So I was watching the launch event of the Redmi K50i and something made me smile wryly. Redmi was comparing the Antutu scores of its new phone with that of the Apple iPhone 13.
Redmi claimed that the Mediatek Dimesnity 8100 SoC in Redmi K50i is more powerful than the Apple A15 Bionic in Apple iPhone 13. Take a look at the launch event video.
Let's talk about how Redmi is wrong about this and why comparing Antutu scores doesn't mean really anything,
Mediatek Dimensity 8100 is a powerful chipset
Mediatek has taken the fight to Snapdragon with its latest flagship chipsets, Dimensity 9000 and Dimensity 8100.
Dimensity 9000 goes up straight against Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 while Dimensity 8100 goes up against Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 888 Plus.
These two came at a time when both the chipsets from Snapdragon were plagued by thermal management issues. Snapdragon itself switched out from Samsung fabrication to TSMC for its latest chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1.
Redmi was calling Dimensity 8100 better than Apple A15 Bionic, is it true?
You know Xiaomi and its launch events, its presenters exaggerate many things. And they like to compare its budget phones with iPhones in particular.
Remember this one? Redmi Note 5 Pro getting compared with iPhone X and Google Pixel 2 XL.
The same thing has happened here. Dimensity 8100 is a powerful chipset, but it is not as powerful as Apple A15 Bionic. There's Dimensity 9000 from Mediatek to compete with the real flagship chipsets.
Redmi was comparing Antutu scores. But comparing Antutu scores from one platform to another isn't the correct way to benchmark performance.
Antutu itself has mentioned it on its website about that. It is being discussed there in detail that direct comparison between platforms isn't a fair one. The difference in APIs for running the tests itself is a major issue. The Apple version uses Metal API while the Android version uses OpenGL ES and Vulkan APIs.
And Antutu itself mentions the scoring mechanisms for the Android version and iOS version are completely different.
This is an excerpt from the conclusion from Antutu:
"The test results of Antutu benchmark only support the comparison within the same system based on the same major version and not support cross-version or cross-platform comparison".
To put it simply, comparing the Antutu scores of Apple A15 Bionic and Mediatek Dimensity 8100 and claiming that Redmi K50i is more powerful than Apple iPhone 13 is laughable. Not just the Antutu benchmark, this should hold true for most other benchmarks too.
