The Xiaomi Mi9 Review: Flagship Performance At a Mid-Range Price
by Andrei Frumusanu on September 13, 2019 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Xiaomi
- Snapdragon 855
- Xiaomi Mi9
Machine Learning Inference Performance
AIMark 3
AIMark makes use of various vendor SDKs to implement the benchmarks. This means that the end-results really aren’t a proper apples-to-apples comparison, however it represents an approach that actually will be used by some vendors in their in-house applications or even some rare third-party app.
In AIMark, the Mi9 offers the needed library support from Qualcomm for the benchmark to work. In terms of performance, the device ranks high, although it’s just slightly edged out by the rest of the Snapdragon 855 devices.
AIBenchmark 3
AIBenchmark takes a different approach to benchmarking. Here the test uses the hardware agnostic NNAPI in order to accelerate inferencing, meaning it doesn’t use any proprietary aspects of a given hardware except for the drivers that actually enable the abstraction between software and hardware. This approach is more apples-to-apples, but also means that we can’t do cross-platform comparisons, like testing iPhones.
We’re publishing one-shot inference times. The difference here to sustained performance inference times is that these figures have more timing overhead on the part of the software stack from initialising the test to actually executing the computation.
AIBenchmark 3 - NNAPI CPU
We’re segregating the AIBenchmark scores by execution block, starting off with the regular CPU workloads that simply use TensorFlow libraries and do not attempt to run on specialized hardware blocks.
The CPU results in AI Benchmark are relatively mixed in terms of their positioning for the Mi9. In some of them, the Mi9 falls in amongst the last S855 devices, while in others, it more in the middle of the pack. Overall, this is just a matter of how the scheduler and DVFS is tuned on the Mi9. It’s to be noted that the differences between the devices here is very minor, with only a 10% difference between the best and worst Snapdragon 855 devices.
AIBenchmark 3 - NNAPI INT8
In the INT8 tests which are accelerated on the SoC’s Hexagon DSP, we’re seeing the Mi9 lands in the middle of the pack again.
On the last “Cartoons” test running VGG-19, we’re seeing that the Mi9 is falling behind the rest of the pack alongside the LG G8. The reason for this is likely that the device is shipping with older NNAPI drivers than the rest of the Snapdragon 855 phones. The firmware we’ve tested this on was the latest at the time of testing in early September.
AIBenchmark 3 - NNAPI FP16
In the FP16 tests the Mi9 again ends up middle of the pack.
AIBenchmark 3 - NNAPI FP32
Finally, the FP32 test running on the GPU ends up as the last Snapdragon 855 device in the pack, although again the differences here between the devices are very small, and it’s still performing vastly better than any other non-Snapdragon device.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
96 Comments
View All Comments
Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, September 13, 2019 - link
That article is garbage, linear one axis VCM actuation isn't anywhere near the effect of real OIS.eastcoast_pete - Friday, September 13, 2019 - link
Thanks for the response! I agree that the lack of real OIS doesn't bode well for video. I also looked at the gizchina article mentioned by Redmyth here, and it seems to be more of a single axis autofocus than a multi-axis OIS. Still, if you have a chance, would like to hear how the EIS in this phone coped, especially in 4K.Redmyth79 - Friday, September 13, 2019 - link
Well I personally own or owned Galaxy S4, S5, S6, S7, S8, S8+, S9+, Note 9, LG G2, G3, G4, V20, V30, iPhone 6plus, 8plus and now a Xiaomi Mi 9. I can tell you that none are close to the photo abilities or the stabilization of the Mi 9! That's not hype but facts as I still have most my flagships today including the Note 9 which until the Note 10 was Samsung's top Note ever and it beats it day or night in photo or video and not by just a little bit.You do realize the IMX586 in the OnePlus 7pro somehow scored a 118 in Dxomark yet the Mi 9 scored a 112 but it beats it in 9 out of 10 photo reviews online especially in real world YouTube reviews. So technically it has the ability to stay with any flagship out today in photo but it's night cam is not as good as P30 pro I can promise you and pixel does extremely well there to. But the catch is that the Mi 9 has a very good ported version of Gcam online from XDA free of charge that makes its night shot awesome. Without it it still beats anything from last year minus the Pixel 3xl and this year it beats quite a few as well. But with Gcam it does great against any period but the P30 is still in my opinion in its own league.
The Zoom on the P30 is unheard of!
As for Video, check out many reviews on line especially YouTube but again check out Dxomark's review and stabilization rating on the Mi 9. It's anything but a one axis OIS lol. Xiaomi was the one that created 4 axis!
Why would they abandon it on there flagship if something new was not better? Seriously? Think about that.
Also I have a Pixel 3XL and a iPhone Max in house that I've tested the Mi 9 against personally and it beats them both rather well.
eastcoast_pete - Saturday, September 14, 2019 - link
I actually looked at the dxomark article on the Mi 9, and they did indeed give it one of their best scores for video, especially mentioning the good video stabilization in 4K. @Andrei: could you give your review unit a quick test of its video capabilities, especially the stabilization, and let us know what's what? Thanks!Bulat Ziganshin - Friday, September 13, 2019 - link
In the first night shot Mi9 Wide and Night photos are swappedairdrifting - Friday, September 13, 2019 - link
Let me guess, this doesn't work in US? Why can't we have all the good things?NXTwoThou - Friday, September 13, 2019 - link
I'm using a Mi9 6/256 Transparent edition with AT&T in the US right now.NXTwoThou - Friday, September 13, 2019 - link
Sorry, 8/256. It's the china version and covers most of the bands. I haven't had any connectivity issues in Oklahoma, but I haven't done a lot of traveling.Redmyth79 - Friday, September 13, 2019 - link
The EU global version works perfect on AT&T or T-Mobile. I have it on both.realbabilu - Saturday, September 14, 2019 - link
Just been in the us for US open. It is gave LTE for T mobile