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
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.
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.
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Chaser - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
On a positive note the single speaker on the iPhone 6 was very good.blackcrayon - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Yeah, it's much louder than the previous iPhones, I like it for audiobooks.doobydoo - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
lol, stereo speakers on a phone.refineryorker - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
I find it amazing that the year old iPhone 5s still dominates much newer phones in the CPU tests.And more than holds it own and even dominates some of the GPU tests.
I'd say based on those tests a year old iPhone 5s still out performs much newer phones and is the best value phone on the market. Wow
darkich - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
The main reason for the GPU (and even some CPU cases) dominance is the low resolution screen.On screen, yes, the iPhone 5S will still produce one of the fastest fps, but it will do so on a surface so small that it makes any serious gaming a masochistic excersise anyway.
refineryorker - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
I own an iPhone 5s. I play games on it. It seems ok to me.No question the screen is much smaller, but I was expecting performance wise for the iPhone 5s to get left in the dust by competitor's phones, but it doesn't.
Instead in most of the cpu tests, the iPhone 5s is the third fastest phone behind the two new iPhones.
And even in the GPU and nand tests, the iPhone 5s performs extremely well on the majority of tests and even dominates a few.
I just find that fact amazing.
A year old cellphone and competition hasn't passed it on performance, and based on these tests overall the third most powerful cell phone on the market is the year old iPhone 5s.
For me that's by far the most surprising thing about this review.
Chaser - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
It doesn't take much processing power to run on a 5 year+ Leapfrog like interface.refineryorker - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
I don't understand your comment.I'm not interested in a debate. I'm just responding to the performance of the iPhone 5s on those tests.
To me it is amazing how a year old iPhone 5s out performs much newer phones on those tests.
Based on those tests overall, the iPhone 5s looks to be the 3rd best performing phone only behind the two new iPhones.
KoolAidMan1 - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
Obsession with tweaking an interface just so you can launch substandard applications or wait for them to be ported over from iOS is something I'll never understand.blackcrayon - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
It takes quite a bit of processing power to run some of the more sophisticated apps though - multi track audio apps, video editing apps, some of the more advanced drawing apps, and of course some of the more advanced games. If all you're doing is staring at the home screen interface, then yes iOS is probably not for you. Some people prefer to run software on their device though and appreciate having one of the best SoC's around to make it possible.