The iPhone 5 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Brian Klug & Vivek Gowri on October 16, 2012 11:33 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iPhone 5
Six Generations of iPhones: Performance Compared
Section by Anand Shimpi
Cross platform smartphone benchmarks are interesting, but they do come with their own sets of issues. Before we get to that analysis however, let's look at how the iPhone's performance has improved over the past six generations. Luckily Brian has a set of all of the iPhones so he was able to run a few tests on all of the devices, each running the latest supported OS.
We'll start with SunSpider 0.9.1, our trusty javascript performance test:
The transition from iPhone to iPhone 3G shows you just how much additional performance you can squeeze out of simply a software change. There's likely even more that could be squeezed out of that ARM11 platform, unfortunately newer versions of Safari/iOS aren't supported on the iPhone 3G so we're left with a runtime that's around 37x the length of a single run on the iPhone 5.
The rest of the devices support and run iOS 6, so we're at least on a level software playing field. The performance boost from one generation to the next is quite significant still. Going by this chart alone, the best balance of minimal upgrades and maximum perceived improvement would be from the original iPhone to the 3GS then again from the 3GS to the 5.
The BrowserMark results tell a similar story. The jump from the ARM11 based iPhone/iPhone 3G to the 3GS running iOS 6 is huge. Both the 4S and 5 offer doublings in performance, albeit for different reasons. The 4S delivered a doubling thanks to a doubling of core count and a move to the Cortex A9, while the iPhone 5 doubled performance through a much higher clock speed and microarchitectural improvements.
Finally we have Geekbench 2, which only runs on the iOS 6 supported devices so we say goodbye to the original iPhone and iPhone 3G:
None of the jumps looks as dramatic as the move to the iPhone 5, but we already know why. The Swift CPU architecture does a great job improving memory performance, which shows up quite nicely in a lot of the Geekbench 2 subtests.
On the PC side we often talk about 20% performance improvements from one generation to the next being significant. It's clear that the mobile SoC space is still operating along a hyper Moore's Law curve. The rate of progress will eventually slow down, but I don't see that happening for at least another couple generations. The move to ARM's Cortex A15 will be met with another increase in performance (and a similarly large set of power challenges), and whatever comes next will push smartphones into a completely new category of performance.
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dado023 - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
These days for me is battery life and then screen usability, so my next buy will be 720p, with iPhone5 setting the bar, i hope other android makers will follow.Krysto - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
Are you implying iPhone 5 is setting the bar for 720p displays? Because first of all, it doesn't have an 1280x720 resolution, but a 1136x640 one, and second, Android devices have been sporting 720p displays since a year ago.hapkiman - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
I have an iPhone 5 and my wife has a Samsung Galaxy S III.Her Galaxy S III has a Super AMOLED 1280x720 display.
And yes my iPhone 5 "only" has a 1136 x 640 display.
But guess what - I'm holding both phones side by side right now looking at the exact same game and there is no perceivable difference. I looked at it, my son looked at it, and my wife looked at it. On about five or six different games, videos, apps, and a few photos. The difference is academic. You cant tell a difference unless you have a bionic eye.
They both look freakin' fantastic.
reuthermonkey1 - Tuesday, October 16, 2012 - link
I think you're missing Krysto's point. Of course looking at a 4" 1136 x 640 and a 4.8" 1280x720 display side by side will look equivalent to the eye. But his response wasn't to whether they're similar, but to the minimum requirement dado023 has set for their next purchase to be 720p.The iPhone5's screen looks fantastic, but it's not 720p, so it's not exactly setting the bar for 720p.
Samus - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
I'm no Apple fan, but in their defense, it is completely unneccessary to have 720p resolution on a 4" screen.The ppi of the screen is already 20% higher than is discernible by the human eye. Having the resolution any higher would be a waste of processing power.
afkrotch - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
More screen real estate. Higher resolution, more crap you can throw on it. Course ih a 4" or 4.8" display, how many icons can you really place on the screen. I have a 4" screen and I wished I could shrink my icons though. Would love to get more icons on there.I can't do large phones anymore. I had a 5" Dell Streak...no thanks. Too big.
rarson - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - link
"The ppi of the screen is already 20% higher than is discernible by the human eye."Uh, no it's not. The resolution of a human retina is higher than 326 ppi.
Silma - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
This doesn't mean anything. It depends on how far away the reading material is from the eye.720p may not be needed for such a small screen but it is better than "not exactly" 720p in that the phone doesn't have to rescale 720p material.
In the same way retina marketing for macbook is pure BS as for the screen size and eye distance from the screen such a high resolution is not needed and will only burn batteries faster and make laptops warmer for next to no visual benefit. In addition 1080p materials will have to be rescaled.
rarson - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
Right, so if you have good vision, like I do, then at a foot away, you can see those pixels.MobiusStrip - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Yawn.