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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cheinonen - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
If means if you run them at maximum volume and you have a passage of music that is at 0dBFS (absolute maximum) then they can clip. However, if you look at something like the Galaxy 5S, the iPhone 6 can be a few levels below maximum volume and still have more power output into a 15 Ohm load. Only the HTC M8 so far does more power into a 15 Ohm load.0dBFS and maximum volume likely don't occur all that often (and for the sake of your hearing, they really shouldn't), but if they do the iPhone 6 will clip. However, the only phone so far that won't clip and produce that kind of power output is the HTC M8, so it's not really a huge negative, it just shows that HTC really built a great headphone amp.
Hxx - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
thanks Chris that makes more sense. I only run the usual itunes type music on my IP5 and I doubt ill be running into this clipping issue. Just noticed my IEMs were rated at 16 ohms and wasn't sure what to think especially since I already preordered the 6. Thanks again man. Great article.Calista - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Would say it's the first iPhones I have felt tempted to buy. Great camera, battery-life in place, speedy SOC and iOS can for the first time in five years compete with Android. It's truly a complete package. Of course, we should expect one of the most expensive phones to also be one of the best.SunLord - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
God that is an ugly ass phone... Those thick white lines on the back make it look god awful should've kept it to how the 5s did it with a white top and bottom. Did they fire everyone who designed the 5s and replace them with retarded color blind spider monkeys? At least the 5s in gold looked goodkyuu - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
"I've always felt like the HTC 8X had one of the most compelling shapes for a phone, and the incredibly thin feel of the iPhone 6 definitely reminds me of that."Uh, what? The iPhone 6 is not shaped like the 8X. It's just a really thin, flat slab. The 8X has a countered back.
Not sure what's to like about the iPhone 6's design, btw. It's just a really unnecessarily thin piece of slick metal. I don't get it.
JoshHo - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
To clarify that comment, it's really the thin feel of the edge. The 8X really felt razor-thin at the edge, and the iPhone 6 has a similar feel at the edge.kyuu - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
I see, that makes a little more sense. Thanks for the clarification. Probably should clarify the wording in the article to make it clearer that you're referring to the edge rather than the overall shape of the phone.solarisking - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
You guys completely glossed over the Qualcomm modem. Didn't even put the part number in there (9625). I'm wondering what bands to these iPhone support? Do they all have the exact same chip? Exact same hardware for each service and the only difference between them is which SIM card they are provisioned with? Also, why not go with the even newer and smaller 9635? The 9625 was announced in friggin 2011 and sampled in 2012 with quantity available in 2013. Yeah, the 9635 has more features than they need but it's still newer and smaller, i.e. uses less battery.NEED MORE INFO!!!
solarisking - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
In this thread: tons of angry Samsung owners wishing Apple would bend to their will.araksonofthunder - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Amazing. A phone review with everything except how it performs as a phone. You know, that thing you do when you speak into the device and your voice comes out of another device thousands of miles away.