Screenshot 2018-10-17 07.10.50.jpg

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is an all-out flagship not just because of its design, big battery and impressive new triple camera system, it's also the first Android phone to have the newest generation of mobile chips.

We're talking about the new 7 nanometer chip technology that Huawei has been working on for years to bring us its crown jewel, the new Kirin 980 system chip on the Mate 20 Pro. In comparison, all other Android Snapdragon 845 flagship phones currently are still based on the older, 10nm technology. And speaking of the competition, it was actually Apple who was the first to bring a 7nm chip in a real-world device with its iPhone XS series.

So what should you know about the new Kirin 980 chip inside the Mate 20 Pro? It has a curious architecture with two big cores, two middle cores and four LITTLE cores, or a total of eight CPU cores. You have two big A76 cores clocked at up to 2.6GHz, two middle A76 cores running at up to 1.92GHz, and four A55 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. There's a new Mali G76 on board for better performance in gaming as well.

So with all this in mind, how does the Mate 20 Pro perform against its rivals? And how does the Kirin 980 perform against the Snapdragon 845, the Apple A12 Bionic, and the Apple A11? Let's look at the benchmarks to get a better idea.

Screenshot 2018-10-17 07.12.14.jpg

The Kirin 980 is the first Android chip built on the new 7nm technology

GeekBench 4

Our first stop is the Geekbench benchmark that focuses on measuring CPU performance. The first test here focuses on single-core performance, stress-testing the new Cortex A76 cores inside the Kirin 980.

Screenshot 2018-10-17 07.15.02.jpg

Then, we move on to multi-core performance. This will show how all the eight cores perform in tandem and what you can expect in terms of performance for more intense tasks.

Screenshot 2018-10-17 07.16.56.jpg

AnTuTu

The AnTuTu benchmark is a complex, all-in-one test that measures various aspect of the performance, including CPU and GPU, and it comes up with one number to show the overall score of the device.

The Mate 20 Pro here scores higher than any other Android phone, but still falls short of the performance that the iPhone XS series offer.

Screenshot 2018-10-17 07.19.16.jpg

GFXBench

Finally, we look at GFX Bench to see the graphics power of the new Mali G76 chip inside the Mate 20 Pro.

This GPU is supposed to be a big leap over previous generation graphics chips, but interestingly, the Galaxy Note 9 outscores the Mate 20 Pro in this test consistently. The Mate also strangely produces vastly different results with every run of this benchmark (we've included the highest scores here).

Screenshot 2018-10-17 07.22.43.jpg

Final Words

Overall, the Mate 20 Pro with the Kirin 980 is a big step forward for Huawei.

It's the fastest chip on Android in most areas, but it's no match for the Apple A12 Bionic, which will be the chip to beat in 2019.

Still, if you prefer an Android device and you want absolute power, the Mate 20 Pro is probably your best choice at the moment.