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
GPU Performance
While we don't quite have real games to benchmark against, we do have benchmarks that are reasonably good approximations of games, which heavily stress the GPU. For the most part, this means that we can see the performance of the A8's PowerVR GX6450 GPU but there are some aspects that are CPU-bound, which we'll discuss after the results.
Edit: Before I get into the results, I must caution that Basemark X will have inaccurate on-screen results as the benchmark was made using XCode 5.x in order to keep scores comparable between versions 1.1 and 1.1.1. This doesn't affect the overall score, which is solely calculated based upon off-screen performance.
For the most part, we see that the GX6450 is at about the same level as Qualcomm's Adreno 420, which seems to track closely to expectations given that the A7's GPU was around the same performance as the Adreno 330. The 3DMark test does have an interesting result, but it seems that this is because 3DMark's physics test has a strong amount of data dependency that restricts the level of out of order execution that can be done. NVIDIA's Tegra K1 is the current leader in graphics performance, but of course it's also in a tablet instead of a smartphone so it's not a direct competitor.
NAND Performance
As we move towards the goal of seamless performance in everyday tasks, one significant factor is IO performance. While there's definitely a minimum level of performance that allows for generally acceptable smoothness, there's value in having higher storage performance (e.g. prevent bottlenecking in situations such as updating apps in the background). In order to test this, we use Androbench with some custom settings on Android and a custom utility developed by Eric Patno for iOS, who has been quite helpful with furthering our efforts to test storage performance.
As this is the first time that we've looked into NAND performance on iOS devices, it's definitely worth scrutinizing the data a bit more closely than in most cases. There are a few notable cases here, which are the class-leading speeds for sequential reads and writes on the iPhone 6, but also the rather middling random read and write speeds for the iPhone 6 and 5s. The oddest result is definitely the iPhone 5, which is Ryan's personal unit and while the random read speeds are on the low side, random write speeds are easily record-setting.
In practice, with tablets and smartphones being less multitasking heavy than PCs/laptops, the sequential scores are probably slightly more relevant to the overall user experience. The iPhone 6 results show a significant increase in performance over the iPhone 5s in all of the tests, which is always good to see.
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SuLyMaN - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Thanks for the really good and truthful view of crapple.flashbacck - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
lol holy shitMetroid - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Agreed with everything you said + the 1gb memory on iphone 6 is utterly bs and to mention apple has been hiding the 1gb memory ram, checked their website and nothing is said or showed the 1gb memory ram, checked the specs page and nothing too, its too shameful to show it has 300% less memory ram than its competitors heheWinterCharm - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Why do they need more ram? The iPhone kills everything else in the benchmark (did you even read the anandtech review?). Apple rarely lists specs for their iDevices aside from storage. They don't need more ram when the 1GB iPhone is killing your 3GB android devices.Omega215D - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
More RAM is useful for future iOS updates with advance features or new games that come out taking advantage of the larger display/ resolution. You're also forgetting that the RAM is shared with the GPU which means you're not getting the full 1GB for apps and cache. Don't forget multitasking is only going to have more of a presence in the future in terms of iOS.It seems to me Apple fans commenting on a tech site don't know much about tech and how the parts actually work.
Kidster3001 - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
Apple doesn't want you to keep upgrading your phone. They want you to go buy a new one. Future-proof is a 4-letter word at Apple.akdj - Friday, October 3, 2014 - link
Weird, folks drill extremely happy with their near five year old iPhone 4 & their three and a half hear old iPad 2. Future proof. Interesting word choice. As far as 'future proofing' Apple is another example of 'paving the way' that others can't seem to figure out. Everyone gets the update the Same Day, Same Time. Works perfect! Adoption rates are exponentially quicker, faster and en masse than any other OEM or OS developer. Period. And with older devices they're optimizing and elimating features that WOULD cripple the user experience.I still own the original iPad. Still works great. locked into 5.x.x but holds a ten to twelve hour charge, spotless and scratch free. Going on five years old and still VERY usable for basic tablet comouting; surfing, email and social media, media consumption including incredible 'run time' for video watching or music listening. Reading books. Simple and older games. Pretty amazing and absolutely the opposite of your statement their Kidster. But you'll grow up, gain wisdom and 'learn' fact from fantasy
Metroid - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
I guess you fail to understand why memory ram is important for some specific tasks.grayson_carr - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Because you can only have, at most, 5 tabs loaded in Safari at once before they will have to completely reload, which is time consuming and annoying at best. Even less tabs can stay loaded if, God forbid, you open another app for something and then return to Safari. That is just pathetic.akdj - Friday, October 3, 2014 - link
WTH do you need more than a half dozen tabs loaded?Buy a laptop man. Give it up
iOS defekopers defekop for the masses. 512/1GB A5/6(x)/7. iOS 8 defelopment had begun but as we saw with '7‘...as time moves on the "Monument Valleys" and Asphalt 8s show up. MS Office suite and unreal 1.0 release and an example of 'how to do it right'. The list goes on.
A large web page is 17-24 megs. There's almost ALWAYS more than 250-300 free and available, typically closer to ½ of the total isn't being 'spoken for' with compression. Available and 'free'. Cached and common processes life in the availability RAM for instant swipe to the app or page population. Apple seems to think more than 'five tabs' open results in a reload is reasonable. I agree. Typically I'll have two or three. I've got plenty of computers around if I need to write a thesis with mutilple Wiki and info Tabs ready immediately.
I've never understood this 'issue'
A) why so many tabs ...and
B) the instantaneous repopulation of a page with LTE or decent Wifi is a blink of an eye. If you're commenting and need to reference something else, tap, select all, copy. Go to your reference page and when ya return ...if for some reason its 'gone' just click the response and hold finger, 'paste'. You're good. As fast as ios is on new devices it's amazing to me you guys are able to think 'faster' tan 'it'. Weird. LTE and near ubiquitous Wi.fi coverage in urban and populated areas, one shouldn't be thinking 'EDGE' reload speed. Click the empty tab and its damn near fully populated when you're ready with your finger to scroll. Who. Cares? That much of a hurry? Invest in a decent ISP and speed. Your Iphone will take care Of the rest