CPU Performance

Now that we have a good idea of what the A8 SoC looks like, we can talk about performance. While we covered this in the preliminary article, it’s worth going over again. For those that are unfamiliar with our test suite the CPU-based tests are mostly browser-based benchmarks. Once again, although I’m not quite happy with the state of benchmarking things we’re getting close to a more platform-agnostic solution.

SunSpider 1.0.2 Benchmark  (Chrome/Safari/IE)

Kraken 1.1 (Chrome/Safari/IE)

Google Octane v2  (Chrome/Safari/IE)

WebXPRT (Chrome/Safari/IE)

BaseMark OS II - Overall

BaseMark OS II - System

BaseMark OS II - Memory

BaseMark OS II - Graphics

BaseMark OS II - Web

For the most part, the A8 SoC performs admirably despite the relatively low (1.38 GHz) frequency and half the cores when compared to competing SoCs. It seems that this is mostly building upon the lead that A7's Cyclone CPUs began. It remains to be seen if other SoC manufacturers will catch up in their CPU architecture at one point or another (NVIDIA's Project Denver in particular is interesting), but for now Apple seems to be quite far in the lead in CPU performance.

A8’s GPU: Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR GX6450 GPU and NAND Performance
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  • Torakaru - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link

    Which Galaxy did you used? Because I have been reading around that 1GB is not enough and many users complaint about it (doesnt matter if iPhone5/5s/6/6+ or last year iPad's) as for instance the Safary crashes/fully reloads even after more than a couple of tabs in use.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link

    "Could you be so kind to be more precise about that feeling that you have? It is due lack of RAM for multitasking, or also for single tasks?"

    It's a lack of RAM for multitasking. At some point the OS will reach its limit and be forced to evict apps and/or cached Safari tabs. The 5S and 6 have a it a bit worse than the 5 due to the fact that the AArch64 processors in the 5S and 6 require additional RAM to be allocated to the OS to operate the 32bit and 64bit user lands simultaniously.
  • refineryorker - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link

    The other interesting thing I noticed about this review and many of the top performing non I phones is that for American consumers, a lot of these phones don't really exist to purchase on the major U.S. carriers.

    I visited the t mobile, sprint, Att, and Verizon websites and

    The Hauwei honor 6, the Samsung Galaxy s5 broadband lte a, Nokia lumia 930, Nokia lumia 630, and the Xperia z1s don't exist on those websites.

    The Samsung Galaxy s5 T-Mobile only exists for T-Mobile.

    The HTC one e8 is only on sprint.

    So all this means is that the List of phones that Americans can purchase looks vastly different than the top performing non iPhones on the above list.

    Most non iPhones that Americans can purchase aren't top performers.
  • roncron - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link

    I've read at least 15 reviews of the iPhone 6, including the excellent review at iLounge.com. But this review is the best of them all. Very thorough and scientific. The review, while long, is also well-written and nicely organized.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link

    Thank you.
  • cknobman - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link

    I take your battery test results with a grain of salt when it comes to actual real world use. I know they are scientific but it just seems they paint the iPhones as having great battery life when in reality it blows.

    We have two iPhone 5s in our house, an LG G2, a Nokia Lumia 1520, and a SG4.
    In practical use the iPhone's cant even get through 3/4 of a day without being drained dry.
    The SG4 can barely make it to evening.
    The LG G2 can make an entire day easy but needs to be recharged every day.
    The Nokia can go 2 days without being charged.

    Before getting the iPhone 5s's I read reviews thinking that those things should get better battery life than the SG4, most of that opinion coming from reviews like yours. Little did I know that those thoughts were bogus.

    I dont expect much more practical battery life from and iPhone 6 either. This is not isolated to my house either.
  • munim - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link

    It doesn't seem like you're trolling so think about the following factors:
    I'm assuming different people are using each phone. They probably have different usage habits, different apps syncing, different amount of apps syncing, maybe one person uses the phone more outdoors using higher brightness / GPS / LTE as opposed to wifi.
  • zhenya00 - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link

    Without some context your comparisons are useless. I presume the phones are owned by different family members and see different usage patterns. Perhaps some of them are backup or work/non-primary phones. Perhaps the iPhones used more heavily than the others as is often the case (I have family members who own iPhones and have work provided Blackberries - I bet they'd say the iPhone has poor battery life as all but which one are they using all day and which one sits on the counter?)

    You could have bad backups you've restored to them that cause drains, or other problem software. My 5s tended to see about 2.5 hours of 'use' per day, and I'd tend to get about 5 usage hours and 2 days between charges. The 6 seems to be giving me closer to 7-8 hours of use, and again, 2 days of standby.
  • cknobman - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link

    I cannot give you exact usage patterns for all of the phones.

    BUT

    The iPhone 5s's and the LG G2 are used by my 3 teenagers (two 16, one 14). They all do plenty of facebooking, instagraming, messaging, and tweeting. While non of them have the exact same usage pattern I can safely say that they are all similar. I find it ironic that the two iPhones just happen to be unable to get through a 8 hour period without losing charge. I had to buy both of those phones battery cases for my kids. The LG G2 on the other hand has never had a battery problem.

    As for the SG4, that is used by my wife who is a facebook, instagram, and pintrest junky. She can drain a battery on anything in a day. Usually her phone makes it from morning until night but sometimes she kills it before bedtime.

    The Nokia is mine and it gets a decent amount of use. During the day not a lot of things going on it while I am at work outside of games when Im in the restroom and during lunch. Once at home it is my primary source of access to anything digital I need. I dont touch a computer once I leave the office.
  • beggerking@yahoo.com - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link

    I have the same conclusion with mine. Nokia seem to last forever on tiny batteries.

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