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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robbie rob - Monday, September 29, 2014 - link
Always does when your phone is at the bottom of the benchmarks..robbie rob - Monday, September 29, 2014 - link
Very ignorant coment - considering many Android fans know ( and admit ) it was Samsung and HTC who got cheating around a year ago on benchmarks..Need a refresher? Samsung caught again:
http://www.androidbeat.com/2013/10/samsung-caught-...
Moctavian - Saturday, February 7, 2015 - link
Just because it isn't biased towards favour YOUR favourite phone, it doesn't mean it's rigged. Get over your jealousy.Alien959 - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Nice showing from apple, I can only imagine the battery life if apple used 2000+ mah battery.Narg - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
I agree 100%. Thin is nice, but to make the 6 just thick enough to cover the camera bulge would have given it 30% more battery room, and still be thinner than the iPhone 5c. 3 weeks of standby on the 6 Plus!! I'd liked to have seen the results on that setup.Impulses - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Their chosen config is cheaper for them tho (better profit margin), and enough for most users (going by our current expectations anyway), and also make the devices obsolete sooner (promoting future sales).I've got very little interest in an iPhone, but I'd love to see Apple build one that absolutely destroys any and ALL Android phones in battery life, something where they can genuinely claim 2-3 days of battery life.
That would certainly light up a fire under everyone's butt and stop this obsession with thinner and thinner devices. Something 5-7mm thick isn't even particularly easier to hold than a "chunkier" 9mm phone which tapers at the edge or whatever.
Moving away from the first 12mm thick bricks (hello OG EVO) was great, but Apple and Samsung are just over doing it now. At least Samsung still packs in decent sized batteries, something Moto started with the Maxx but has now shied away from.
canadianchris - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Thanks for sharing some early results! I've been considering a move back to iOS, this is really helpful.DJDJPHOTO - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
The IPhone 6 is the hands down the best phone I've ever used. My wife has a cell phone store, and I've used them all. Android for 8 years, too.The 6 is smooth as butter, and a crazy good camera to boot.
16vjohn - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Android 8 years... haha. Oh, I love the nut swingers. Android will be 6 years old tomorrow.Valis - Monday, September 22, 2014 - link
Phonearena puts the battery time under the S5, Z2 and the Z3, see for yourself.http://www.phonearena.com/reviews/Apple-iPhone-6-R...