OnePlus 3 [Encrypted vs Unencrypted] [Benchmark Results & Discussion]

Hey XDA.


So I'm guessing I'm not the only one wondering if the OnePlus 3 benefits or not from coming with storage encryption by default as per Android Marshmallow OEM requirements. So I put a little experiment together and decided to share my results with the XDA OP3 community.




Disclaimer

None of the results here should be taken as an absolute, as always these tests are flawed and should be taken with a grain of salt, the whole idea of this was to see if disabling encryption would boost "performance" on the device.

Testing Methodology

To attempt to reduce differences that could affect results between both testing scenarios (Encryption enabled and disabled) I followed a set of rules perfoming these tests:

• Both scenarios had the phone with the same amount of data that is to say, same apps installed and files on sdcard as to replicate results on an equal and real environemnt (not freshly restored device with no data or apps)
  


• Tests were run back to back for each set of tests. after the first set (Boot Time) there was a 3 minute period for the phone to cool down before perfoming the second set (Antutu) etc.
  


• First all tests were run with encryption enabled after disabling encryption and restoring all apps and data a period of time (5-6min) was taken to ensure device was cool again before tests for the second scenario were started.
  


• Boot Time was done by starting timer as soon as power button was held and holding until OnePlus Logo and Name appeared on screen, timer was stopped as soon as Lockscreen rendered.

Results

Quote:

Oneplus 3 Encrypted------------------------------------------- Un-Encrypted Boot Time 0:30:82-------------------------------------------0:30:32 0:34:44-------------------------------------------0:28:98 0:30:78-------------------------------------------0:29:54 0:34:79-------------------------------------------0:28:32 0:34:28-------------------------------------------0:28:15 Median 1,2,3,4,5 M 33:02-------------------------------------------M 29:06 +12% Boot Time saw a 12% benefit from Unencrypted storage which I expected but in my opinion isn't as big as a difference when compared to other devices with and without encryption before the Snapdragon 820 Antutu stuck at 70%------------------------------------ 143698 143297------------------------------------------- 143213 141531-------------------------------------------- 142985 141849------------------------------------------- 142895 141501------------------------------------------- 142502 Median 2,3,4,5 M 142045-------------------------------------------M 142899 +0.60% The first test performed on the encrypted scenario got stuck at 70% and as to not skew results the first scores for both scenarios were ignored when calculating median, here we can se a 0.60% increase in performance for the unencrypted scenario which in my opinion is too small of a difference to draw a correlation between encrypted and unencrypted and worth mentionting is that anyway I believe no significant differences would be tested and found here between both scenarios because of the way encryption works. Geekbench 2409-----------------------------------------2396 5620-----------------------------------------5597 2433-----------------------------------------2406 5591-----------------------------------------5628 2428------------------------------------------2392 5587----------------------------------------- 5578 2439-----------------------------------------2390 5643-----------------------------------------5581 2431------------------------------------------2391 5569-----------------------------------------5544 Median 1,2,3,4,5 M 2428-----------------------------------------M 2395 -1.35% M 5602--------------------------------------------M 5586 -0.28% Here we can observe a decrease in performance of 1.35% in single core results and 0.28% in multi-core results which again in my opinion does not amount to anything noticeable in day to day usage and I believe is not the result of encrypted or unencrypted storage differences

Conclusion

Quote:

Based on these results and this personal experience only, I conclude that for me the only benefit of unencrypting my storage was a shorter boot time (~4sec) and performance wise there is little to no difference at all, and while the security benefits of Android encryption are questionable to say the least. some employers/companies require this to be enabled at all times, and since in these results the differences are so minisucule, there would be at a glance no reason to not stay encrypted if you already are. Although a more in depth testing methodology and cases where storage read/write speeds were predominant would be ideal to maybe see significant differences between performance of encrypted and unencrypted storage, I presume this would not affect a regular user enough to warrant the reformating of all user data if the storage is already encrypted, which will probably be the common state of Android phones that are coming out now and in the future.

Obviously this will not replicate the same experience anyone can have so I encourage anyone to reply to this thread with their personal experience on the matter, what is your opinion on encryption? and if you find this post helpful somehow remember to hit the thanks button on my post or any other user that replies helpfully to you. Thanks.