iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus: Preliminary Results
by Joshua Ho on September 22, 2014 7:07 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iOS
- iPhone 6
- iPhone 6 Plus
While we’re still working on the full review, I want to get out some preliminary results for the iPhone 6. For now, this means some basic performance data and battery life, which include browser benchmarks, game-type benchmarks, and our standard web browsing battery life test. There’s definitely a lot more to talk about for this phone, but this should give an idea of what to expect in the full review. To start, we'll look at the browser benchmarks, which can serve as a relatively useful proxy for CPU performance.
There are a few interesting observations here, as a great deal of the scaling is above what one would expect from the minor frequency bump when comparing A7 and A8. In SunSpider, we see about a 13% increase in performance that can't be explained by frequency increases alone. For Kraken, this change is around 7.5%, and we see a similar trend across the board for the rest of these tests. This points towards a relatively similar underlying architecture, although it's still too early to tell how much changes between the A7 and A8 CPU architectures. Next, we'll look at GPU performance in 3DMark and GFXBench, although we're still working on figuring out the exact GPU in A8.
In in GPU benchmarks, we generally see a pretty solid lead over the competition for the iPhone 6/A8. It's seems quite clear that there is a significant impact to GPU performance in the iPhone 6 Plus due to the 2208x1242 resolution that all content is rendered at. It seems that this is necessary though, as the rendering system for iOS cannot easily adapt to arbitrary resolutions and display sizes. Before we wrap up this article though, I definitely need to address battery life. As with all of our battery life tests, we standardize on 200 nits and ensure that our workload in the web browsing test has a reasonable amount of time in all power states of an SoC.
As one can see, it seems that Apple has managed to do something quite incredible with battery life. Normally an 1810 mAh battery with 3.82V nominal voltage would be quite a poor performer, but the iPhone 6 is a step above just about every other Android smartphone on the market. The iPhone 6 Plus also has a strong showing, although not quite delivering outrageous levels of battery life the way the Ascend Mate 2 does. That's it for now, but the full review should be coming in the near future.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
316 Comments
View All Comments
rafoix - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
The same way that an Intel quad-core can outperform an AMD octa-core while the AMD also has a higher clock speed.A better design will give you better real world results.
Scannall - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Intel i5's with 4 cores beat out AMD 8 core CPU's all day long, with a much better IPC. 2 big cores make a lot more sense in a mobile device. It's had to get software that takes advantage of 4 cores in your desktop computer, let alone your phone.GC2:CS - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Apple A8 a power sipping beast.juicytuna - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
"In in GPU benchmarks, we generally see a pretty solid lead over the competition for the iPhone 6/A8."Actually, it looks to me about on par with its contemporaries (SD 810, Exynos 5433)
Also your battery tests need revising as they don't reflect real world usage at all. I can tell you from experience the Moto G is not in the same league as the Note 3 in terms of battery life.
juicytuna - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
SD 805*kenansadhu - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Hi there. I know this is Anandtech and you're few steps above the others, but may I kindly ask you to check the performance over time of this new iPhones? I heard that what's special about this new chip isn't the increase of performance, but the power/heat management (maybe I even heard about it from this site). Thank you!MacMan1984 - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Regarding battery life: don't you need to compare "apples with apples" (as it were)? You can't just list a device's name: both the size of it's battery and, more importantly, the weight of the device, plays into this. Yes, the Ascend Mate 2 has a longer battery life, but it also weighs in 202 g as opposed to the 129 g of the iPhone 6 and the 172 g of the 6+). So while you get a longer battery life with the Mate 2, you have to carry around the extra weight. This is an important trade-off and I think it should be in there with the other stats.Vjgoh - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Not really. If what you're concerned with is the absolute life of your phone throughout the day, and that's your main consideration when buying a phone, it's likely that you'll eschew other factors just to get the most life out of the phone that you can. A lot of people online seem to cite the swappable battery and SD card in the Samsung as reasons to buy that phone, regardless of the merits of other phones. If you want your phone to last all day, the power to weight ratio probably isn't going to impress you much.Zink - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
I don't think I've every seen battery life compared like that. If no one wants to read it then it is probably a waste of time to create, I'd rather websites I read publish interesting things. No one is stopping you from publishing that article though.RebeccaS - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
It's pretty much pointless comparing an Ascend Mate 2 with its 6.1" screen to a small 4.7" iPhone 6 anyway. They aim at different segments of the market. I wouldn't personally even consider a 5" or larger mobile phone, they are simply too big to be very useable, may as well get a tablet. Compare it to an Xperia Z3 Compact instead, as that's a similar size phone, aimed at the same market segment. Gives a much more interesting result. Unfortunately Anandtech doesn't appear to have tested the Z3 Compact yet, so how it would compare in those battery life tests is yet an unknown factor.