Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt Performance and Benchmarks

Cherry Mobile has shocked the local tech scene by announcing the Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt. Php3,999 for a 7-inch tablet with an 1280 x 800 pixel resolution HD display, quad core processor and 1 GB of RAM almost unbelievable. The specifications sheet reads like a Asus Nexus 7 at less than a third of the price.

The biggest question mark in with the new Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt is the chipset and graphics processing unit (GPU). The Fusion Bolt has a 1GHz quad-core Actions Semiconductor ATM7025 processor paired with a Vivante GC1000+ GPU. How well does this combination perform.

Pinoytech Blog has benchmarked the Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt an the tablet and the performance is very good for a Php3,999 tablet, but really is better than dual core tablet but not as good as powerful  than a quad core tablets.

Antutu Benchmarks

Samsung Galaxy Tab P3110 - 4974 
Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt - 5665 points
Google Nexus 7 - 12726 points


The Samsung Galaxy Tab P3110 uses a dual core processor on a TI OMAP chipset with a PowerVR SGX 540 GPU. The Google Nexus 7, has a quad core Nvidia Tegra 3.                          

Examining a breaking down of three key aspects of the Antutu benchmarks would show they key areas where the ATM7025 processor paired with a Vivante GC1000+ GPU fall short.


Samsung Galaxy Tab P3110

CPU integer - 1358
CPU float point - 1102
3D graphics (1024 x 600) - 1085


Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt

CPU integer - 1313
CPU float point - 901
3D graphics (1280 x 800) - 1513


Google Nexus 7

CPU integer - 3679
CPU float point -2692
3D graphics (1280 x 800) - 2874

The quad core ATM7025 processor really does not perform better than a dual core unit. The dual core 1 GHz TI OMAP on the Samsung Galaxy P3110 is actually one of the slower dual core options on th market.

The Vivante GC1000+ GPU actually fairs pretty well. It does 40% better than the PowerVR SGX540 GPU on the Samsung Galaxy P3110 despite having to push 60% more pixels. Roughly the  Vivante GC1000+ GPU is twice as powerful as the PowerVR SGX540 GPU.

My advice, is dont look a gift horse in the mouth. If you compare the Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt to a Google Nexus 7 which costs more the than three time more, the Google Nexus 7 is more than twice as fast. But you should not expect the same performance for a third of the price.

If you compare the Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt to a Samsung Galaxy P3110 which will cost you more than twice as much, the Fusion Bolt looks to be a much better value for money option.


Update: Apparently, the Cherry Mobile Fusion benchmarks cited above was the result of pre-production firmware. An independent test score the Cherry Mobile Fusion Bolt at 12042 points.