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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kron123456789 - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
problem is that there is no PowerVR 6XT GPU that have more than 6 clusters, i.e. GX6650 is the top of PowerVR GPUs. And GX6650 can compete with K1 only on frequency higher than 600MHz(theoreticly). We'll know for sure in the end of october.danieleran - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
A bigger problem is that nobody is buying the K1 NVIDIA Shield, while tens of millions of people are buying A7 and A8 iPhones and iPads.There is a concept of profitability and capital reinvestment that shifts where technology goes. Google and even Samsung (more than half of Android) are laser focused on cheap, low end devices, in large part because their attempts to sell expensive tablets (Honeycomb tabs were more expensive than iPads) failed, and even attempts to sell cheap tablets and phones failed. So now they are in India trying to sell $100 phones.
Meanwhile, Apple sells 80% of the $500+ phones in China, 40% of all smartphones in US, and most of the smartphones in Japan.
Anyone who thinks one struggling GPU vendor will save Android despite the fact that the vast majority of those "80% of phones" making up the Android "platform" are using ARM Mali cheap GPUs (including many of the "premium" Samsung models), should prepare to have their expectations dashed.
Apple was winning in smartphones and tablets before they had their own advanced silicon. Now its more of a joke. TI left the OMAP chip business, Samsung is struggling, and ARM isn't catching up to Apple's aggressive support for Imagination Tech - and conspicuously, nobody else is using high end PowerVR CPUs because they're targeting the third world with cheap devices. Didn't work out too well for PCs did it?
Guest8 - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
You do realize Intel uses the same if not beefier GPU in their cell phone APU's right? Put that together with a real die shrink at 14nm and x86 compute power and it is only a matter of time before Apple puts x86 chips into the iPhone.happycamperjack - Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - link
Haha you are possibly the most delusional person that I've seen posted here, ever. I don't even know where to start. Calling nvidia a "struggling" GPU vendor or calling google and Samsung "failed" when the android cellphones are outselling iPhone more than ever. Selling $100 phone to a crowd who cant ever afford a smartphone otherwise is desperation? Man its just easy to call you stupidrobbie rob - Monday, September 29, 2014 - link
happycamperjack,Here's the reality. Android isn't one big happy family. Guess what ? Android makers don't just compete against Apple - they compete against each other. Samsung's sales hurt HTC.. HTC's hurt motorola's.. and LG's ! WOW Guess what ? They all use Android but only Google makes money from Google Play, only Google makes money from the Google searches and Google ads on Android phones. This is one reason why the best selling Android Phone maker: Samsung is trying to make it's own Android like operating system - like Tizen. See Samsung has this dream to one day not have to kiss Googles ass. They want t run their own OS ( like Google and like Apple ) and their own store.
And guess what ? Only TWO phone makers make more money EVERY YEAR. Apple and Samsung. Most Android Phone makers had flat growth ( see none ).. some even lost money.
Apple losing market share? Technically it looks that way yeah - I'll give you that. But only because the market is growing so fast that it appears Apple's share has shrank some.
The reality is that is only true if you compare ALL of Android against IOS. This would be great if all of Android made a profit together- but they don't. This is not true when you compare each phone makers market share to the others regardless of operating system. Its like trying to compare to sale of matches to lighters. Most of the Android phones in poor Asian/Indian countries are cheap phones with little functionality. This is why Android dominates in those countries. Say what ? You think those countries have 4g? Most have 2g if they are lucky. This is why guys like you don't understand how they can still sell a iPhone 4 over there. It's because an iPhone 4 is as fast as a Samsung G5 ona 2g network. Countries like China block Google services - you think they are getting your Google experience? Haha.. over there the phone is junk.
Apple has outsold itself ( SEE SOLD MORE PHONES EACH YEAR ) every year since the original iPhone ( One year before Samsung started copying the iPhone and before the Google guys got kicked off the Apple Board for stealing technology ) .. This is also why Apple got a headstart on tablet sales - the google guys were kicked off and didnt see the tablet idea coming !
Apple just sold 10 million iPhone 6's in 3 days.. The next best selling phone is a Samsung G S5 and it took 28 days to sell 10 million.
You can knock Apple all you want. It won't stop people from buying their products.
The only phone makers that actually matter are Apple and Samsung. Android versus Apple is a joke. Especially when you look at how they all want Apple's profits.
Havekk - Friday, October 3, 2014 - link
You fan boys on both side crack me up. Does it make your dick bigger if the iPhone is the No. 1 selling phone and you have one? Do you all realize how physiologically damaged you are? Why can't you just buy the phone you like and shut the fuck up? Why must everyone bend and come to the same conclusion you did when purchasing your phone? Fact is, you're a joke. You can sit here and spout all the numbers you want claiming whatever you'd like. The fact is, people will buy the phone that suits them better. I am currently using a Galaxy S4 from my work and an iPad 3. I'm buying the Galaxy Tab S 10.5 and my work is getting me an iPhone 6. They both have their uses. They're both great products. Why must people stick a fucking flag in the ground behind one of these companies who don't get a flying fish turd about you? You make yourself look like a moron. Jebus fucking christ you people drive me nuts.Vayra - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
What have you been smoking? Nice presentation of twisted and inflated marketshare numbers (what is that, 80% of the +$500 market in China? their Iphone copies cover almost every segment and cost a quarter of an Iphone) though.Regardless, the only country in which Apple really holds ground is the US. In Europe and Asia it will not last and the market share has actually decreased year over year.
Havekk - Friday, October 3, 2014 - link
You fan boys on both side crack me up. Does it make your dick bigger if the iPhone is the No. 1 selling phone and you have one? Do you all realize how physiologically damaged you are? Why can't you just buy the phone you like and shut the fuck up? Why must everyone bend and come to the same conclusion you did when purchasing your phone? Fact is, you're a joke. You can sit here and spout all the numbers you want claiming whatever you'd like. The fact is, people will buy the phone that suits them better. I am currently using a Galaxy S4 from my work and an iPad 3. I'm buying the Galaxy Tab S 10.5 and my work is getting me an iPhone 6. They both have their uses. They're both great products. Why must people stick a fucking flag in the ground behind one of these companies who don't get a flying fish turd about you? You make yourself look like a moron. Jebus fucking christ you people drive me nuts.Alexvrb - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link
According to what I've read, a 950Mhz GK20A in the K1 chips (either one) produces less FLOPs than a ~650Mhz GX6650. Not to say that that's all that matters, but it's a pretty good indication that GX6650 is quite competitive. I wouldn't jump to conclusions, even if they're "only" using 6 clusters.With that being said I've often defended Nvidia's Tegra chips. I think they are very good overall performers, especially given the price. They usually undercut comparable ARM SoCs, and as a result provide very good performance (especially graphics) within a given price range.
I'd be a lot more interested, frankly, if Apple used Wizard. Get all those Apple developers onboard with hardware-assisted hybrid raytracing. Might encourage others to develop similar GPUs.
kron123456789 - Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - link
But are we talking about same FLOPs? GK20A produces 365GFLOPS in FP32 at 950MHz. GX6650 produces ~250GFLOPs in FP32 at 650MHz, but in FP16 it produces 500GFLOPs. I don't know how many FLOPs GK20A produces in FP16.