The iPhone 5 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Brian Klug & Vivek Gowri on October 16, 2012 11:33 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iPhone 5
Six Generations of iPhones: Performance Compared
Section by Anand Shimpi
Cross platform smartphone benchmarks are interesting, but they do come with their own sets of issues. Before we get to that analysis however, let's look at how the iPhone's performance has improved over the past six generations. Luckily Brian has a set of all of the iPhones so he was able to run a few tests on all of the devices, each running the latest supported OS.
We'll start with SunSpider 0.9.1, our trusty javascript performance test:
The transition from iPhone to iPhone 3G shows you just how much additional performance you can squeeze out of simply a software change. There's likely even more that could be squeezed out of that ARM11 platform, unfortunately newer versions of Safari/iOS aren't supported on the iPhone 3G so we're left with a runtime that's around 37x the length of a single run on the iPhone 5.
The rest of the devices support and run iOS 6, so we're at least on a level software playing field. The performance boost from one generation to the next is quite significant still. Going by this chart alone, the best balance of minimal upgrades and maximum perceived improvement would be from the original iPhone to the 3GS then again from the 3GS to the 5.
The BrowserMark results tell a similar story. The jump from the ARM11 based iPhone/iPhone 3G to the 3GS running iOS 6 is huge. Both the 4S and 5 offer doublings in performance, albeit for different reasons. The 4S delivered a doubling thanks to a doubling of core count and a move to the Cortex A9, while the iPhone 5 doubled performance through a much higher clock speed and microarchitectural improvements.
Finally we have Geekbench 2, which only runs on the iOS 6 supported devices so we say goodbye to the original iPhone and iPhone 3G:
None of the jumps looks as dramatic as the move to the iPhone 5, but we already know why. The Swift CPU architecture does a great job improving memory performance, which shows up quite nicely in a lot of the Geekbench 2 subtests.
On the PC side we often talk about 20% performance improvements from one generation to the next being significant. It's clear that the mobile SoC space is still operating along a hyper Moore's Law curve. The rate of progress will eventually slow down, but I don't see that happening for at least another couple generations. The move to ARM's Cortex A15 will be met with another increase in performance (and a similarly large set of power challenges), and whatever comes next will push smartphones into a completely new category of performance.
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darwinosx - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
The iPhone 5 display is better than any current Android display.But Motorola and Android if you want a company that is dying and being sold and a copycat cheap phone with no service and support.
V-Money - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Your wisdom and informative argument adds tremendous value to this post. For the record though, the OP said specifically battery life and 720p display, so the response was relevant.The rest of your post is petty, get over yourself. If you are going to play the copycat card you should have done it before Apple decided to go with a bigger screen and use a (eerily similar) notification bar to what Android phones have had for years.
As for quality (of display or otherwise), that is subjective analysis and considering that Apple only releases one phone at a time and Android manufacturers many, its a stupid argument for anyone to make. Case and point, I can find many android phones that are much more terrible than the iPhone, but I can also find many that are better. The iPhone is a decent phone, but its not for everyone. Every consumer has their preference.
My point being there is not one-size-fits-all phone, so quit acting high and mighty with your close mindedness. You are not better than those around you because you bought into Apple's marketing, you are just a fool dealing with the first world problem of living such a meaningless existence that you have to hold on to the imaginary power an inanimate object pretends to give to you.
Alucard291 - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
I feel that your argument may be too good for him to reply to :)He seems awfully angry :D
crankerchick - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Great reply. If there's one place I just want to exchange comments without playing the "my toy is better than yours" game, it's here on AnandTech.Gradly - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
I'm sick of ppl comparing iPhone to other devices. I'm sick of those telling you iPhone borrowed the notifications slider form android and skipping the myriad of things that other borrowed form iPhone. Apple has always said that "we are not the first but we do it the best". I'm sick of those who still don't realize that before iPhone ppl were living in caves actually.I'm an Apple lover not an Apple fanboy. I just adore the design, aesthetics, and GUI of Apple devices.
Penti - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
It's sadly Apple that goes and patent UI-elements to use against their competitors that is why it's always brought up. It would be totally unnecessary otherwise. You might look at who's the inspiration otherwise and it's often not Apple. In reality we had capacitive touch screens (it's not Apples tech of course) before, app store before, Android even had an SDK out before Apple. Competitors like Symbian/Nokia, HP WebOS, and Blackberry are even allowed to use stuff like bounce back effect even without (or before) any agreement with Apple. They should have credit but they didn't all the sudden bring out their device with what we now call smartphone features, it lacked most functions at first and slowly iterated, it did a lot poorer in many areas then it's competitors was doing even before iPhone and the first few years it also showed in sales numbers which were not high at the first 2-3 years. It did show us how important a good platform was. Guys like Rubin had already figured that out though. So I'm not sure what they would borrow. Full WebKit-browsers on mobile is a good example of stuff they are co-developing but it was out in Nokia devices in 2006, netfront and Opera was never good alternatives to build into your platform. Stock Android don't have the bounce back effect, UI's looking like Apples and so on. Not even TouchWiz on Samsung's tablets looks like or infringes anything (design-wise) by Apple. They clearly have their own ideas. They are not the "me too", others might try to emulate them more in a business sense though. But they will be punished by the market by their execution instead of by Apple. It's not like any of the major players are fruit ninja-clones though.iPhone was desperately rudimentary at first. It didn't do applications and the web, messaging, photos etc better then anybody. What they did good was to iterate and improve. They take enterprise / corporate customers more seriously then Microsoft and so on in this field. Even if it took some time for them to get there. So they do plenty of good. It's a good platform, but it's not like they gave their competitors their blueprints for their devices / os of today back in 2007 and both have made many improvements. Well maybe not Microsoft but it takes a few years to start over. Apple has even got into hardware (components) a bit. Commoditization and convergence has reached far beyond the mobile field. That's great even if Apple won't enter them. Still don't know why any competitor would like to turn themselves into a retail giant and employ mostly store staff as Apple does – Microsoft should start doing what they are good at instead. Google would be the most evil company in the world if they had started to patent and sue based on UI-features and methods. Or if they really tried to stop Bing and Bing Maps (and getting it banned in some markets) for example. It doesn't really matter who was first and who invented what if you take it to court were that doesn't really count and that creates a lot of BS surrounding the whole issue and companies involved that is largely unnecessary. But the real silly thing is why they fight. It's not based on IPR, it's basically that they want to be alone in doing whatever, even if they can't really make that claim to have sole rights to something. But ultimately courts do get that under control even when corporate leaders turn to fighting outside of releasing product.
slickr - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
LOL. Don't make me laugh. It has still the worst display and has had the worst display for at least 3 years.A5 - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Your response is just as dumb as his. The iPhones have excellent displays.medi01 - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
None of the iPhones have anything to compare with AMOLEDs, on top of having idiotic resolution.On tablet space, only iPad 3 matched color gamut of THE FIRST Samsung Galaxy Tab.
thunng8 - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
How does 67.5% of sRGB on the galaxy tab 10.1 match the 94.4% on the ipad 3?http://www.anandtech.com/show/5688/apple-ipad-2012...