What’s the Point of Octa-core?
THL and Starmobile have already released their octa-core offerings and so far both the Starmobile Diamond X1 and the THL T100 are very strong contenders in the Php13,000-Php14,000 smartphone price range. We were fortunate enough to have had considerable time with both devices and we’ve written our full reviews about them already. This puts us in a good position to share with you guys our thoughts on Octa-core smartphones in general. What do they bring to the table? What makes them special? Is it a considerable upgrade from quad-core?
Based on our two reviews we’ve narrowed it down so far to two major benefits.
It Delivers Global Flagship Performance at a Fraction of the Price
The first and most obvious benefit is PERFORMANCE. However we have a big caveat here. In our tests we can honestly say that we only got almost zero-lag only with the Starmobile Diamond X1. This is because the Diamond X1 has a resolution of 1280 x 720 and not Full HD at 1920 x 1080. However the over-all quality of the display is still very much impressive thanks to the IPS and OGS technology. No matter what we threw at the Starmobile Diamond X1 it handled perfectly.
The difference between the performance of a MediaTek octa-core smartphone and a MediaTek quad-core is very noticeable. On the numbers side Antutu scores the octa-core powered devices well over 27,000 while the best we’ve seen with MediaTek quad-core is 17,000. In real life usage this means faster loading time, smoother multi-tasking, and a more pleasant gaming experience, especially if you’re into heavy mobile gaming like Dead Trigger 2, Asphalt Heat 8, or Wild Blood.
The performance you get out of a MediaTek powered smartphone is comparable (or even superior) to global smartphones running Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core processors (definitely not at the level yet of Qualcomm Snapdragon 800). You get all that power at a much lower price point.
The only real risk are future Android updates. We haven’t seen a local brand upgrade from Jelly Bean 4.2 to 4.3, much less 4.4.
It Delivers Near Optimal Full HD Experience
The second major benefit is that MediaTek Octa-core powered smartphones offer the best Full HD experience at the lowest price possible. However note that there are still traces of lag. The good news though is that you can enhance the over-all experience by replacing the default launcher of the T100 (we went with Nova Pro).
There’s still a big difference though with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 powered Full HD smartphone versus a MediaTek octa-core powered Full HD smartphone. The most obvious one is LTE support but more importantly is that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 gives almost zero lag user experience. However smartphones with this chipset tend to cost 250% more than the MediaTek octa-core smartphones, hehe.
So what’s the point of octa-core? Simply put it gives you global flagship performance with an HD display at a fraction of the price or you can get a near optimal Full HD smartphone experience. This is based on our reviews of both the Starmobile Diamond X1 and the THL T100. We’ll validate and confirm this once we get our hands on other octa-core powered devices in the coming weeks.
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