Performance

The RAZR is the first time we’ve seen TI’s OMAP 4430 SoC with a 1.2 GHz CPU clock, other devices run OMAP 4430 at 1.0 GHz. As a refresher, OMAP4430 consists of two ARM Cortex A9 CPUs with the optional NEON SIMD unit for each core, alongside a PowerVR SGX 540 GPU and the usual accoutrements like the Cortex M3 image subsystem and TI’s encoder/decoder. We’ve gone over the details inside the Bionic piece and Droid 3 before, and I’d encourage you to check those out if you’re curious.

On the browser performance side, the RAZR is no slouch at all. In fact, I wager that part of Blur 6.x included some browser optimizations that dramatically improve scrolling behavior over the Bionic or other Motorola devices. It isn't quite buttery smooth like Android 4.0's stock browser or Samsung's, but it's much improved over the stock experience. This shows in the Vellamo total score more than anything. 

Vellamo Overall Score

BrowserMark

SunSpider Javascript Benchmark 0.9.1 - Stock Browser

CraftyMindFlash Rendering Performance

Again, one look at those performance differences between the Bionic and RAZR and it's immediately obvious that something more than a simple 20% boost in CPU clock is at play here. Since I've been working on the Galaxy Nexus at the tail end of the RAZR review, I also tossed those numbers in here, and you can get a feeling for the JavaScript performance delta between Android 2.3.x and Android 4.0.1 right now. In the flash department (CraftyMindFlash) we're basically against Vsync in the test we use and will be using another test with more challenging assets soon. 

Linpack - Single-threaded

Linpack - Multi-threaded

RightWare Basemark ES 2.0 V1 - Taiji

RightWare Basemark ES 2.0 V1 - Hoverjet

GLBenchmark 2.1 - Egypt - Offscreen (720p)

GLBenchmark 2.1 - Pro - Offscreen (720p)

In the synthetics, we see first that Linpack behaves as expected and reflects a 20% boost in CPU clocks over the Bionic. It's in the GPU department that things get a bit interesting, and I again included Galaxy Nexus results that we have on hand from that forthcoming review. The two perform very closely because, from what I can tell, the Galaxy Nexus' OMAP4460 SGX 540 clock is set at 307 MHz (even though OMAP4460 can clock its 540 at up to 384 MHz), very close to the RAZR's OMAP4430 which sets its SGX 540 clock at a maximum of 304 MHz. We'll investigate this further soon in the Galaxy Nexus review as well, but for now know that the RAZR and Galaxy Nexus are pretty evenly matched in the benchmarks.

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  • mfenn - Friday, December 16, 2011 - link

    Dunno how many times I have to say this, but etc. is short for "et cetera". Putting more than one period in it is just plain wrong.
  • jordanclock - Sunday, December 18, 2011 - link

    Actually, when finishing a sentence with etc. it is correct to put a second period afterward, as the first one is to indicate an abbreviation and the second is to indicate the end of the sentence. It is acceptable to use just one period, but it is not incorrect to use two.
  • BabelHuber - Friday, December 16, 2011 - link

    A question to the Anandtech guys:

    Why don't you ever lose a word about rSAp (remote SIM Access Profile)?

    I regularily use my phones in my car, where I want to use the built-in antenna when connecting my phone via bluetooth.

    Connecting via Handsfree is really a PITA: The speech quality is bad and the phone's battery is stressed.

    Hence for three years now I use rSAP, first in my Audi A5 and now in my BMW 5er (via the Snap-in adapter SAP from BMW).

    I still have my good old Nokia X6, this one does rSAp very well. Android, OTOH, does not support rSAP (neither does iOS), but AFAIK e.g. Samsung added rSAP-capabilities to the Galaxy line.

    I know that testing rSAP is not easy because of the different systems the various Auto makers use, but it would even be interresting if you could test it at least a little bit (e.g. checking if the Adress Book synchronization works or if one has to use the SIM card itself).

    A phone without rSAP is useless for me, but perhaps I am part of a small minority, who knows.

    Have you had any thoughts on rSAP?
  • Conficio - Friday, December 16, 2011 - link

    Where are you located? I have not heard about that tech.

    But sounds very interesting. Especially as there is a big debate going on in the US about driving and using the phone.
  • BabelHuber - Friday, December 16, 2011 - link

    I'm located in Germany, but I would think that rSAP is a global tech.

    It supported by VW/ Audi, Mercedes and BMW. For BMW, you need the 'Snap-in-adapter SAP', though.

    With rSAP, the phone is put to standby-mode, since the phone itself is in the car. The car gets the SIM-card-information via bluetooth and also reads the address book, then you use its built-in phone.

    It's a cool technology, the speech quality is very good, since the antenna of the car is used. Also there is almost no drag on the phone's battery, since it doesn't do anything at all.

    The downside is that you cannot stream music from your phone to the car's stereo, you also can't use E-Mail with rSAP.
    For me this is OK, though, I don't want to receive mails while driving and the car's stereo is fed by a USB-harddisk attached to it.
  • introiboad - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - link

    There is no technical reason for you not to be able to stream music even when using RSAP. They are 2 different profiles, RSAP and A2DP, and should be able to run in parallel. It's a limitation imposed by the car manufacturer, not by the spec.
  • JonnyDough - Saturday, December 17, 2011 - link

    Its not really a debate. Using a cell while driving should be illegal. When you're operating a vehicle that can take someone's life in a 30mph crash then your eyes, hands, and mind should be focused on the task of driving. I learned that in driver's ed and I believe its still part of the test to get a driver's license. Driving is a privilege and so many of the younger generations today have such a sense of entitlement..
  • cheetahfox - Saturday, December 17, 2011 - link

    As someone who was nearly killed because the person that hit my car was changing the radio station; there will always be distractions in a car. If you feel that Cell phones should be illegal then you should also ban all radio's, gps, cd-players and ipods. Further you should also make all cars have a single seat. We can't let someone talking to you distract you. You should also have some way to measure if a car is being driven by someone that is sleepy. It's been shown over and over again the lack of sleep is worse that drunk driving. I propose a mandatory system of cameras that monitor the driver of a car and if they detect that the person in question is sleepy and not attentive enough that they slowly cut power to the car and force them to pull over for a 30 min nap.

    I am taking it to an extreme but if we should ban cell phones, we should really ban many other things. Things that we would never ban, like more than one person in a car. The problem isn't the device, it's the person using it. If the person driving is a distracted driver(for whatever reason) and they cause an accident it should be handled with existing laws.
  • introiboad - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - link

    Remote SIM access profile is part of the Bluetooth Specification, it's just one of the profiles defined by the Bluetooth SIG. Unfortunately, RSAP never took off in the same way that HFP (Handsfree Profile) which is the profile that nearly every other phone available uses when connecting to a car.
    One of the reasons may be that RSAP requires the car to come bundled with a GSM baseband/radio since it only obtains the SIM info from the phone and then uses it to place calls using its own. On the other hand HFP simply instructs the phone to place the call using the phone's own GSM radio and then transfers the sound to the car. So it's clearly cheaper to include in a car since the car manufacturer doesn't need to include a Bluetooth _and_ a GSM radio.
  • introiboad - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - link

    As far as I know, only Symbian and Bada phones implement RSAP.

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