Xiaomi Mi 4s review: Pushing forward

Performance

The rather affordable Xiaomi Mi 4s is powered by the upper mid-range Snapdragon 808 chip, which packs a six-core processor, Adreno 418 GPU and 3 GB of RAM. That's the same SoC to power the Xiaomi Mi 4c and the LG G4.

The processor of the S808 chip has two powerful Cortex-A57 cores ticking at 1.82GHz, and four energy-efficient Cortex-A53 blocks running at 1.44GHz. A single of those Cortex-A57 cores is quite a beast and it easily outruns any Cortex-A53 CPU (K4 Note, Honor 5X), but scores behind the Cortex-A72 within the Snapdragon edition of the Redmi Note 3.

GeekBench 3 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  1573
• Xiaomi Mi 4s
  1254
• Huawei Honor 5X
  705
• Lenovo Vibe K4 Note
  628

Then there is the multi-core GeekBench 3, where core count matters and the Mi 4s falls behind some of the popular eight-core smartphones, but its score is still respectable.

GeekBench 3 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Helio X10)
  4537
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  3570
• Sony Xperia M5 Dual
  3554
• LG Nexus 5X
  3527
• Xiaomi Mi 4c
  3321
• HTC One A9
  3209
• Xiaomi Mi 4s
  3147
• Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)
  3061
• Huawei Honor 5X
  3053
• Xiaomi Redmi 3
  2842
• Lenovo Vibe K4 Note
  2745
• Motorola Moto X Play
  2608
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  2336
• OnePlus X
  2297

The compound AnTuTu test puts the Mi 4s better than the Helio X10-powered Redmi Note 3, equally capable as the HTC One A9, but behind the Snapdragon model of the Redmi Note 3. The Snapdragon 650 with the Redmi Note 3 also offers a hexa-core processor, but instead of 2x Cortex-A57, it has 2x Cortex-A72, which matters a lot.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  75051
• HTC One A9
  60324
• Xiaomi Mi 4s
  59850
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Helio X10)
  45474
• Lenovo Vibe K4 Note
  38359
• Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)
  35689
• Huawei Honor 5X
  35469

The BaseMark OS II 2.0 test, which gauges CPU, GPU, Memory, System, and Web performance, puts the Xiaomi Mi 4s on top of every other smartphone in its price bracket. The Nexus 5X (also S808 chip) came up with a notch better result, probably because of Android Marshmallow optimizations.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• LG Nexus 5X
  1591
• Xiaomi Mi 4s
  1545
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  1537
• Xiaomi Mi 4c
  1233
• OnePlus X
  1213
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Helio X10)
  1018
• HTC One A9
  944
• Huawei Honor 5X
  874
• Sony Xperia M5 Dual
  860
• Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)
  833
• Motorola Moto X Play
  809
• Xiaomi Redmi 3
  804
• Lenovo Vibe K4 Note
  729
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  296

We already know the Adreno 418 is perfectly capable of handling itself under load quite well when it comes to a 1080p display and the benchmark results confirm this.

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• LG Nexus 5X
  16
• Xiaomi Mi 4c
  15
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  14
• Xiaomi Mi 4s
  13
• OnePlus X
  9.9
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Helio X10)
  8.5
• Sony Xperia M5 Dual
  8.4
• HTC One A9
  6.4
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  6.2
• Motorola Moto X Play
  5.8
• Xiaomi Redmi 3
  5.8
• Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)
  5.7
• Huawei Honor 5X
  5.6
• Lenovo Vibe K4 Note
  4.2

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• LG Nexus 5X
  11
• Xiaomi Mi 4c
  10
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  9.1
• Xiaomi Mi 4s
  8.1
• Sony Xperia M5 Dual
  4.5
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Helio X10)
  4
• HTC One A9
  3.8
• Lenovo Vibe K4 Note
  2.6

BaseMark X, a demanding GPU bench, says the Adreno 418 within the Mi 4s is better than the Adreno 405 (One A9), Mali-T720MP3 (K4 Note), and the PowerVR G6200 (Redmi Note 3 Helio X10). The Adreno 510 within the Redmi Note 3 with Snapdragon 650 came out more capable, though.

Basemark X

Higher is better

• LG Nexus 5X
  16609
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  14732
• Xiaomi Mi 4s
  12990
• Xiaomi Mi 4c
  12096
• OnePlus X
  10572
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Helio X10)
  8540
• Sony Xperia M5 Dual
  7780
• HTC One A9
  6617
• Xiaomi Redmi 3
  5108
• Motorola Moto X Play
  5032
• Huawei Honor 5X
  5009
• Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016)
  4947
• Xiaomi Mi 4i
  4875
• Lenovo Vibe K4 Note
  4072

The dual glass design of the Xiaomi Mi 4s might be beautiful, but it takes its toll on heat management. The Mi 4s becomes warm rather quickly (though, not hot) and we noticed the throttling kicking in on some benchmarks.

You can see this perfectly on the lengthy BaseMark ES 3.1, which took about 40 minutes to complete. The Mi 4s should out a similar result to Mi 4c and Nexus 5X, as both have the same GPU, but it didn't.

The throttling isn't detectable in real life, even when playing games, so you shouldn't have any worries. The phone doesn't get particularly hot either but it's something you should keep in mind.

Basemark ES 3.1 / Metal

Higher is better

• LG Nexus 5X
  306
• Xiaomi Mi 4c
  248
• Xiaomi Mi 4s
  219
• HTC One A9
  132

The Xiaomi Mi 4s offers more than adequate performance and will handle anything you can run or play. It has the same hardware as the LG G4, and the 3GB RAM will be enough for heavy multi-tasking. There is the issue with throttling, but nobody will notice it in real-life use.