Apple iPhone 4S: Thoroughly Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on October 31, 2011 7:45 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iPhone
- iPhone 4S
Display
Though many expected Apple to redesign everything around a 4“ display, the display on the 4S superficially identical. The 4S includes the same size and resolution display as the 4, namely a 3.54” IPS panel with 960x640 resolution. We’ve been over this a few times already in the context of the iPhone 4 and the CDMA iPhone 4, but it bears going over again.
In retrospect, moving up to 4“ would’ve gone against Apple’s logical approach to maintaining a DPI-agnostic iOS, and it makes sense to spread the cost of changing display resolution across two generations, which is what we see now. While Android is gradually catching up in the DPI department, OEMs on that side of the fence are engaged in a seemingly endless battle over display size. You have to get into Apple’s head and understand that from their point of view, 3.5” has always been the perfect size - there’s a reason it hasn’t changed at all.
I’ve been through a few 4s myself, and alongside the CDMA iPhone 4, have seen the white point of the retina display gradually shift over time. While I don’t have that original device anymore, even now the 4S seems to have shifted slightly compared to a very recently manufactured 4 I had on hand, and appears to have a different color temperature. We’ve been measuring brightness and white point on smartphone displays at a variety of different brightness settings, and the 4S isn’t spared the treatment. I also tossed in my 4 for comparison purposes. The data really speaks for itself.
The first chart shows white point at a number of brightness values set in settings. You can see the iPhone 4 and 4S differ and straddle opposite sides of 6500K. I would bet that Apple has some +/- tolerance value for these displays from 6500K, and the result is what you see here. Thankfully the lines are pretty straight (so it doesn’t change as you vary brightness), but this variance is why you see people noting that one display looks warmer or cooler than the other. I noted this behavior with the CDMA iPhone 4, and suspect that many people still carrying around launch GSM/UMTS iPhone 4 devices will perceive the difference more than those who have had their devices swapped.
The next two charts show display brightness at various settings for solid black and white on the display.
The 4S and 4 displays follow roughly the same curve, however there is a definite shift in contrast resulting from higher black levels on the 4S display. I’ve seen a few anecdotal accounts of the 4S display being less contrasty, and again this is the kind of shift that unfortunately happens over time with displays. I’ve updated our iPhone 4 result on the graph with the latest of a few I’ve been through.
Unfortunately the 4S falls short of the quoted 800:1 contrast ratio, whereas the 4 previously well exceeded it (the earliest 4 we saw had a contrast value of 951). Rumor has it that Apple has approved more panel vendors to make the retina display, I have no doubt that we’re seeing these changes in performance as a result of multiple sourcing.
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tipoo - Monday, October 31, 2011 - link
Anyone know if there is a reason this hasn't made it into any Andriod phone yet? Does Google specify compatible GPU's, or is it cost, or development time, etc? Looks like it slaughters even the Mali 400 which is probably the next fastest.zorxd - Monday, October 31, 2011 - link
The only reason is that no one used it yet. The TI OMAP 4470 will use the 544 which is probably a little faster.The SGS2 is using the slower Mali 400, however it was released 6 months ago. Yet it's not that bad, even beating the 4S in Glbenchmark pro.
zorxd - Monday, October 31, 2011 - link
I meant no SoC vendor is using it.djboxbaba - Monday, October 31, 2011 - link
The numbers were incorrect and have been updated, the 4S is ~2x faster than the GS2 on the GLBenchmark Pro.freezer - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
But not when running at phone's native resolution. Thats what people will use while running games on their phone.iPhone 4S has much more pixels for GPU to draw while having much smaller screen. Not very optimal for gaming right?
http://glbenchmark.com/result.jsp?benchmark=glpro2...
djboxbaba - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
Correct, but we're comparing the GPU's by standardizing the resolution. Of course in the native resolution this will change.thunng8 - Monday, October 31, 2011 - link
I don't see any GL benchmark that the Mail 400 beats the 4S???freezer - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
That's because Anandtech review shows only the 720p offscreen results.This gives very different numbers compared to running GL Benchmark Pro in phone's native resolution.
iPhone 4S has about 60% more pixels than Galaxy S2, and so its GPU has to draw much more pixels in every frame.
Go to glbenchmark.com and dig database yourself.
Ryan Smith - Monday, October 31, 2011 - link
The 544 should be identical to the 543 at the same clock and core configuration. It's effectively a 543 variant with full D3D feature level 9_3 support. The primary purpose of the 544 will be to build Windows devices, whereas for non-Windows devices the 543 would suffice. We don't have access to PowerVR's pricing, but it likely costs more due to the need to license additional technologies (e.g. DXTC) to achieve full 9_3 support.Penti - Tuesday, November 1, 2011 - link
Who will use it to support Windows Phone though? Qualcomm uses their own AMD/ATi based Adreno GPU. I guess it will be TI's attempt off getting Microsoft to support Windows Phone on their SoC in order to supply say partners of theirs like Nokia. Or might just be a later purchase/contract date for the other SoC vendors. Getting the IP-blocks later, but many did opt for the Mali-400 so why wouldn't they opt for the successor too? It seems to have worked out good. Samsung is just one of the vendors that usually did use PowerVR. I guess ST-E will use it in order to support Windows Phone on Nova A9540 SoC too. While Android vendors might opt for the older A9500 still.Interesting to see how Nvidia do lag in this field though.