After a superb run, the Redmi Note series finally has a challenger in India. The Honor Lite series. With the recent launch of both the Redmi Note 5 and the Honor 9 Lite, both phones have surprised users with its solid specs, but also with its performance. Thus, when it comes to the largest segment in the Indian market, it is a good time to understand just how these phones perform, beyond the top level specs. We have all heard about the EDGE the Honor 9 Lite enjoys on the cameras, operating system and design, while theRedmi Note 5 packs in a solid battery and larger screen.But if you are really into your smartphones, you will eventually zero in on performance, right? This is where we decide to run both these phones through their paces, with identical tests on their responsiveness, or quite simply, speed.And the results have been very interesting.
But first, a quick primer on the hardware that decides performance.The first big number is the number of cores in the chipset, where both these phones start off with the same number, eight.The Redmi Note 5 has the Qualcomm 625, while the Honor 9 Lite has the Kirin 659.Both these and their octa-core processors come exclusively with ARM Cortex-A53 cores. But this is where the difference starts.While all of the Snapdragon 625 cores are clocked at 2.0 GHz, the Kirin 659 plays it smart, with 4 performance cores clocked at 2.36 GHz, and four cores clocked at 1.7 GHz. The latter is basically meant to save power when the phone does not need the extra power. Thus, when the device actually needs a push, it has these four extra powerful cores to support it. Does that matter? It does, as it turns out.
We tested both the smartphones ontwo top Benchmarking apps, AnTuTu and Geekbench. Do note that before the testing, we performed a factory reset on both the devices so that we could get the actual performance. Starting with the AnTuTu Benchmarks, the Honor 9 Lite receives a total score of 88699, which is higher than the Redmi Note 5, which received 76764 points. The Honor 9 Lite was able to beat the Redmi Note 5 in each and every parameter.
Coming to the Geekbench 4 test, the Honor 9 Lite received 936 points in single-core test and 3727 in multi-core test. On the other hand, the Redmi Note 5 garnered 860 points in single-core test and 4248 in multi-core test. Yet again, the results show that the Honor 9 Lite performed better in single-core test, while the Redmi Note 5 won the multi-score test. Overall, it is safe to say that Honor 9 Lite is able to beat the Redmi Note 5 in almost all the benchmarks, which proves that it is indeed faster in terms of overall performance.
These were the benchmarking tests. In the day-to-day usage, the Honor 9 Lite felt to be more smooth and fast as compared to the Redmi Note 5. We opened the same apps and games on both the devices at the same time and we found out that multitasking experience on Honor 9 Lite was more fluid and slick as compared to the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5. While exact performance varies, a 10% differential is a safe bet in favour of the Honor 9 Lite.
With that, it’s obvious that the challenger is here to stay, even as the Redmi Note 5 will need to up its game, and fast to protect its reputation.Check out the Honor 9 lite exclusively on Flipkart.