Samsung Galaxy S4 mini review: Little droid that could

Synthetic benchmarks

The Samsung Galaxy S4 mini is powered by the Snapdragon 400, which has two Krait cores clocked at 1.7GHz. This is the older-generation but should be more than capable of running Jelly Bean and TouchWiz smoothly on a qHD screen. The Galaxy S4 mini packs 1.5GB of RAM, which enables quite good multitasking.

Single-threaded performance is excellent and the Krait cores are always in the top of our chart only beaten by the newer Krait 300 processors. Multi-threaded performance is not that great, but on par or better than 2012 flagships.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  130
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  132
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  132
• LG Optimus G Pro
  147
• HTC One
  151
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  166
• Sony Xperia Z
  264
• HTC Butterfly
  266
• Oppo Find 5
  267
• HTC One X+
  280
• LG Optimus G
  285
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  305
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  330
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  350
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  359
• Nexus 4
  431

Linpack

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  818
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  791
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  788
• LG Optimus G Pro
  743
• HTC One
  646
• Sony Xperia Z
  630
• HTC Butterfly
  624
• LG Optimus G
  608
• Oppo Find 5
  593
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  413
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  214.3
• Nexus 4
  213.5
• HTC One X+
  177.7
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  175.5
• HTC One X
  160.9
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  141.5

Geekbench 2

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  3324
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  3227
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  3046
• LG Optimus G Pro
  3040
• HTC One
  2708
• Sony Xperia Z
  2173
• HTC Butterfly
  2143
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  1937
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1845
• LG Optimus G
  1723
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1661
• iPhone 5
  1601

The system-wide benchmark Quadrant saw the Galaxy S4 mini pop in the middle of the chart. AnTuTu was recently updated and we've only tested quad-core devices since, so the last place isn't too bad news for the S4 mini. In fact its close proximity to those ahead of it is very encouraging.

Quadrant

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  12446
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  12376
• LG Optimus G Pro
  12105
• HTC One
  11746
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  11346
• Sony Xperia Z
  8075
• HTC One X+
  7632
• LG Optimus G
  7439
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  7153
• Oppo Find 5
  7111
• HTC One X
  5952
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  5916
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  5450
• Nexus 4
  4567

AnTuTu

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  26275
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  24716
• HTC One
  22678
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  21363
• Sony Xperia Z
  20794
• LG Optimus G Pro
  20056
• HTC Butterfly
  19513
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  15547
• Oppo Find 5
  15167
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  14518

GLBenchmark 2.5 and 2.7 were run in 1080p offscreen mode – four times the physical resolution of the screen. If nothing else, this test shows the S4 mini packs about as much GPU power as the Galaxy Note II.

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  43
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  41
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  41
• HTC One
  37
• Oppo Find 5
  32
• Google Nexus 4
  32
• Sony Xperia Z
  31
• Sony Xperia ZL
  31
• Sony Xperia SP
  31
• Apple iPhone 5
  30
• LG Optimus G Pro
  30
• LG Optimus G
  21
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  17
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  17
• HTC One X
  11

GLBenchmark 2.7 T-Rex (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  17.1
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  17.1
• Apple iPad 4
  16.8
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  16
• Google Nexus 10
  13.9
• LG Optimus G
  13.9
• Sony Xperia Z
  13.5
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  13
• Sony Xperia ZL
  12.8
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  6.4
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  4.9

Epic Citadel, which runs at screen resolution, shows that the GPU is quite capable of handling qHD gaming. The 54+fps is a reasonably high result, although it shows the smartphone isn't able to maintain 60fps graphics at all times, unlike many of the flagships out there.

Epic Citadel

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  59.8
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  57.5
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  57.1
• HTC One
  56.4
• Sony Xperia Z
  55.6
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  54.7
• LG Optimus G Pro
  54.2
• Nexus 4
  53.9
• Asus Padfone 2
  53.4
• LG Optimus G
  52.6
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  41.3
• Oppo Find 5
  38.6

Just as expected, the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini did impressively well in our web browsing test. Both JavaScript performance (SunSpider) and HTML5 rendering (BrowserMark 2) rival current flagships. Samsung has nicely tuned the JavaScript engine of its smartphones and has also coached its devices to do well in synthetic tests, plus core-count doesn't really matter there.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  804
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  810
• Samsung Ativ S
  891
• Apple iPhone 5
  915
• Nokia Lumia 920
  910
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  972
• HTC One X+
  1001
• LG Optimus G Pro
  1011
• Motorola RAZR i XT890
  1059
• HTC One
  1124
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  1185
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  1196
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1192
• Sony Xperia Z
  1336
• LG Optimus G
  1353
• HTC Butterfly
  1433
• Nexus 4
  1971
• Oppo Find 5
  2045

BrowserMark 2

Higher is better

• LG Optimus G
  2555
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  2438
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  2338
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  2314
• HTC One
  2262
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  2170
• Sony Xperia ZL
  2107
• Sony Xperia Z
  2093
• LG Optimus G Pro
  1801
• Oppo Find 5
  1797
• Nexus 4
  1794
• Nokia Lumia 920
  1774
• Google Nexus 10
  1773
• HTC Butterfly
  1475
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1247

Vellamo's browser test produced another impressive showing by the Galaxy S4 mini, trading punches with some elite competitors.

Vellamo

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  2418
• HTC One
  2382
• Sony Xperia Z
  2189
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  2078
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  2060
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  2056
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  2019
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  1936
• HTC Butterfly
  1866
• Oppo Find 5
  1658
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1641
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1568
• LG Optimus G
  1522
• Nexus 4
  1310

The Galaxy S4 mini did about as expected in benchmark tests and it even punched above its weight in some of them. More importantly though it has excellent real life performance – there were no system hiccups, app loading times are pretty much non-existent, the Android OS runs as fluid as possible and most of the heavy tasks are an easy job for the qHD Galaxy S4 mini.