Over at the IMP3Net forum, iambillbil has posted his hardware evaluation of the iFive Mini 4 engineering sample [Google Translate]. A portion of the post is locked, but some of that information is here.
There are several surprises in it!
1) The first surprise is that, as measured, the screen is second only to the iPad Mini 2 in terms of brightness — even beating the Xiaomi MiPad. Five didn’t dim the screen this time.
2) Although it has ten-point multitouch, the firmware on the engineering sample was buggy and could not do full ten-point correctly. This is expected to be fixed in the final production model.
3) Speaker volume is good (although I notice the absence of the iPad Mini 2 in the chart!).
4) That above is the test of EMMC internal storage. He seems to be brief about it, saying:
Five elements of internal storage mini4 speed read 50, write 22, but read and write performance belongs to the upper level
In another thread, he’s asked by someone (not me) about the suitability of the iFive Mini 4 for reading large PDFs. He says it would do fine with the EMMC and RAM (RAM is covered later).
5) CPU benchmarks:
He doesn’t run AnTuTu (although a photo of the screen shows he’s installed it).
6) Surprisingly, it correctly recognized a FAT32-formatted 64GB microSD card (which also sits recessed):
So it’s not limited to 32GB microSD cards. I know some people will want exFAT due to large video files. That’s not mentioned and we’ll have to wait for buyers to cover that.
Now we get into the hidden information and the next big surprise.
7) Despite the all-metal back, WiFi performance is excellent. iambillbil says:
Never thought an all-metal casing equipment, to maintain the effect of the 7 m wifi still outside normal speed, so I was very surprised. 3188 changed some of the inadequacies of the machine above the previous five elements.
Separated by a wall, outside, seven meters away from his wireless router and there was no degradation of WiFi throughput speed. I hope this will be the case in production machines too.
8) Battery life is … adequate. Quoting:
Under the premise of maximum brightness than 370, the new security Bunny hardware tests, electricity, cpu full load from 90% to 15%, wifi turned on the premise of maintaining the 2 hours 02 minutes of continuous video playback and 3d soft decoding calculation , repeatedly ran sub-project website. During machine high fever, the whole machine are hot.
Temperature slightly lower than before tested Taipower x89hd, slightly lower than the millet flat, but using 8392 chip and five basic elements 3gs similar calories are still there, of course, the overall temperature is higher than the 3188 plan.
Can be seen in the test two hours inside, 98 percent of all electricity used to maintain the brightness of the 370’s screen, so a conservative estimate of 80 brightness settings when it can be used more than 5.5 hours. Compared to other styles of 7.85 inches, this machine life medium.
With maximum brightness, WiFi turned on, using an AnTuTu video test that used software decoding, the machine lasted two hours and two minutes. The machine also got hot — but not as hot as the Teclast X89HD or the Xiaomi MiPad; perhaps as hot as the iFive Mini 3GS. With 370 being maximum brightness, at a setting of 80 (about one-fourth) the battery is estimated to last six hours. As usual, no Chinese Android tablet can match iPad Mini 2 battery life.
9) RAM test:
Quoting:
Five Elements mini4 memory.
Five elements mini4, 3288 motherboard uses dual channel ddr2 memory, memory bandwidth 8.5g, memory throughput speeds are basically in effect 1966-2055mb per second, pipo p4 motherboard also speculation commodity machines with a solution.
However, the use of dual-channel memory ddr3 3288 motherboard, memory bandwidth 9.6g, throughput speeds can basically achieve 4888MB / s, pipo p4 engineering machine to use this board; pipo p1, visual also use this board.
(K1 memory speeds around 2788, a80 memory speed of about 3944, x89 3g memory speed of 3735 about 7666. Around x89H of ddr3 memory 8444)
RAM speed and bandwidth aren’t what they could be, nowhere near that of the iPad Mini 2 (which isn’t listed in the chart). Whether users will notice that or not, I don’t know. I’m thinking that if a custom ROM with MultiWindow Android 2.0 is created, users will see some effects.
10) There’s no HDMI-out but Miracast worked and was smooth.
11) There were no surprises with Bluetooth.
12) There’s no GPS, period.
13) There’s a gyroscope.
14) USB On The Go worked:
15) Rooting of the engineering sample firmware worked:
I will skip the Google Translate of his conclusion and clean it up into better English:
1) The screen is second only to the iPad Mini 2.
2) Even with an all-metal back, WiFi is surprisingly good.
3) Something is wrong with touch, with recognition being off. There’s no less than five-point multitouch. [This will likely be fixed in the final firmware.]
4) Having a gyroscope is good.
5) The weak point is the battery life. But production machines can differ from engineering samples so the final judgment remains to be made.
6) Even though it generates less heat than the Intel 3735D and Allwinner A80, there’s still heat.
7) If there was a version with 3G, voice calling, light and proximity sensors, plus GPS, it would be a perfect tablet.
8) For people who think a screen is the most important part of a tablet, this is the one to get.
Everyone should keep in mind this is an engineering sample. I’m personally skeptical about the battery life and WiFi performance. I need to see what actual owners have to say about both of those.
If iambillbil continues his tradition, there will be a third post, his performance evaluation.
Previously here:
iFive Mini 4: iambillbil Appearance Evaluation
iFive Mini 4: More Photos, Three Videos
iFive Mini 4: More Photos, Benchmarks
Five Adds iFive Mini 4 To Their Site
First Photos: iFive Mini 4
iFive Mini 4: Pre-Sales Begin August 1st
Five Shows iFive Mini 4 Box
Five Technology Announces iFive Mini 4
iFive Mini 4: First AnTuTu Score
iFive Mini 4: More Official Details
iFive Mini 4 Specs Released
iFive Mini 4 Teased
iFive Mini 4: New Information
Rockchip 3288-Based Retina-Class iFive Mini 3! [Updated: Mini 4!]
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