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.
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Rapha.194 - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
What matters are the battery tests using 3G / 4G!PeteH - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Maybe for you, but not for me. 90% of the time I'm using my phone (either at work or at home) I'm on WiFi.Rapha.194 - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
The Site PhoneArena reviews said the battery is badPeteH - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
The Site AnandTech reviews said the battery is good.Affectionate-Bed-980 - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Can I just say that while I generally respect Anandtech's articles for detailed analysis of technical details, can we stop trying to release these piecemeal articles? If you truly want to write an article from start to finish with the typical analysis that Anandtech provides, then do it. If it takes 2 weeks, then wait 2 weeks. Please don't do these preview, then follow up then slight follow up articles.I can point to a bunch of examples (ahem GS4 Part 2 review?) where reviewers promise to follow up and never do. There's plenty of examples from the computer hardware world too where you guys promised a DDR3 roundup article, an i7 overclocking article, and a lot of other stuff following a single review article so we kept on waiting and waiting. Either do it now or never.
victorson - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
This. I myself am checking the website a couple of times a day (work-related) to see whether the iPhone 6 review is ready, but this half-baked piece just looks amateurish and out of place. Anand has set the bar high, and you guys with Andrei Frumusanu (I loved his last review, hope I got the name right) certainly have what it takes to keep it up.Rapha.194 - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
The Site PhoneArena reviews said the battery is baduhuznaa - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
The site PhoneArena doesn't say how their test works though.Busterjonez - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
There is something absolutely crazy going on with the web browsing battery life test.On no planet can the Nexus 4 ever achieve 6+ hours of screen on time. (Source: I own one)
There is zero chance that my LG G2 can ever get 10+ hours of screen time.
I get that the test is supposed to give a relative idea of battery strength. However, a better representation of an actual use case would be greatly appreciated!
Rapha.194 - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
The Apple website shows that the battery is better iphone 6 1 hours "at most" compared to iPhone 5sHow can these tests take more than 2 hours apart?
Sorry. but I believe more in the battery test PhoneArena