Mobile phones have become an indispensable part of our lives. And it is quite understandable why. With the developments that the smartphone industry has seen, it is only justified that we are in awe of our devices.
Smartphone manufacturers understand this affinity that people have towards their smartphones. As a result, they constantly push to make better devices, with a better processor, better OS, better camera, and almost everything that can make the device more sellable.
In this article, we discuss one of those features that many smartphones boast of today: the processor. With phones fitted with octa-core processors now available, it is about time that we measure the heights that this particular mobile processor can scale. Take a look:
MediaTek has been the company behind pushing the world towards accepting the octa-core processors. As the name suggests, these are processors that have eight different cores that are assigned to perform specific tasks.
For instance, MediaTek’s latest octa-core processor, the MT6592 has two sets of four cores that are based on ARM’s big.LITTLE concept. Here, there are highly powerful four cores present to handle demanding tasks like 3D gaming, and four low powered cores that look after light usage.
(Image Courtesy: Android Community)
However, tech savvy will tell you that while having eight cores as opposed to two or four might look great on paper, the real world story presents a stark contrast of this believed the truth.
Is Octacore Better Than Quad-core Or Dual-ore?
Benchmarks tests run on Antutu show that while octa-core processors show a great multi-core score, they lag behind in single-core scores. This implies that every single core in an octa-core processor is less powerful as compared to single cores in quad-core and dual-core processors.
Take for instance Qualcomm’s 820 which is the company’s flagship quad-core processor that powers most of the premium devices today. While this particular processor has half the cores of an octa-core, it still outperforms any octa-core based phone in real world usage.
(Image Courtesy: Review's Water)
Even better, Apple, A8, which is a dual-core processor, tends to perform even better than Qualcomm’s 820.
So, what does it mean? Quite simply, it is a sweet reminder that bigger numbers always don’t tell the complete story. There are many other aspects that come together to determine the actual performance of a device, and the number of cores in its processor is not one of them. The hardware-software integration, for instance, is perhaps the factor that dictates how a device feels and performs in the real world.
What do you think of octa-core processors? Let us know in the comments below.
(Featured Image Courtesy: Direct Mobiles)
