Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2 review: Gone fishing

Synthetic benchmarks

The Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2 packs roughly double the processing power of its predecessor with a dual-core 1GHz processor (Cortex-A9 cores), 1GB of RAM and Mali-400MP GPU. It also enjoys the benefits of running Jelly Bean with Google's optimizations to the graphical stack.

We already know that Cortex-A9 isn't the speediest processor core, especially at just 1GHz. It's no match for Krait-based designs, but it can still effectively compete against phones in its price bracket.

Compound benchmarks like AnTuTu and Quadrant put it in the lower mid-range, which is what we expected.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• Sony Xperia V
  279
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  346
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  409
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  499
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  552
• HTC Desire X
  639

AnTuTu

Higher is better

• HTC One
  22678
• Sony Xperia Z
  20794
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  15547
• Oppo Find 5
  15167
• HTC Butterfly
  12631
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  6650

Quadrant

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia V
  5816
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  4998
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  3542
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  3045
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  2316

Mali-400MP is usually good enough for WVGA resolutions and both NenaMark 2 and Epic Citadel show framerates of over 30fps (both render at screen resolution). Epic Citadel in particular is based on the Unreal Engine 3 (Unreal engines are fairly popular among phone game devs) and it shows the real-world performance to be expected of the Galaxy Xcover 2.

GLBenchmark 2.1 and 2.5 run the tests off-screen (at 720p and 1080p resolutions respectively) so the physical screen resolution doesn't matter and we can compare raw GPU power. The Xcover 2 doesn't do too well here, but with a WVGA screen it won't have any problems (unless someone makes a game that's more resource-heavy than Epic Citadel, but we think that's unlikely in the near future).

NenaMark 2

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Premier
  55.3
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  38.9
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  38.7
• HTC Desire X
  35.4
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  28.7

Epic Citadel

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia Z
  55.6
• Nexus 4
  53.9
• LG Optimus G
  52.6
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  41.3
• Oppo Find 5
  38.6
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  36.4

GLBenchmark 2.1 Egypt (720p offscreen)

Higher is better

• LG Optimus G
  113
• Sony Xperia U
  19.6
• Samsung Galaxy Ace 2
  16.3
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  16
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  16

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 5
  27
• Nexus 4
  26
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  13
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  12
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  11
• HTC One X
  9
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  6.2

The Galaxy Xcover 2 is close to a Chrome-running Galaxy Nexus in terms of JavaScript performance and close to a Galaxy S II Plus in HTML5 performance. Overall, the Xcover 2 will handle web pages comfortably for some time to come.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Sony Xperia V
  1189
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  1460
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  1654
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  1863
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  1901
• HTC Desire X
  2259

BrowserMark 2

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia V
  1957
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  1154
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  1079
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  1036
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  714