[T-Mobile LG G2x] brentil:
2011.05.05 - G2x Stock vs G2x Rooted + Frozen Apps

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This test demonstrates the rooting and then using an application to freeze apps that are running. I did not freeze MyAccount or Tegra Zone since I use them.

AppPack

logmein.rescue

logmein.rescuesecurity

EA Games

NFS Shift

Nova

Polaris Office

SmartShare

T-Mobile TV

TeleNav

Video Chat (qik)

Wi-Fi Calling

Zinio Reader

As can been seen from the attached graph the there was a noticeable bump in performance in all tests performed on the phone. SmartBench 2011 showed a larger gap than Quadrant because a couple of its tests are SMP aware and probably benefited more from the extra overhead on the two cores. The gain of ~250 in Quadrant for comparison is the value a stock G1/MT3G gets by itself in Quadrant. SunSpider performs extensive small javascript tests that I did not expect to see much gain from since it is more implementation bound than CPU bound where SmartBench however performs much more CPU intensive visual browser tests.

2011.07.26 - G2x 2.2 Stock vs G2x 2.2 Rooted vs G2x 2.3 Stock

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I've updated my G2x via the LG update software to the GB 2.3 that was released for it. I did not unroot/unfreeze prior so I lost root but my frozen apps stayed frozen post update. As can be seen from the graph the Gingerbread tests show it performing within 2% of the results of the previous FroYo 2.2 rooted phone. I will not be able to perform a true stock test until I re-root the phone and unfreeze applications. The SunSpider test shows a decent 5% gain in speed which is not unexpected since browser performance was a touted feature of 2.3 on phones.

The lack of overall performance gain though was expected for this update before I ran the tests.

FroYo was the performance release version of the 2.x series of versions where 2.3 was a feature release. The addition of new features will typically garner a drop in overall performance unless additional time is spent focusing solely on performance increases. Google has already stated that the next phone oriented performance release will be Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0?) which will merge in the multi-core enhancements of the Honeycomb 3.x series.

This release of 2.3 is still running the 2.6.32.9 kernel version # as the previous 2.2 version was. This DOES NOT mean it is the same kernel, but it does indicate a lack of major changes, just primarily bug fixes and tweaks were done. The kernel controls task switching and various other base level processes, without a significant change at this level there will not be significant changes at the upper levels.

2011.08.30 - G2x 2.3 Rooted vs Faux123 Kernels

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After running my updated 2.2 Rooted + Frozen to 2.3 Unrooted + Frozen I felt there was something wrong with it as some things felt slightly off. My belief is the freezing process removes the permissions from an application required to read/write/execute it which in turn may have prevented specific items from being updated during the LG Updater process. I decided to do the GB root process and flashed the stock rooted GB file onto my phone which being a ROM flash and not an updater over wrote the frozen applications. Afterwards with everything running the phone just behaved more as I expected than the previously frozen version. Benchmarks attached show this as everything increased (except for SunSpider).

A note on SunSpider I was reporting results wrong previously as I forgot lower scores in SunSpider mean better results. Which in terms of the 5% variance is still not much of a change.

Now being rooted again I decided to start working with kernels to see how they changed things.

Faux123 SV (Stock Voltage & Frequencies) - This kernel showed higher values in some tests but lower in others. The main disadvantage is the memory compression in my opinion as it actually sacrifices bandwidth for capacity. The thing is though even with our ~380mb of RAM it's still more than enough for daily use. If you use the System Stats Live Wallpaper with memory listed you'll see that even with the most taxing applications this phone never reaches capacity. The decrease in bandwidth is noticeable with larger applications like games as they take longer to load and to switch between large maps and other data sets.

Faux123 OC/UV @ 1.1 - The slight bump in frquency provides the extra benefit to push the memory bandwidth past the hurdle created by compcache. This kernel provides an all around (except in 3D applications) performance increase making it very worth while even at this slight MHz bump.

Faux123 OC/UV @ 1.4 - Everything else before this was in single digit % of increase. The bump to 1.4 GHz on both cores provides significant increases as the graph shows. If your phone can run stable at these speeds then I say go for it. For me 1.4 GHz was as high as I could go and stay stable, 1.55 GHz would crash my phone on boot.

2011.08.30 - G2x 2.3 Faux123 Kernels @ 500 MHz vs G1 @ 614 MHz

Having been an Android user from the start with a T-Mobile G1 & MT3G I still actively use that phone for testing and playing around with. When I actively used it we were always trying to find various tricks just to get smidgens more performance from it. So I decided to underclock the G2x down to 500 MHz and overclocked the G1 to 614 MHz running CS-DOS (GB 2.3.4) with everything tweaked for the fun of it.

This comparison shows the difference in terms of an ARMv6 versus an ARMv7 Cortex9 architecture and is just a fun informative bit. While being 100 MHz slower the G2x still was able to outperform the tweaked G1 by the following.

Quadrant - 72% faster

SmartBench - 79% faster

BrowserMark - 27% faster

SunSpider - 61% faster

2011.09.07 - G2x ROM benchmarks

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I've completed my various ROM comparison testing and below are my numerical findings. I averaged the overall results and as listed in the order below are the highest to lowest scoring ROMs in terms of performance. In terms of numerical, graphical, & I/O performance they're all very close to each other. However it becomes very clear that either the stock ROM's web browser has been modified or the Android 2.3.4/2.3.5 web browser has had some significant performance optimization done to it as BrowserMark & SunSpider both return values nearly twice as fast as the 2.3.3 based versions. I believe that CompCache settings on the Faux123 kernel used in the Faux123 ROM result in its lower CF-Bench scores as it impacts memory bandwidth. With Miui it has a different/modified web browser in place and it shows as it has the worst of the browser benchmark scores.

CM7.1-RC1

CM7 Nightly 124 (2011.08.31)

Eagles Blood 1.08

Faux123 1.3.1

G2x 2.3 Root

Stock Tweaked 1.2.2

Miui 1.8.26

Weapon G2x 2.4 (0823)

2011.09.30 - G2x CM benchmarks

With the release of G2x Nightly 154 the codebase is now Gingerbread 2.3.7 so I decided to do a CM benchmark comparison to see how it handled compared to the others. Of not since the 14x series of nightlies EXT4 was also enabled by default.

As 2.3.6/2.3.7 were mainly Sprint Nexus S updates along with Google Wallet feature additions I am not surprised from the results to see the numbers are fairly close to each other. The 2.3.7 eeked out slightly ahead in CF-Bench but lagged behind in SunSpider by about 500 milliseconds making it's score larger (ie slower) than 2.3.5 however those values are still much better than 2.3.3 based browsers.