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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grayson_carr - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
I own an iPad and my wife uses an iPhone. I hate lightning connectors. They're expensive, they die or stop being recognized far too frequently, and I can't use them with any of my other electronics so they add more cable clutter to my house and cars. So your statement is false. There are people who own Apple devices and still hate lightning connectors. Also, check out the lightning cable reviews at Apple's website (1300 1 star reviews vs 130 5 star reviews... hmm)... http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD818ZM/A/lightn...blackcrayon - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
How are people killing these lightning cables? I've never had one die, the first one i got from my iPhone 5 is probably still working (can't tell them apart really, but they're all still working).shm224 - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
you are the exception, not the norm. the 1.5 star, out of 5, on Apple review clearly demonstrates that @grayson_carr isn't the only one with unhappy with Apple's charge cables.mrochester - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
It sounds like you're being incredibly careless with your cables. Personally I think people who don't look after their things deserve to see them broken. I've never had any Apple or micro-USB cable break. Maybe try looking after you're stuff a bit better?dmacfour - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
A lot of people think it's normal to bend the connector ends of the cable at obscene angles. I've never done thing with any kind of cable, and I've never had a cable fray.akdj - Friday, October 3, 2014 - link
I agree. We've got a dozen ipad fours. We use them in the field. All over Alaska and from extreme to extreme temperature wise. Had the iPhone 5&5s'es for 17 employees and my wife, nine year old son iPod touch fifth gen and not a SINGLE lightning cable since their release two years ago has crapped out. Two dozen at least with backups for vehicles, desks and homes.This is ridiculous. Whoever 'breaks' a Lightining cable does it intentionally. They don't. Just. Break. Good Lord!
michael2k - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Apple has more cash on hand than the US Treasury:http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/04/14...
Not sure why you think they needed to compete in the mid and low end three years ago, do you really think they need that much more cash?
Hemlocke - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Exactly. Every other OEMS competes there, and the only one who is even playing in the same sport as Apple is Samsung, and they have been sent back to the minors over the last year. Competing on the low-end/price is a race to the bottom that nobody wins except Google, much like Microsoft did in the PC business. In the end, Apple proved that model to be inferior, as well.techconc - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
Lightning connector is not defective. We all wish USB would have put nearly as much thought into their connectors as Apple has. I can't exactly blame Apple for raising the bar here and showing others how it should be done.It's funny, people see jacka$$ on youtube putting lots of pressure on an iPhone 6 plus and assume it's a real issue. Those that I know with a 6+ don't seem to have any trouble with it in their pockets, etc. Also, why no mention of devices like the HTC One which bends under considerably less pressure? According to consumer reports, it bends under 70 lbs of pressure whereas the iPhone 6+ doesn't start to bend until 90 lbs. of pressure.
supgk - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Wow.. I sincerely hope it's just Samsung paying you to write that. The thought that anyone would truly believe it is depressing.