GPU Turbo update to grace a slew of Huawei and Honor phones this year

Back during Computex 2018, Huawei's subsidiary, Honor, announced that a software update will be heading to Huawei and Honor phones that can help increase the graphics processing efficiency of the said phones. Honor is calling this GPU Turbo, which is a software update that can supposedly increase graphics performance by 60% while reducing energy consumption by 30%. Now, Huawei has revealed a timeline detailing when compatible phones will be getting the update.

The GPU Turbo update will start gracing the Mate 10, Mate 10 Pro, Mate RS, P20, and P20 Pro in August 2018 in Europe, Russia, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. Most other Huawei phones will be getting the update by September 2018. The update schedule will wrap up by November 2018 with the Mate 9, Mate 9 Pro, P10, and P10 Plus. Huawei seems to have confirmed to Android Authority that none of the Huawei phones in the US are getting the update. The speculated reason for this is the nonchalance of the US Government towards Chinese branded phones such as Huawei and ZTE. Nevertheless, if you've imported a Huawei flagship phone in the US, you're out of luck for now. 

GPU Turbo is meant to improve graphics performance in GPU intensive games and apps. How it achieves this is not exactly known. The company's claims of a 60% performance boost with 30% reduced consumption is a bit hard to chew. The only plausible way that this can be achieved is either by reducing the render resolution or overclocking the GPU. Given the tall claims about energy efficiency, the overclocking possibility seems a bit out of bounds. This also raises the question as to how come there is so much room for optimization and why didn't Huawei/Honor do this during release. 

Honor phones such as the Honor 10 will be getting the update in August with the Honor 9 Lite, V10, and 7X following suit in September. The Honor 8 Pro and Honor 9 will be getting their taste of GPU Turbo in November. Huawei is working with game developers to optimize their games for GPU Turbo. Initially, popular titles such as PUBG Mobile and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang are supported with more games in the pipeline. We will put the software update to test as soon as it rolls out so watch out for that.

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