iPhone 5 Smokes Top Android Smartphones in Benchmarks
Some have criticized Apple for letting the iPhone fall behind the competition, and the iPhone 5 is no exception, as Samsung is more than happy to point out. A 4-inch screen? Yeah, several other smartphones have that beat. Fast 4G LTE connectivity? Again, there are plenty of mobile devices that already do that. A new proprietary dock connector? Okay, so Apple 'wins' that round. But is it fair to criticize the iPhone 5 for not reinventing the smartphone?
Perhaps not. It may not be a revolutionary upgrade, but the sum of its parts adds up to a whole lot of phone, one that can certainly run with the big boys. We put the iPhone 5 through its paces and discovered that not only is it a shinier new bauble of a smartphone for Apple, but along with all that design elegance comes rather impressive system-level performance that, in many cases, could place the iPhone 5 at the head of the pack versus competitive Android and Windows Phone devices currently in the market. In various standard cross-platform benchmark metrics, the iPhone 5 surprisingly puts up results that leave most other high-end smartphones, like the Samsung Galaxy S III and Razr M, in the dust.
From simple Javascript performance (as seen above) to web browsing and 3D graphics rendering in OpenGL, Apple’s A6 SoC in the iPhone 5 can offer over twice the performance of competing SoC’s such as the dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4.
No matter which of our standard assortment of mobile benchmarks we threw at the iPhone 5, it was consistently came close to, at a minimum, nearly doubling the performance of competing Android and Windows Phone devices. So yes, while Apple may be playing a game of "catch-up" with the competition in terms of features, the competition clearly has some catching up to do of its own, in terms of performance.
Of course, there's more to a smartphone than just benchmarks. To see what we think of the iPhone 5, be sure to check out our in-depth review.
Perhaps not. It may not be a revolutionary upgrade, but the sum of its parts adds up to a whole lot of phone, one that can certainly run with the big boys. We put the iPhone 5 through its paces and discovered that not only is it a shinier new bauble of a smartphone for Apple, but along with all that design elegance comes rather impressive system-level performance that, in many cases, could place the iPhone 5 at the head of the pack versus competitive Android and Windows Phone devices currently in the market. In various standard cross-platform benchmark metrics, the iPhone 5 surprisingly puts up results that leave most other high-end smartphones, like the Samsung Galaxy S III and Razr M, in the dust.
From simple Javascript performance (as seen above) to web browsing and 3D graphics rendering in OpenGL, Apple’s A6 SoC in the iPhone 5 can offer over twice the performance of competing SoC’s such as the dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4.
No matter which of our standard assortment of mobile benchmarks we threw at the iPhone 5, it was consistently came close to, at a minimum, nearly doubling the performance of competing Android and Windows Phone devices. So yes, while Apple may be playing a game of "catch-up" with the competition in terms of features, the competition clearly has some catching up to do of its own, in terms of performance.
Of course, there's more to a smartphone than just benchmarks. To see what we think of the iPhone 5, be sure to check out our in-depth review.
