There was a recent article in Bloomberg about phone maker ZTE’s increasing market share in the US. The article singled out one phone, the ZTE Maven, which costs about $60 (US).
This phrase jumped out at me: “a processor with capabilities somewhere between the iPhone 5 and 6.” The iPhone 5S could also fit that description. The ZTE Maven uses the ARM Cortex-A53, 64-bit processor running at 1.2 GHz. The Apple iPhone 5s uses the Apple Cyclone-A7 Cortex-A7 Harvard Superscalar processor running at 1.3 GHz.
We decided to put that statement to the test. We ran WebXPRT 2015 on the ZTE Maven and its score was 47. The iPhone 5s scored 100. The Maven was not even close.
As we’ve said before, the performance of a device depends on more than the GHz of its processor. For example, the ZTE Maven uses the Snapdragon 410 SoC, which was aimed at mid-level devices. The iPhone 5s uses the Apple A7, which was intended for higher-end devices. You can find side by side specs here.
Be wary when you see unsupported performance claims. As this example shows, specs can appear comparable even when the actual performance of the devices differs considerably. A good benchmark can provide insights into performance that specs alone can’t.
Eric
