left Xiaomi 2S, middle Z5 mini, right P6) ▼

In the setting interface, MIUI V5 and Emotion UI 1.6 both use the design of two columns, which are common settings and all settings, while the setting of nubia is the same as that of native, using a long list to put down all settings (left Xiaomi 2S, middle Z5 mini, right P6) ▼

Compared with the native Android system, the systems of these three phones have been improved to varying degrees, and many of their own features have also been added. The following is a screenshot of some of their features:

MIUI V5

Full screen folder and weather application ▼

Free desktop and auto start management ▼

nubia UI

Somatosensory action and accessories app (hardware support required) ▼

Support multi-function puzzle, GIF album and system backup function ▼

Emotion UI 1.6

System permission management and hiding of navigation bar ▼

Self start management and power saving management ▼

In general, MIUI is the most versatile one, which is also related to the accumulation of brands. Of course, too much function integration also puts forward new requirements for system resources. Nubia's UI is relatively close to native Android, and many of its own features are added on this basis, but more work needs to be done to beautify the system. After a year of development, we can see that the Emotion UI has also made many improvements in many details, and hopes to fully cover its functions, but it still lacks some impressive points. From the perspective of the smoothness of the system, the smoothness of the three UIs is relatively high.

performance

The three mobile phones in this comparison use different SoCs. The Z5 mini and Xiaomi 2S both use Qualcomm processors, namely APQ8064 1.5GHz and APQ8064T 1.7GHz. They are equipped with Adreno 320 GPUs, which can easily cope with 720P resolution. In terms of CPU, APQ8064 uses the Krait 200 core, and APQ8064T uses the Krait 300 core. But P6 uses the Hisense K3V2E 1.5GHz processor based on Cortex-A9, and is equipped with GC4000. What's the difference between their performance? Let's see through actual measurement.

Theoretical performance

Anrabbit evaluation 3.4

The commonly used scoring software supports OpenGL ES 3.0 after being updated to the latest version, but it has no impact on the three mobile phones we tested this time, because this technology will not be supported until Android 4.3 (left Xiaomi 2S, middle Z5 mini, right P6) ▼

From the score, Xiaomi 2S has a strong performance, which also benefits from the powerful performance of APQ8064T. However, Z5 mini has a certain gap with Xiaomi 2S in RAM performance and floating point performance due to its inferior frequency and architecture. It is worth noting that the graphics performance of Xiaomi 2S and Z5 mini are at the same level. The P6 has a big gap with the other two mobile phones in this score, which is also limited by the poor processing ability of the K3V2E.

3DMark

In the GPU performance test, the scores of Z5 mini and Xiaomi 2S are relatively close, and carefully look at the GPU test scores. Z5 mini is higher than 2S. It can be seen that the gap between APQ8064 and APQ8064T can be ignored in the 3DMark test, and more attention is paid to the optimization of GPU performance (left Xiaomi 2S, middle Z5 mini, right P6) ▼

GFXBench 2.7.2

GFXBenchmark is our common GLBenchmark in the past. After the update to version 2.7, higher requirements are put forward for GPU performance, and more stringent requirements are placed on GPU shader performance. In this test, we still found that the GPU score of Z5 mini is higher than that of 2S. It can be seen that Nubia is still unique in terms of graphics performance optimization (left Xiaomi 2S, middle Z5 mini, right P6) ▼

Sunspider 1.0

For web Javascript, we used Chrome Beta V29 for testing (the lower the score, the better). The best performance Xiaomi 2S has not yet reached the 1000ms mark. The performance of P6 is very poor. Although the Cortex-A9 processor is used, the performance of this test is a bit disappointing (left Xiaomi 2S, middle Z5 mini, right P6) ▼

Software decoding

Video software decoding is also an important test item to measure the general performance of CPU. This test item tests the multithreading performance of CPU, which is different from video hard solution. It is a method to test the general computing power of CPU, and multi-core processors will be used. The test here is a 1080P 60fps ref=16 MP4 video. Use BSPlayer version 1.9 to test ▼

2S, average 30 frames ▼

Z5 mini， Average 17 frames ▼

P6， Average 14 frames ▼

Due to the advanced CPU architecture and high frequency, it is understandable that Xiaomi 2S performed well in this test, while Z5 mini only opened dual cores during the test, so the number of frames is not too high. In addition to not being able to fully open the quad core, P6 also has a serious frequency reduction problem, so the number of frames is the lowest.

Game Test

Large games can relatively reflect the SoC strength of mobile phones, especially the ability of mobile phones in graphics processing. Here, Modern Warfare 4 and Extreme Speed 17 are used as test items.

Xiaomi 2S

Modern war 4, high special effects, average 39 frames ▼

Top speed car 17, high special effect, average 38 frames ▼

Z5 mini

Modern war 4, high special effects, average 30 frames ▼

Top speed car 17, high special effect, average 43 frames ▼

Modern war 4, medium special effects, average 14 frames ▼

Top speed car 17, high special effect, average 18 frames ▼

From these two games, since Z5 mini and Xiaomi 2S both use Adreno 320, and the frequency is 400MHz, their performance will be similar in theory, but in actual measurement, the performance of modern war 4 Xiaomi 2S is much better, while the Z5 mini in Top Speed Car 17 is better than Xiaomi 2S. However, P6 was again at a disadvantage in this test, which also showed that the GC4000's screen performance at the 720P level was obviously insufficient.

Let's take a look at the comparison chart. Let's take the previous 3DMark graphics test as a game scenario and compare it. It can be seen that although Z5 mini and 2S both use Adreno 320 GPUs and are at a disadvantage in terms of processing capacity, the overall graphics performance is slightly superior, which shows that the optimization in this area is satisfactory. However, due to the limitation of its own hardware, P6 is far from the other two mobile phones, and it is far from the mobile phone using Adreno 320 in terms of running scores and games.

Hardware decoding

In addition to CPU and GPU performance, the video hardware decoding performance of SoC is also a part of our concern. We use the following video to test the video decoding of these three mobile phones, and the software used is BSPlayer+MXLayer:

720P group

FLV AOM OP, 1280 × 720, H.263
MP4 Jay Chou's Double Cut Staff, 1280 × 720, H.264 High Profile L5.1， Bit rate 17M
AVI The Circle of Realm trailer, 1280 × 720, Xvid
WMV Microsoft WMVHD official video, 1280 × 720, VC-1, MP@HL
RMVB Dark God Theater, 1280 × 720, RV40
FLV Lord of the Rings, 1280 × 720, HEVC, 1000kbps

1080P group

MP4 Clannad OP ，1920×1080，H.264 High Profile L5. ref16
MKV Conan Theater Edition 15 trailer, 1920 × 1080, H.264 Main Profile L4.0， Audio coding AC-3
WMV Microsoft WMVHD official video, 1440 × 1080, VC-1, MP@HL

The results are as follows:

The test results show that Xiaomi 2S has the worst hard solution ability, and only four videos in the test can be hard solved normally. Compared with the 2S, the Z5 mini can hard decode 1080P mp4 video, and the P6 performs better than the other two mobile phones with Qualcomm processors. It can hard decode WMV video normally.

photograph

All three mobile phones regard taking pictures as their selling points. Among them, the Xiaomi 2S 32G uses Sony's 13 megapixel stack camera, while the Z5 mini is a 13 megapixel backlit camera. It adds functions that can only be seen on SLR cameras such as locking AE/AF, focusing, and light measuring point separation, and it also adds a physical shutter key, while the P6 is a 8 megapixel stack camera, It mainly focuses on macro and night scene shooting. First, let's take a look at the photo interfaces of the three mobile phones:

The photographing interface of Xiaomi 2S is dominated by round icons, and the setting button is in the upper right corner ▼

After entering camera settings, you can set some parameters ▼

P6's photo taking interface is also relatively simple. Some parameters of the camera can be adjusted in the settings, but it is depressing that the double click shutter on the emotion UI 1.5 has been canceled ▼

Z5 mini's photographing interface is relatively complex, which can be divided into three modes: automatic, professional and fun. The professional mode adds professional functions such as locking AE/AF, which can be more convenient for users to take photos together with the physical shutter key ▼

Fun mode includes special effect camera, panorama mode, timed continuous shooting and other functions, and it also adds multiple exposures ▼