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
AppleCrappleHater2 - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
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.Steve Jobs said no one should want a 7" tablet until everyone went and bought Android devices forcing Apple to copycat with the iPad Mini. Apple didn't think anyone wanted a phone screen larger than a business card until they all bought Androids thus forcing the arrival this week of the iPhone Galaxy and iPhone Galaxy Note clone phones.
Swipe down notifications that don't interfere? Copied from Android and WebOS. Siri? Bought and ruined from a private developer; Google Now crushes it. 3rd-party keyboards? Welcome to 2010, iChumps! Widgets? Welcome to 2009 except you can't place them on your home screen. Live wallpapers and hidden icons? Maybe Apple will get around to copying those in iOS X in 2016. Who knows.
Apple lacks creativity and honest people acknowledge it. Steve Jobs gets credited as an innovator when all he was was a huckster who'd spot someone else's tech, polish it up nicely, then slap a gnawed fruit logo on the back, charge a premium price and wait for the rubes like Jim Smith to hand over their cash like the good iSheep they are.
But after that initial iteration, Apple is incapable of actually innovating something new. They literally cannot make a product until someone else shows them how and they copy it. They are also unable refine things because they believe to improve is to admit something was imperfect the first time. (This is why QuickTime 4 had a legendarily terrible UI that was never changed through QT7 a decade later.) All they can do is make things incrementally thinner or faster but it's just minor refinements since they can't invest their way out of a wet paper bag.
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. At the rate Apple drags along, QHD screens should arrive in 2018. Maybe. A graphic went around after the reveal comparing the iPhone Galaxy to the Nexus 4 from 2012. Exactly.
TL;DR: Apple is finally (and desperately) copying where Android OS and phones have been for the past 2-4 years.
lagnaf - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
And that has exactly what to do with these benchmark results? Why are you so invested in which corporate entity is aping the other corporate entity?Graag - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Ignore the troll. I wish this site had an ignore button so we wouldn't have to waste our time with these 16 year olds.uhuznaa - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
God, you're really obsessed with Apple, aren't you?garbul - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
May I suggest a brisk walk; or, perhaps, a lobotomy.blackcrayon - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Isn't it ironic that people post moronic walls of text in the very same articles that prove how stupid they are?TruthLoader - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
You've been soiling yourself in public with your iTard blather all through these comments, but you totally beclowned yourself here, you sad pitiful foolish fucking cunt.Your ranting insult makes no sense at all, you are wasting space, oxygen, time, help make the world a better place, go and die.
dmacfour - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
You sound like a neckbeard.TruthLoader - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Neckbeard:http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nec...
apunari - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Do we really need qhd screens on a 5.5 inch mobile phone?