The iPhone 6 Review
by Joshua Ho, Brandon Chester, Chris Heinonen & Ryan Smith on September 30, 2014 8:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iPhone 6
GPU Performance
While we don't quite have real games to benchmark against, we do have benchmarks that are reasonably good approximations of games, which heavily stress the GPU. For the most part, this means that we can see the performance of the A8's PowerVR GX6450 GPU but there are some aspects that are CPU-bound, which we'll discuss after the results.
Edit: Before I get into the results, I must caution that Basemark X will have inaccurate on-screen results as the benchmark was made using XCode 5.x in order to keep scores comparable between versions 1.1 and 1.1.1. This doesn't affect the overall score, which is solely calculated based upon off-screen performance.
For the most part, we see that the GX6450 is at about the same level as Qualcomm's Adreno 420, which seems to track closely to expectations given that the A7's GPU was around the same performance as the Adreno 330. The 3DMark test does have an interesting result, but it seems that this is because 3DMark's physics test has a strong amount of data dependency that restricts the level of out of order execution that can be done. NVIDIA's Tegra K1 is the current leader in graphics performance, but of course it's also in a tablet instead of a smartphone so it's not a direct competitor.
NAND Performance
As we move towards the goal of seamless performance in everyday tasks, one significant factor is IO performance. While there's definitely a minimum level of performance that allows for generally acceptable smoothness, there's value in having higher storage performance (e.g. prevent bottlenecking in situations such as updating apps in the background). In order to test this, we use Androbench with some custom settings on Android and a custom utility developed by Eric Patno for iOS, who has been quite helpful with furthering our efforts to test storage performance.
As this is the first time that we've looked into NAND performance on iOS devices, it's definitely worth scrutinizing the data a bit more closely than in most cases. There are a few notable cases here, which are the class-leading speeds for sequential reads and writes on the iPhone 6, but also the rather middling random read and write speeds for the iPhone 6 and 5s. The oddest result is definitely the iPhone 5, which is Ryan's personal unit and while the random read speeds are on the low side, random write speeds are easily record-setting.
In practice, with tablets and smartphones being less multitasking heavy than PCs/laptops, the sequential scores are probably slightly more relevant to the overall user experience. The iPhone 6 results show a significant increase in performance over the iPhone 5s in all of the tests, which is always good to see.
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Samus - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
tl/drAceMcLoud - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
lol, retardroids crack me upninjaroll - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
LOL. That's pretty sad. I would NEVER spend more than 2 minutes writing about a product I don't intend on using. You seem a LITTLE obsessed with Apple judging by your username. But I applaud you for having so much free time, must be nice having so much disposable time. I say you focus on using whatever works for you.bigstrudel - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
It took a second to scroll by your post, but I had to scroll back up to read your line"Last but not least, every Apple product includes a direct hotlink to the NSA, free of charge, something that might make it a good value, after all."
Wait. Apple is the one with NSA connections?
Aljazeera released emails that show Google's founders speaking with the NSA director on a first name basis.
In 2004, Google bought Keyhole, a geospatial data visualization company with history and investments made by the CIA. Keyhole's marquee application suite, Earth Viewer, emerged as Google Earth in 2005 while other aspects of its technology were integrated into Google Maps.
SELinux was created by the NSA for "security purposes" and is included on Android with Google's permission. It cannot be disabled.
Do you think AOSP will save you with it's "millions of eyes" strategy? Wrong. Google Apps are closed source and cannot be removed by 99% of the population.
Yes. We don't really know what happens to the data that Apple collects. But Apple is a hardware company. They make their money selling devices.
We do know what Google does with our data however. Google exists to collect and sell user data. Distributing an OS and App package that collects user data is a far better strategy for mass spying than trying to directly compete with only a single companies hardware.
And there is nothing to stop Google from handing over anything they want behind closed doors, like you accuse Apple of, but with no evidence.
WinterCharm - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Someone's upset that their phone isn't the "best"bigstrudel - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
DEVS.2nd response with a wall of text? On a popular website? Impossible. He clearly had it pre-prepared before the review was even ready seeing as it's the size and quality of a 7th graders essay.
Delete this trash.
RandomReader - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
You never stop making censorship requests, do you?Here we go again:
In contrast to you I very much enjoyed reading the differing viewpoint mentioned above, albeit the fact that it does display a healthy dislike for apple products in general and has been written by an obvious android fan-boy.
Now what I don't like that much is your request to censor the aforementioned post and all related answers out of purely private motives.
Just because you deem something inappropriate and dispensable, it doesn't has to be that way, thus I politely ask you to respect the right of others to enjoy unhindered freedom of speech in general and the existence of other peoples personal opinions.
Hereby I politely ask you to abstain from censorship requests out of mainly egoistic, egocentric motivations, please respect other peoples rights and opinions.
As a side note, based on your behavior and the totalitarian nature of your requests, I suspect you to be either a member of some law enforcement entity or
an individual blessed with a pretty weak character, apparently unable to deal with differing viewpoints in a grown up, factual manner.
kattahn - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
"The apple way, selling over expensive crap to stupid consumers that like toget robbed."
starting at 200$ is the price that every companies top end smartphone starts at. iPhones have always been priced competitively.
"The iwatch is such an ugly piece of crap" - opinion
"Some characteristics are glaringly obvious and inherent to it: over expensive" - compared to what
"hardly innovative" - combining messaging, navigation, and health features into a watch with TONs of interchangeable bands, integrating the watch dial as manual control, and the ability to use touch feedback to the user to communicate non-visual messages. Inductive charging without the need for a cradle. Theres really no other smart watch doing all of this...
"limited functionality and usability (need of an iPhone to make it work)" - Yup. Its an extension of your phone. this is normal.
"looks exactly like a toy watch and so on." - Have you seen it with any of the nice metal bands? And with the face up? What kind of toy watches are you looking at?
"There are of course way better smart watches out there, especially from the
likes of Samsung, Sony, Motorola, Asus, LG, simply put, there is no need for
another piece of over expensive junk." - You've never used a wearable before, have you? Or read any reviews? Every android one so far has been pretty terrible, with the "flagship" that everyone was waiting on using a 4 year old SoC.
"The iPhone 6 is technologically stuck in pre-2011 times, a base model with
a capacity of 16GB without the possibility to use SD cards isn't even funny
anymore. " - I 100% agree. Apple is making a ton of money off limiting storage capacity.
"Now the Iphone 6 Plus offers a „Retina HD“ screen, full 1920x1080p, oh wow,
where have you been for the past 4 years apple, talk about trailing behind." - First 1080p smartphones came out in q4 of 2012.
"Car engines come to mind. For comparisons shake let’s look at a 1.0 liter, turbo
charged petrol engine and a V8 compressor. What’s better should be obvious, but
by calling the former an „ecobooster“, thus giving it a special marketing label,
this joke becomes a „feature“, something positive that can be added tot the list
of features of a car." - so we've made it clear you know literally cars. got it. stick to analogies with things that you understand.
"FACT: Apple has been forced to copy Android in style and size for
years because people abandoned their tired, moribund and fossilized
devices for superior and innovative Android devices." - Yes, they'e been taking the best features of android for a while now, and leaving the bad ones behind. And they've got a damn fine product to show for it.
"charge a premium price and
wait for the rubes like Jim Smith to hand over their cash like the good
iSheep they are." - Again, iphones are priced the same as any other smartphone.
"For all their squealing about Retina displays, they never even had a HD display until now;
8th time is the charm, though you need the iPhone Galaxy Note to get the 1080p that many Android
users have had for at least a year and is now considered
bare-minimum spec." Yes, androids have been pushing resolutions WAY higher than their processors and batteries could handle for several years. And they've been laggy/stuttery and have had terrible battery life the whole time.
And thats the part that you and the other fanboys just don't understand. Specsheets are boderline useless. Ask intel about spec sheet races during the netburst era of CPUs. Intel ran out clock speed improvements like crazy and got trounced with better user experience and performance by AMD CPUs running half the clock rate.
We can also use your inept car analogy here. Because with engines, bigger is not always better. Not by a longshot. A BMW M3 with a twin-turbo straight 6 pushes more HP and will outperform a Mustang with a 5.0L V8. An Ariel Atom with a 2.3L naturally aspirated engine will beat both cars in 0-60, and will outhandle them both. Because the entire car was built around performance. Point being, If all you look at is horsepower or engine size, you have no idea what you're doing and aren't really getting the best product for what you're trying to do.
Apple creates fantastic, tightly designed products that focus on the user experience. They have 100% control of their hardware and software ecosystems and are able to highly optimize everything they do to provide the highest level of performance they can. If you pick up an iphone 6, regardless of the specs, the screen will look great, the battery life will be great, the phone will be flawlessly snappy and won't lockup/hang/get slow over time. You'll have a great user experience, even if it doesn't spec for spec line up against a 2014 android flagship. Just like if you get into an ariel atom and hit the gas, it will absolutely throw you back against the seat and show you power and acceleration you've never felt before, even though by specs it doesn't look comparable at all to something like an M3 or a Mustang 5.0
Ant1matt3r - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
I've never seen so much admiration or hatred for a company as I have Apple. Have you thought to think that, considering the length of your diatribe, that Apple is doing something RIGHT?I mean, to polarize the world into groups of fanbois and haters, with each being equally passionate about Apple, I'd have to say that they're doing a damn fine job.
If they can compel you to write a 5,000 word essay denouncing their product, imagine what they do for people who actually ENJOY what they do.
dmacfour - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
I don't think the world is actually polarized.There's the 5% that are Apple fanboys, the 5% that would murder Steve Jobs if they had the opportunity, and then the 90% that'll buy wherever is the coolest.One thing is certain: the iPhone is a superior product from a business standpoint.