Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime review: Mirror shot

Performance

The Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime is based on a Snapdragon 410 chipset - that's the entry-level 64-bit chipset from Qualcomm, though in 32-bit land it will be positioned in the upped mid-range. The phone runs Android 4.4.4 KitKat at the moment, a 32-bit OS, so the Grand Prime won't see the benefits of 64-bits until (if?) 5.0 Lollipop arrives.

Still, Qualcomm says that the Cortex-A53 processor outperforms Cortex-A7 and this phone has four of them clocked at 1.2GHz. There's also Adreno 306, which offers power savings instead of performance improvements over the GPU it replaces, the 305.

Starting off with Geekbench 3 we do see some improvement over the old generation processor - both the Galaxy Grand Prime and HTC Desire 510 use the A53, while the Moto G (2014) has four A7 cores at 1.2GHz and also ran Android 4.4.4 when we did the test.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Gionee Elife S5.1
  2410
• HTC Desire 510
  1471
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  1469
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  1171
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  1159
• Sony Xperia M2
  1074
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo
  1041

Basemark OS II shows a decent improvement in single-core performance for Cortex-A53 over A7, but as the Gionee Elife S5.1 shows clockspeed is more important (it's powered by Cortex-A7 at 1.7GHz). It's worth noting that neither Basemark OS II nor Basemark X detected any benchmark cheating.

Basemark OS II

Higher is better

• Gionee Elife S5.1
  613
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  526
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  504
• HTC Desire 510
  491
• Microsoft Lumia 535 Dual SIM
  414
• Sony Xperia M2
  298
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  275

Basemark OS II (single-core)

Higher is better

• Gionee Elife S5.1
  1819
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  1420
• HTC Desire 510
  1332
• Sony Xperia M2
  1164
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  1123

Basemark OS II (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Gionee Elife S5.1
  13634
• HTC Desire 510
  5484
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  5481
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  5001
• Sony Xperia M2
  4927

AnTuTu 5 gives the Galaxy Grand Prime an edge in overall performance over the Moto G and puts it on equal ground as the Desire 510 (which uses the same chipset, so no surprise here).

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

• Gionee Elife S5.1
  31452
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  21002
• HTC Desire 510
  20756
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  18245

For graphics the GPU only has to render graphics at qHD resolution - 540 x 960px, a quarter of 1080p - but it's a low-power GPU and struggles at even this resolution. The GFX benchmark is much heavier than regular games, but even 2.7 T-Rex at screen resolution is well-below the 30fps mark. Casual games should work okay, but high-end 3D games are out of the question.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Gionee Elife S5.1
  16.4
• HTC Desire 510
  15.5
• Sony Xperia M2
  15.4
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  12.8
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  10.8
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  10.6

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC Desire 510
  8.3
• Sony Xperia M2
  6.9
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  6.4
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  4.1
• Samsung Galaxy Grand 2
  4

Basemark X found a much bigger difference between the Galaxy Grand Prime/Adreno 306 and the Moto G (2014)/Adreno 305 and gave the win to the older GPU. That's quite unexpected as the Moto G has a 720p screen, nearly 80% more pixels than a qHD screen. Even the GFX scores show both phones on nearly equal ground, so the Motorola handset probably runs its GPU at a higher clock rate.

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Gionee Elife S5.1
  4150
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  3142
• HTC Desire 510
  1906
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  1904

It seems that Samsung has forgone its usual browser optimizations as the Grand Prime is among the slower devices in its price range. Kraken 1.1 measured JavaScript performance to be pretty similar to Cortex-A7 based devices, even giving a small lead to the Moto G (2014). Note that we used the Internet app on the Samsung and Chrome on the Moto G (as that's the only browser available out of the box on the mostly pure Android setup).

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Gionee Elife S5.1
  12961
• HTC Desire 510
  14171
• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  15988
• Sony Xperia M2
  18047
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  18343
• Microsoft Lumia 535 Dual SIM
  26981

Basemark 2.1 was even harsher when judging the Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime, putting it behind the low-cost Lumia 535, which has a slower chipset (quad-core Cortex-A5 and Adreno 302), but renders web pages at the same qHD resolution.

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• Motorola Moto G (2014)
  1085
• Sony Xperia M2
  903
• Gionee Elife S5.1
  868
• HTC Desire 510
  832
• Microsoft Lumia 535 Dual SIM
  480
• Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime
  413

With Android 5.0 Lollipop Google switched to a new runtime - ART - retiring the old Dalvik. Also, Lollipop has optimizations specifically for 64-bit platforms, but we're not even sure if the Grand Prime will be updated so it's no use to speculate how that will improve performance.

As it is right now, the chipset is fast enough for daily use but the advantage of the newer Cortex-A53 cores quickly fades away when compared to a higher clock Cortex-A7. The GPU is okay for casual gaming, which is the biggest kind of mobile and we couldn't really expect much better at this price range. Web browsing was a bit of a disappointment as it's clear that even lower-power hardware can do better with the right software.