iPhone 4S Benchmarked: Obliterates competition

[Arpit]

sometimes superior specs on the paper does not translate into a real life superiority - esp. when the software is not optimized/polished enough...

so i guess there is no surprise as like the previous generations iPhone, new 4S just works well enough to satisfy its user.

though to be fair, we need to see the ice cream sandwich [android 4.0 ?] to see what Google brought on the table.

and i believe those initial iOS 5.0 GM scores will get better a little bit with [possible] 5.1 or 5.2 release ...

to be fair, one should benchmark with the software/devices that are released and available to the public. ICS will be benchmarked just as well when it is released however till then, this is what it is.

with that said, i'd like to see how it stacks up against mango.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

I'm not surprised. I look forward to seeing how well it compares against the upcoming Android-based devices as well as the new WP7-based Mango devices.

[SMELTN]

Biggest 2 os's on the market are iOS and Android. While Mango is a huge upgrade for Windows phones, they are still a very small market share at the current time

[lt8480]

No-one can take these stats seriously unless they test against more recent phones.

Most rational people would assume this, yes. But, as was seen after the iPhone 4S was announced, many were saying it would not perform well against current and upcoming Android phones. None of those have commented here, yet.

It doesn't compare it to any upcoming phones, or even the recently released phones, the chart is mostly comprised on phones that have been out a fair while.

I just did another speed test, the calculator app on WP7, Android, and a Nokia 3210 all loaded instantly, whereas I'm still waiting for the iPhone to arrive. It was first rumoured to be out in January.

[zeta_immersion]

Im not any phone fanboy and i dont own any smartphone yet..

Samsung Marketing really worked on Galaxy SII right until the time that iPhone4S came to life...i mean...what a Knock Out !!!

It completely turned a big "bomb" like SII to a small little bang. I wonder how will Nexus 2 will come out. Impressive work on this new iPhone, i started to think that it would nearly pass Galaxy S2 but it came out to say...." who is Galaxy S2...!? "

Lets see how this goes

I have an S2 and an i4 (not the 4S granted ... but even with these synthetic benchmarks I still feel that android is more of a hate love tweak relationship than hardcoded here it is don't change anything apple dogma

my wife loves the i4 and I feel weird using it not my thing though, and she feels overwhelmed by my S2 so I think it all depends on the user to what they want to do with it

so, both devices are very good but synthetic benchmarks gives extrapolated data based on predetermined tests

[El Marto]

to be fair, one should benchmark with the software/devices that are released and available to the public. ICS will be benchmarked just as well when it is released however till then, this is what it is.

with that said, i'd like to see how it stacks up against mango.

Completely agree. why should we test against ICS? why not test against iOS6 in that case? its about whats out right now. (granted we have 3 days before ios5 officially)

[Chasethebase Veteran]

Good to see the 3GS brought up to scratch with iOS 5 as well.

[Elliott]

Anyone notice something, no Mango phones here. They should be on it and new Mango devices should be on it as well because mango did blow apart ios5 in html5 tests.

Just ran the FishIE tank test (which, FYI, is optimized for WP7 resolutions) on my iPhone 4 running iOS 5: 60 FPS, easily. The speed reading test on an iPhone 4 with iOS 5 ran at around 40-45 FPS. Not sure how Mango could "blow apart" those scores.

I'll benchmark the two again when I get my iPhone 4S, but I imagine they'll both run no problem at 60 FPS.

[PyX]

The biggest difference is, iOS is optimized for the few iPhones and iPod Touches that Apple has. Google will never be able to keep up, because there’s too much hardware running around, having Android on it. It’s the same thing for how Mac OS X is more optimized on Macs than Windows is on PCs. There’s wayyyyy too much hardware to support, and you have to cut the corners short when optimizing. Microsoft can’t and will never be able to keep it up (and I’m not blaming them, I would not be able to keep up as well. The problem is not Microsoft itself, it’s their decision model to support just about everything).

Also, Android applications are all coded in JAVA, which is definitely an inferior language to Objective-C/Cocoa in terms of speed. JAVA is known to work across all devices, but also to be slow across all devices.

In the end, Apple can have the same or a little bit inferior hardware than the competition, and they will get better results.

[SirEvan]

So what you're saying is, that...if I understand correctly, a new phone has better specs than phones that have ALREADY been out for >= 6 months....? fascinating....

Where's the benchmarks indicating how much faster you can dial phone numbers or send sms/email?

[Twisp]

Wow brand new phone with the latest cpu/gpu is faster than older phones, in other news the grass is green.

Hasn't the A5 SoC been out since iPad 2 launched?

[SirEvan]

Anyone notice something, no Mango phones here. They should be on it and new Mango devices should be on it as well because mango did blow apart ios5 in html5 tests.

But then that would invalidate this post... you clearly never compare your products to those of competitors that are better...how would you sell anything?

[Astra.Xtreme]

So what you're saying is, that...if I understand correctly, a new phone has better specs than phones that have ALREADY been out for >= 6 months....? fascinating....

Where's the benchmarks indicating how much faster you can dial phone numbers or send sms/email?

Yeah because the iPhone is using components that were fabricated yesterday....

The parts in the 4S are probably more dated than parts in the Galaxy and Droid. A lot of the Android phones are even clocked much higher than the iPhone, and they still got crushed.

All this shows is that Android is a mess right now and have a lot of work ahead of them if they want to keep up-to-par with Apple.

[PyX]

All this shows is that Android is a mess right now […]

And at this point of Android’s development, this is unfixable.

As I mentioned, the best way to fix it would be to support 80% less hardware and optimize it perfectly for the selection of supported hardware, then rewrite the whole thing in another language than JAVA, and that all developers rewrite all their applications.

[.Neo]

Yay for the iPad 2! :laugh:

[ahhell]

The title seems to be lacking in sensationalism.

/s

[c3ntury]

I'm somewhat surprised, but I'm happy to know Apple are leading the pack in terms of performance. More competition! :D

[rajputwarrior]

Hasn't the A5 SoC been out since iPad 2 launched?

yes and it's clocked higher then the iphone 4S

[StandingInAlley]

/sigh

The hardware isn't updated. It's lower clocked, but it has longer instruction lengths than most phones.

This is brand new hardware. Very fast hardware to boot.

Clock speed isn't everything.

Thats not true. A5 processor came with iPad2 in early 2011 so its old.

[BoredBozirini]

No competition, Apple is king.

[BetaAddict]

As an owner of an SGS2, I will accept these results for what they are right now. But, it would only be fair to retest all the devices after ICS comes out as there should be some significant boost in performance due to better optimization.

Also, Apple only has to worry about optimizing the iOS5 for iPad2 and iP4S, which is obviously going to give better results compared to Android having to be compatible for a long list of devices that are not fully optimized.

[Astra.Xtreme]

And at this point of Android’s development, this is unfixable.

As I mentioned, the best way to fix it would be to support 80% less hardware and optimize it perfectly for the selection of supported hardware, then rewrite the whole thing in another language than JAVA, and that all developers rewrite all their applications.

Yep that's the biggest problem for Android. All these manufactures with different hardware and then modifying the software for their own means.

Android is written in Java? Dear god, that's really sad if it is. But I guess it would all makes sense... :rofl:

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Custom OS on custom hardware. It SHOULD win!

[articuno1au]

Thats not true. A5 processor came with iPad2 in early 2011 so its old.

A5 refers to the chip Architecture, just like Core i5 does, despite there being 3 different versions of this chip (generations) and a dozen different SKU's.

/shrug

[PyX]

Android is written in Java? Dear god, that's really sad if it is. But I guess it would all makes sense... :rofl:

Yes, my friend wanted to program on iPod Touch, but since he doesn’t have a Mac, he is learning how to program on Android. It’s all JAVA. The Android simulator takes minutes to start, and consumes all his battery in under half an hour (I was in front of him when I saw that), it’s driving him completely insane. Even when it’s started, it’s incredibly slow on his 1-year-old laptop.