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.
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Redmyth79 - Friday, September 13, 2019 - link
What's better, the Mi 9Tpro or K20pro is not close to the Mi 9 in overall performance nor is it a flagship like the Mi 9.The Mi 9 has better display with better glass as well being Gorilla glass 6 vs 5, better DCI-P3 profile and HDR10.
IR blaster, better bands,
Better cameras 16 vs 13 and 12 vs 8
Better cooling and performance overall by far without overheating.
Better camera app.
NFC over the K20pro version yet to fully know on the Mi 9Tpro
The only thing the Mi9t or K20 variant have over the Mi 9 is the battery, everything else the Mi 9 clearly out does them in.
tdrsy - Saturday, September 14, 2019 - link
Would have liked to see how OnePlus 7 pro fares now instead of the likes of Magic, Shark or even G8. Looks like OnePlus 7 pro have quite improved now going by recent comparisons. For example comparison with Note 10+ in review of Note10+ on Gsmarena.Andrei Frumusanu - Saturday, September 14, 2019 - link
Unfortunately currently I don't have the OP7Pro.realbabilu - Saturday, September 14, 2019 - link
I suggest a photoshoot shootout contest 855 series preferably blindfold by readers since the photo results are subjective.Dragonstongue - Saturday, September 14, 2019 - link
blekk @ 3k battery size, they should be using their "standard" 4k or larger, I personally care less at this point if 4nm, 7nm super amazing god ARM cpu...I want/need battery AND 3.5mm with also good speaker quality overall ...nothing like being "forced" to plug in every day if not every couple of hours because they them phone makers to damn @#$ cheap to put good size batteries in
FLAGSHIP devices
that like getting the most $$$$$$$$$$ crazy car you can get, just to see it runs with a gas tank that barely holds 1/2 the amount if reasonably can....
WHY !!!!!!!!!!!!!
sleeperclass - Tuesday, September 17, 2019 - link
As a user of the Mi 9 for a couple of months now. It is Superb. I paid $900 NZD. I jumped on a smartphone pretty late. My first smartphone was a Motorla Atrix 2, then Apple iphone 6 and now the Xiaomi Mi 9. As is evident, I keep my phone for a long time. I have to admit that I got caught into the iOs space and would have loved to continue with Apple. Their eco system is flawless and all of it just works like a charm. It will end up locking you in and the experience is unparalleled but an XR was going to set me back no less than $1400 for a 64gb variant. Prices have dropped as I type this, to $1150 which is pretty good. Getting back to the Mi 9. It took me a while to get myself to buy this phone. The usual and endless You Tubing and Googling on the good and bad of the Mi 9. Impressions were all positive, I took the plunge and I have no regrets. Took a bit to re adjust to Android and its been a big change from my Atrix experience. The phone is snappy to do just about anything. My son hammered it with some gaming and it just flies. I had reservations on the battery and end up with 50% or sometimes more by the end of each day. Definitely not a heavy user. While a bigger battery is good to have, most users won't have a problem with the 3300mAh battery. Charging is fast too with the supplied wired charger. The Camera gets the exposure right for the most part. It does tend to add some saturation to the colors though. Videos are alright but I have seen the occasional stutter during play back while moving the camera. I guess electronic image stabilization can only do so much. Have not tried night mode. The only hardware complaint I have with this phone is the weak external mono audio via that sole bottom mount speaker. Software wise, MIUI can add some irritants via adverts as already reported in the review. It does not come in the way of day to day use. It is only when you use the Cleaner and Security App, you tend to notice advertisements floating around the screen. What I cannot forgive them for, and this has been reported by other Xiaomi users is the little app notifications icons can disappear on the top edge o the screen. It shows once and disappears. Unless you pull down the Notification Drawer, you won't notice the icons or notifications ever again. There has to be a better way to implement this.Al in all, a happy Mi 9 user experience.
NXTwoThou - Tuesday, September 17, 2019 - link
It's the rom. Xiaomi has 3 different roms. Global(10.2.9.0 PFAMIXM), China(10.2.25.0 PFACNXM), and EEA(also known as EU, but not .eu 10.2.26.0 PFAEUXM). They have beta trees, Global(9.5.23) and China(9.9.3). The China beta version is the root of everything that then gets eventually split out into all the others. It typically gets updated every week while the Global beta might be every month and the "official" every few months. I find the version numbering confusing as hell as 9.9.3 is a great deal more advanced than 10.2.25. Things get even more confusing when you look at xiaomi.eu. They basically take the china beta builds, complete the language translations, remove the ads, and do a few tweaks. They have a stable and beta. Beta currently is 9.9.6 and stable 10.2.16.0. Unfortunately they don't keep up with the stable version very much, there's such a push for the weekly beta versions. Honestly, the betas have been incredibly stable. For reference, the notification issue was fixed back in April. Why that's not fixed in the "official" roms, I have no clue except there's no telling how far behind the betas those are. I strongly suggest looking into moving to xiaomi.eu betas if they don't push you out a working "official" build next week along with the MIUI 11 stuff.Jetfire93 - Monday, March 2, 2020 - link
Hey Andrei nice and detailed reviewI just know what is mi sound enhancer and how it affects audio quality and is it different from Snapdragon audio+ equaliser