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.

SunSpider 1.0.2 Benchmark  (Chrome/Safari/IE)

Kraken 1.1 (Chrome/Safari/IE)

Google Octane v2  (Chrome/Safari/IE)

WebXPRT (Chrome/Safari/IE)

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.

3DMark 1.2 Unlimited - Overall

3DMark 1.2 Unlimited - Graphics

3DMark 1.2 Unlimited - Physics

GFXBench 3.0 Manhattan (Onscreen)

GFXBench 3.0 Manhattan (Offscreen)

GFXBench 3.0 T-Rex HD (Onscreen)

GFXBench 3.0 T-Rex HD (Offscreen)

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.

Web Browsing Battery Life (WiFi)

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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  • KoolAidMan1 - Thursday, September 25, 2014 - link

    They don't know their history.

    They do know how to be obnoxious.
  • marko3283 - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link

    Sorry for my english I wanted to ask you a question that I can not figure out between 6 and iphone 6 iphone plus I noticed a difference in the performance of the GPU being equal resolution. I wanted to know if they have a difference in the frequency of the GPU or know what it depends on the difference
  • blackcrayon - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link

    There is at least one difference, the 6 plus as being physically larger for cooling and able to rely on a larger battery doesn't need to throttle down its clock speed as far, as quickly as the 6.
  • marko3283 - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link

    So you think that the GPU iphone 6 + has a higher clock speed of the GPU iphone 6?
  • blackcrayon - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link

    I don't think so, I just think the 6 throttles down to a lower clock speed slightly more quickly than the 6+.
  • Celcon - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link

    I'm curious to see how all the other SOCs would perform if they were placed inside an odd console with a fan such as the shield.
  • danbi - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link

    Or liquid metal (not the crystalline material) cooling, such as what Apple has patented few years ago.
  • Ethos Evoss - Tuesday, September 23, 2014 - link

    Huawei Honor 6 BETTER than iphone !
  • casperes1996 - Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - link

    Surely the reason why the physics test sees little improvement is that it's limited mostly by memory and nothing else. Of course it should still see some improvement, but perhaps it's not limited by either CPU n'or GPU.

    And are those resolution numbers right? 2208x1242? That's a 1,15x scaling factor for the 1920x1080 display.
  • Rapha.194 - Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - link

    Iphone 6 vai ser melhor somente 1 hora a mais em rede 3G/4G

    Não esperem mais que isso.

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