The Palm Pre’s Hardware

I’ve gone through this performance comparison once before but I’ll quickly summarize it here. The iPhone and iPhone 3G both use an ARM11 based CPU running at 412MHz. The Palm Pre uses an ARM Cortex A8 based CPU running at 600MHz. The Cortex A8 is significantly faster than the ARM11; while both are very simple in-order cores, the A8 is capable of fetching/decoding/executing/retiring two instructions at the same time - the ARM11 can only do one. Palm has the overwhelming raw horsepower advantage with its hardware, as it should, the Pre was designed much later than the original iPhone (note that the new 3GS should match the Pre in terms of hardware prowess).

Given the incredible performance advantage of the Pre’s hardware, you would expect it to be much faster than the iPhone 3G. Unfortunately, that’s only partially true. Let’s start with some basic application tests:

Application Launch Time in Seconds Web Browser Dialer Google Maps Camera Email
Apple iPhone 3G (3.0) 1.1 s 1.7 s 3.8 s 4.6 s 1.2 s
Palm Pre 3.0 s 1.5 s 8.6 s 4.4 s 3.3 s
T-Mobile G1 5.4 s 2.0 s 4.4 s 4.9 s 2.0 s

 

Despite a significant processing power advantage, the Pre launches most applications slower than the iPhone 3G. I suspect that we’re bound mostly by the read speed of the Pre’s Flash memory, but even then there’s no reason the Pre couldn’t be at least as fast as the iPhone. The more I tested the Pre the more I realized exactly how much time Apple spent optimizing the iPhone’s OS prior to its release.

Palm made a serious mistake when attempting to duplicate Apple’s success. The iPhone gained traction because it did not allow anything to compromise the user experience; applications and even web pages were quickly evicted from memory to preserve a very fast UI. Palm, with its significant hardware advantage, was not able to accomplish the same thing here.

Even when the iPhone gets slow, it’s still smooth. The Pre’s animations are not as smooth as Apple’s. Even when the Pre does something faster than the iPhone, it fails to do it as smoothly. It all comes down to a lack of optimization; Palm could easily fix these issues, but the Pre seems a tad premature. Compared to every other smartphone on the planet, Palm did an incredible job. Compared to Apple? There’s about 10% more polish needed in the animation department.

Web Page Rendering: The Pre Advantage

Where the Pre doesn’t fail to impress is in its web page rendering performance. First, let’s look at the raw bandwidth numbers:

  3G/EVDO WiFi
Apple iPhone 3G (3.0) 916 KB/s 3237 KB/s
Palm Pre 881 KB/s 3973 KB/s

 

At my house Sprint’s EVDO and AT&T’s 3G network speeds were about the same. To test web page rendering performance however I visited several sites (full, not mobile versions), loading each one three times and taking the average time to load from the moment I entered the URL to the instant the progress indicator stopped animating.

3G/EVDO Apple iPhone 3G (3.0) Palm Pre
anandtech.com 20.3 s 17.2 s
arstechnica.com 23.3 s 14.0 s
hothardware.com 38.9 s 20.8 s
pcper.com 43.2 s 42.8 s
digg.com 44.5 s 30.3 s
techreport.com 27.2 s 15.2 s
tomshardware.com 32.3 s 30.3 s
slashdot.org 33.5 s 23.8 s
facebook.com 37.1 s 36.0 s
Palm Pre Advantage   30% Faster


On average, in my 3G vs. EVDO tests, the Palm Pre managed to render web pages around 30% faster than the iPhone 3G. My network bandwidth tests showed that I was getting relatively similar 3G and EVDO performance, so the rendering advantage is entirely due to the Pre’s faster processor. If anything, this is the sort of performance boost I would expect out of the iPhone 3GS when viewing web pages.

The network continues to be a large bottleneck however. Given the performance difference between the Cortex A8 and the ARM11, I would expect a larger difference in web page load speed - if we’re CPU bound at all. When I reviewed the first iPhone I surmised that we were quite CPU bound; moving to a faster internet connection (WiFi) should show an even larger gap between the Pre and the iPhone 3G if we were indeed CPU bound. Let’s see if I’m right:

WiFi Apple iPhone 3G (3.0) Palm Pre T-Mobile G1
anandtech.com 16.3 s 8.2 s 17.2 s
arstechnica.com 17.7 s 7.8 s 17.8 s
hothardware.com 35.2 s 11.2 s 24.4 s
pcper.com 33.3 s 18.0 s 34.0 s
digg.com 34.3 s 22.1 s 40.0 s
techreport.com 24.1 s 9.0 s 20.5 s
tomshardware.com 21.4 s 13.8 s 26.0 s
slashdot.org 26.0 s 20.9 s 46.0 s
facebook.com 31.7 s 19.6 s 37.7 s
Palm Pre Advantage vs iPhone 3G   83% Faster  

 

Remove some of the network bottleneck and the Pre stretches its legs; the gap now grows to 83%. Not only is the iPhone very CPU bound even while rendering web pages, it’s even more so on WiFi. For the WiFi results I also included the T-Mobile G1, which uses a 528MHz ARM11 processor (compared to the 412MHz ARM11 core in the iPhone 3G). The faster CPU isn't enough to really outperform the iPhone 3G, while it does pull ahead in some cases it isn't consistently faster. Apple needed to use the Cortex A8 to guarantee significant performance improvements in the 3GS.

Given that the iPhone 3GS is expected to use similar hardware to the Pre, this is the sort of performance improvement I would expect to see out of the new 3GS.

It’s Time for Multi-Core

Anyone who has owned an iPhone has experienced the stalling problem. Whether it’s switching between applications, clicking on a link or just trying to unlock your phone, occasionally the process will take much, much longer than expected. We’ve been spoiled by having multi-core processors everywhere since 2005, we haven’t forgotten the lessons behind why single-core is bad have we?

A single core microprocessor without SMT can only operate on a single thread of instructions at a time. Unfortunately for single core processors, we often have tens if not hundreds of threads contending for their attention. Thankfully these CPUs operate at millions if not billions of cycles per second and a good scheduler can cycle through many threads, hundreds of times per second.

If everything works ok, there’s nothing to worry about. All of your running threads each get a slice of time and cycle through until they’re complete. As with most things, the scheduling world doesn’t always work like that. Every now and then the scheduler will pick a thread to execute on the CPU that won’t relinquish its control, or the scheduler will screw up and keep picking the wrong thread for execution (e.g. a background task instead of a foreground task). In these situations you get what feels like a a frozen system.

The iPhone appears to handle these situations very well. The app will either take a long time to respond or it will simply crash and exit. Sometimes the phone will require a hardware reset to recover but most of the time it just behaves strangely for a bit.

The move to multiple cores helps alleviate this scenario by giving the OS a second core to schedule threads on. In the event that one core is busy and can’t handle a more immediate, at least to the end user, task the second core is there to help things remain smooth and responsive.

Luckily, ARM has just the solution - the Cortex A9. The Cortex A9 is an out-of-order ARM processor (the first of its kind) that supports multi-core configurations. The ARM11 actually supports multi-core configurations as well but I don’t expect many manufacturers to step back from the A8 to a multi-core ARM11 processor.

I’m expecting the multi-core A9 transition to happen in the next 12 months. If Apple is particularly ambitious (or feeling threatened), it could attempt to bring about app-level multitasking and multi-core at the same time next year.

Web Browsing Battery Life
Comments Locked

91 Comments

View All Comments

  • OCedHrt - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link

    My HTC has predictive text input (based on key locality) in case of a miss so I don't think Apple has a patent on it.
  • macs - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link

    Speaking of fast web browsing.... i use opera mini on my google Ion phone (android). It delivers full browsing experience and it's blazing fast. Opera mini loads anandtech.com over my 3g network in just 9 seconds. You should try!
  • imaheadcase - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link

    Thats how apple stays in business right there, everyone thinks throwing money at overpriced products IT will get better eventually.. ZING!

    I don't know why this review is comparing it to a Iphone, Iphone is outclassed by other smartphones as it is, why not compare it to a real phone like a HTC touch or the like? You know, a phone that is popular with regular people and not hollywood hipsters only..

    Downvote if you want, but the FACT of the matter is, the Iphone is a niche market, look at the top phones sold by At&T, the basic flip phone is still the best selling phone in the world, the HTC touch even outsells the iphone 10-1. Like I mentioned before, I know one person who has a iphone and he only got it because parents got it to him as a going away to collage gift.

  • jmaine - Saturday, June 20, 2009 - link

    Where are you coming up with these stats from? Please show me one reliable source that says the HTC Touch outsells the iPhone 10-1. Please leave the bs in your dreams.
  • ltcommanderdata - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link

    One thing I find funny about arguments that the iPhone lacks basic features found in other phones is that despite this Apple has still sold 21 million iPhones as of March 2009, which is quite a success for a company that wasn't in the cell phone business 2 years ago. The question other phone manufacturers should be thinking about is what happens when the iPhone incorporates many of these lacking hard features in addition to the fluffy pizzaz it already has? How much additional demand will there be for a full featured iPhone?
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link

    The reviews agree, the HTC Touch isn't in the same class of smartphone as the iPhone. Most phones will outsell things like the iPhone; lower prices and lower monthly fees will determine quantities, but the space the iPhone competes in is the high end smartphone market where the stakes/players are a bit different.

    Take care,
    Anand
  • rudy - Monday, June 22, 2009 - link

    I cant find any provider which sells an HTC touch cheaper then an iPhone.
  • Stas - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link

    Same. I know 2 ppl that had iPhones. 1 was my techy friend, who took it to the shooting range and unloaded his rifle at it after 5 months of use. The other is my wife's friend who only knows how to call and text on it (not sure WHY she got it... oh, yeah, it's COOL).
    But I can think of at least 8 ppl that have a Blackberry... :)
  • anandtech02148 - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link

    Nokia N97, europe's answer to all american hyped up marketing trash. N97 unlocked, using Fring to escape that other american trash, US cellphone pre-nups.
    Voip, sip account, sweetness. symbian s60 5th is a bit shaky, but then again there isn't a perfect Os for new cellphone model that comes out every 3months, thanks to Taiwan,Korea and China new handset are out every 24hrs. the only win for Apple here is a lot of laid off engineers creating adobe flash games for the iphone, how else would you get 50,000 apps. my hope is Nokia's answer apple in the next 6month with dual cores Arm.




  • snarfbot - Friday, June 19, 2009 - link

    im glad you're happy with your 700 US dollar phone.

    dumb americans are happy to get a free phone and use the same carrier for a couple of years, probably because almost every network is essentially the same in terms of features/cost.

    on a side note, something needs to be done about the word american.

    america is a big continent, people commonly refer to those living in the USA as "americans".

    it would be more fitting if we were dubbed usa'ians our something so our neighbors dont get insulted by accident.


    which brings me to my last point, in response to the actual article!

    it is odd indeed how the messaging protocol varies regionally, i think the major reason most people in the US use AIM, is because we were all introduced to the splendor of the internet by aol in the 90's, then when broadband became available people switched over and kept their AIM screen names. Those that used a different isp just used AIM because everyone else was on aol, etc.

    Peoples elsewhere probably used icq, until msn/yahoo came along and freed them from oppression.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now