HTC One (M8) And One (E8) Review: A Flagship And Its Sidekick

Results: CPU Benchmarks

AnTuTu

AnTuTu is an Android system benchmark designed to test the performance capabilities of four major aspects of mobile devices: graphics (encompassing 2D, UI, and basic 3D), CPU (fixed, floating-point, and threading), RAM (read and write), and I/O (read and write).

HTC's One (M8) performs almost identically to Google's Nexus 5, losing a little ground when it comes to RAM and CPU speed, but gaining back points thanks to a faster GPU. The Xiaomi Mi3's Tegra 4 chipset does well in this benchmark.

Basemark OS II

Rightware is an experienced multiplatform benchmark developer. The company leverages this experience with Basemark OS II, an all-in-one tool designed for measuring the overall performance of mobile devices. The test is available on all major smartphone platforms, including Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 8. Basemark OS II uses a similar approach to Geekbench, but focuses on more application-specific areas, particularly User eXperience (UX), Web browsing, and rendering performance.

Once again, the One (M8) comes close to the Nexus 5. Check out that memory benchmark result, though. Google specifies the Nexus' memory subsystem at 800 MHz, while HTC doesn't publish the One's clock rate. Once again, a higher GPU frequency helps push the One (M8)'s aggregate score to a near-tie.

Geekbench 3

Primate Labs' Geekbench is somewhat of an industry standard due to its long-standing database and wide cross-platform compatibility (Windows/OS X/Linux/iOS/Android). This simple system benchmark produces two sets of scores: single- and multi-threaded. For each, it runs a series of tests in three categories: Integer, Floating Point, and Memory. The individual results are used to calculate category scores, which, in turn, generate overall Geekbench scores.

This test is run on one core of each phone's SoC. We see the One move ahead with a higher memory score than Google's Nexus, which contrasts with the previous two benchmark results. Lets see what happens when multiple cores are utilized.

HTC's One (M8) loses ground to the Nexus, but still registers a superior memory result. Apple's iPhone 5s performs better in this test, pulling slightly ahead of HTC's entry.

MobileXPRT 2013

Principled Technologies' MobileXPRT 2013 is a modern SoC benchmark for Android. It consists of 10 real-world test scenarios split into two categories of testing: Performance and User Experience. The Performance suite contains five tests: Apply Photo Effects, Create Photo Collages, Create Slideshow, Encrypt Personal Content, and Detect Faces to Organize Photos.

It's interesting to see HTC's One (M8) trail slightly behind the Nexus again, particularly since its advertised CPU clock is slightly higher.

The User Experience suite also has five tests: List Scroll, Grid Scroll, Gallery Scroll, Browser Scroll, and Zoom and Pinch. These results are measured in frames per second. The category scores are generated by taking a geometric mean of the ratio between a calibrated machine (Motorola's Droid Razr M) and the test device for each subtest.

Although these results are all pretty close, HTC still ends up in the back of the pack. A slightly lower gallery scroll and zoom/pinch result is responsible for that position, even if we didn't notice any subjective sluggishness during our time with the One (M8).

CompuBench RS

CompuBench RS is somewhat unique, as it's the first professional RenderScript benchmark. It tests the compute performance of heterogeneous multi-core systems on Android devices that support the RenderScript API, meaning it tasks both the CPU and GPU to perform compute-oriented calculations. The physics workload is a particle simulation, the throughput workload is composed of ambient occlusion and fractal calculations, the image processing load is a combination of Gaussian blur and histogram equalization filters, the face detection workload is its own algorithm, and the graphics test renders a scene dubbed 'Province'.