Apple iPhone 4S: Thoroughly Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on October 31, 2011 7:45 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iPhone
- iPhone 4S
Display
Though many expected Apple to redesign everything around a 4“ display, the display on the 4S superficially identical. The 4S includes the same size and resolution display as the 4, namely a 3.54” IPS panel with 960x640 resolution. We’ve been over this a few times already in the context of the iPhone 4 and the CDMA iPhone 4, but it bears going over again.
In retrospect, moving up to 4“ would’ve gone against Apple’s logical approach to maintaining a DPI-agnostic iOS, and it makes sense to spread the cost of changing display resolution across two generations, which is what we see now. While Android is gradually catching up in the DPI department, OEMs on that side of the fence are engaged in a seemingly endless battle over display size. You have to get into Apple’s head and understand that from their point of view, 3.5” has always been the perfect size - there’s a reason it hasn’t changed at all.
I’ve been through a few 4s myself, and alongside the CDMA iPhone 4, have seen the white point of the retina display gradually shift over time. While I don’t have that original device anymore, even now the 4S seems to have shifted slightly compared to a very recently manufactured 4 I had on hand, and appears to have a different color temperature. We’ve been measuring brightness and white point on smartphone displays at a variety of different brightness settings, and the 4S isn’t spared the treatment. I also tossed in my 4 for comparison purposes. The data really speaks for itself.
The first chart shows white point at a number of brightness values set in settings. You can see the iPhone 4 and 4S differ and straddle opposite sides of 6500K. I would bet that Apple has some +/- tolerance value for these displays from 6500K, and the result is what you see here. Thankfully the lines are pretty straight (so it doesn’t change as you vary brightness), but this variance is why you see people noting that one display looks warmer or cooler than the other. I noted this behavior with the CDMA iPhone 4, and suspect that many people still carrying around launch GSM/UMTS iPhone 4 devices will perceive the difference more than those who have had their devices swapped.
The next two charts show display brightness at various settings for solid black and white on the display.
The 4S and 4 displays follow roughly the same curve, however there is a definite shift in contrast resulting from higher black levels on the 4S display. I’ve seen a few anecdotal accounts of the 4S display being less contrasty, and again this is the kind of shift that unfortunately happens over time with displays. I’ve updated our iPhone 4 result on the graph with the latest of a few I’ve been through.
Unfortunately the 4S falls short of the quoted 800:1 contrast ratio, whereas the 4 previously well exceeded it (the earliest 4 we saw had a contrast value of 951). Rumor has it that Apple has approved more panel vendors to make the retina display, I have no doubt that we’re seeing these changes in performance as a result of multiple sourcing.
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Lucian Armasu - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
Anand, you said the GLbenchmark is the only good cross-platform graphics benchmark. Was GLBenchmark made originally for iOS? Don't you think that it could be biased (possibly unintentionally) towards shader performance in its scores, which would make it favor the PowerVR GPU's more?At the end of the day, these are all just syntethic benchmarks, and sometimes they could be way off from real world performance tests. So what if GLBenchmark doesn't give a too big score for stuff that the other chips are good at, like physics, geometry, whatever, and it gives higher score for shader stuff?
Another question, don't you think shader performance is starting to limit what the games can show about now? Will it really help games that much if they received 20x shader performance in the next 2 years?
thunng8 - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
Glbenchmark was originally release for Linux, Symbian and Windows Mobile.thunng8 - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
Also you do realize that Glbenchmark consists of many tests including some primitive tests like fill rate and Geometry?By other Gpu, do you mean the Mali-400 or GeForce ulp? The standout result I saw was how weak the Mali was at geometry being 4x slower while fill rate was less than 2x slower than the 543mp2
lemmo - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
Thanks for the review, but did I miss analysis on audio quality... for music, not voice quality?You've started this with the Galaxy S2, really useful, and I believe you're developing your testing methodology. But any indication how the iPhone audio quality compares to S2, Prime and others?
cacca - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
if nobody has photo-shopped the images at page 3 i not quite strenge that you have a better throughput.iPhone 4 test done at PM 4.24, a normal afternoon, with quite a lot of traffic
iPhone 4s test done at AM 3.34, a quite early bird, no problems or fight for resources with other phones
To you is normal to test at so different times? An for you there is no difference between a late afternoon and 3.34 in the morning?
bah
koinkoin - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
I was wondering what the battery time is when you call with a headset. I do almost all my call with a headset to keep my hand free (on the wheel or keyboard). How much does this affect the battery time.Also I use a Blackberry and it always check for new email, I sometime read the mail while on the phone, when you do the talk time test is there a connection for email open?
koinkoin - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
I was wondering what the battery time is when you call with a headset. I do almost all my call with a headset to keep my hand free (on the wheel or keyboard). How much does this affect the battery time.Also I use a Blackberry and it always check for new email, I sometime read the mail while on the phone, when you do the talk time test is there a connection for email open?
Griswold - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
I dont think the results the new camera deliver are superior to the one in the iphone4. Judging by the vast number of shots Engadget compared between these two phones and a couple other premium phones, the iphone4s shows alot more noise than the older model, even in broad daylight. Its probably the increased pixel count, which cant be countered by the other improvements.Its not bad, but its also not better than the old camera. The old saying remains true: more pixels doesnt equal better pictures.
jwwpua - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 - link
In the section WIFI, GPS, AUDIO, SPEAKERPHONE, I don't see anything about the speakerphone. Is it louder? Any tests done? Clarity?Thanks, great review!
freezer - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
I think you should have the GPU benchmark using phone's native resolution. That would give more accurate results in real world gaming situation than running all phones using same resolution.The iPhone 4S 3.5" screen has much more pixels than Galaxy S2 4.3" screen which gives latter advantage in 3D speed. That is because the GPU has to draw every pixel in every frame. There's no way around it.
In fact running GL Benchmark 2.1 Pro High in native resolution gives very different results as Galaxy S2 comes at top:
http://glbenchmark.com/result.jsp?benchmark=glpro2...