iPhone 4 processor speed can now be measured: 800MHz

Neblinio · Jan 15, 2011

As of iOS 4.2.1, "sysctl -a" command is no longer returning value 0 for "hw.cpufrequency". Now you get hw.cpufrequency: 800000000 for iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4G.

You can try it any time using mobile terminal, SSH or even Sysinfoplus.

Here's a screenshot I made of Sysinfoplus 1.2 showing my iPhone 4 processor speed.

Gjeepguy · Jan 15, 2011

its the part that says CPU frequency...

but is that the actual frequency, or the underlocked frequency... apple has been known to underlock processor before.

iPhone and iPhone 3G
620MHz underlocket to 412Mhz

iPhone 3GS
833MHz underlocket to 600Mhz

kdarling · Jan 15, 2011

Gjeepguy said:
but is that the actual frequency, or the underlocked frequency... apple has been known to underlock processor before.

It could be underclocked from a gazillion MHz, and the actual frequency is still all that matters.

(The only technical interest in underclocking is that it conserves power and heat.)

Neblinio · Jan 15, 2011

iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4G:
1GHz underclocked to 800MHz

We all knew Apple's A4 processor was able to crank up to 1GHz (iPad does). What we didn't know was the actual underclocked speed on the iPhone 4 and iPod 4G (because they are obviously underclocked, if they weren't so, Apple would have advertised their 1GHz speed)

nunes013 · Jan 15, 2011

for 800 mhz it runs pretty smoothly compared to a lot of these other devices that run at 1 ghz. i wonder what kind of battery we would see if we cranked it up to 1 ghz

anonymous guy · Jan 15, 2011

Looks like "1 GHz processor" may be part of the selling point for the summer upgrade.

Ashin · Jan 16, 2011

Would have been easier to just check Wikipedia

blackberrypilot · Jan 16, 2011

Surprisingly its faster than any Android. It crushes my Evo.

Neblinio · Jan 16, 2011

Wikipedia has never been able to confirm its actual clock speed:
"The clock speed in the iPhone 4 has not been disclosed."

I remember reading somewhere that its clock speed was somewhere near 800-850MHz, but this time it's confirmed by "sysctl" command.

Fugue · Jan 16, 2011

Even at 2GHz the upcoming Bionic and Atrix will lag. What most people do not realize is that the software is more important than the hardware. Android has multitasking but it does not handle it fluidly. As an owner of a Motorola Droid, Droid X, Samsung Fascinate, and HTC Droid Incredible I can tell you that they all force close often.

Take the browser for example. Most Android phones render the page in totality. If you render Engadget it will bring up every article at the same time; this results in an extremely laggy and jittery browsing experience.

The iPhone on the other hand renders whatever is on the screen (that's why if you scroll down or up quickly you will see the checkered loading). Consequently the browser is much "snappier" and pinch and zoom is flawless.

Add to that the fact that the iPhone does not do complete multitasking and lacks the ability to add widgets, therefore it is such a quick phone.

For the Android handsets to run as smooth as the iPhone the hardware needs to be much more powerful. I feel they need at least 2GHz of processing power, and a 2GB ram. Until then you will see Android lag as before. Unfortunately, with the above specs you will need a monster battery. Lithium will not do anymore so we will need to wait for battery manufacturers to create something smaller and more efficient.

wshaft09 · Apr 8, 2011

How did you get Sysinfoplus to measure your clock speed? I have an iPhone 4 on iOS 4.2.1, I recently installed Sysinfoplus, and it read it as 0.

dccorona · Apr 8, 2011

Gjeepguy said:
its the part that says CPU frequency...

but is that the actual frequency, or the underlocked frequency... apple has been known to underlock processor before.

iPhone and iPhone 3G
620MHz underlocket to 412Mhz

iPhone 3GS
833MHz underlocket to 600Mhz

it is underclocked. The A4 processor is identical to the one used in the iPad, but on the iPad it runs at 1ghz

dccorona · Apr 8, 2011

nunes013 said:
for 800 mhz it runs pretty smoothly compared to a lot of these other devices that run at 1 ghz. i wonder what kind of battery we would see if we cranked it up to 1 ghz

thats because of the software...iOS is much better optimized than android devices...Android is great on the outside but the actual OS is just a clunky emulator built on top of linux, and it is almost never specifically optimized for the phone it runs on

this is not true, however, of WP7 devices, all of which are 1ghz, and all of which (well, the 2 ive owned at least, HTC surround and samsung focus) run very smoothly, as smooth if not smoother than the iPhone 4

dccorona · Apr 8, 2011

Fugue said:
Even at 2GHz the upcoming Bionic and Atrix will lag. What most people do not realize is that the software is more important than the hardware. Android has multitasking but it does not handle it fluidly. As an owner of a Motorola Droid, Droid X, Samsung Fascinate, and HTC Droid Incredible I can tell you that they all force close often.

Take the browser for example. Most Android phones render the page in totality. If you render Engadget it will bring up every article at the same time; this results in an extremely laggy and jittery browsing experience.

The iPhone on the other hand renders whatever is on the screen (that's why if you scroll down or up quickly you will see the checkered loading). Consequently the browser is much "snappier" and pinch and zoom is flawless.

Add to that the fact that the iPhone does not do complete multitasking and lacks the ability to add widgets, therefore it is such a quick phone.

For the Android handsets to run as smooth as the iPhone the hardware needs to be much more powerful. I feel they need at least 2GHz of processing power, and a 2GB ram. Until then you will see Android lag as before. Unfortunately, with the above specs you will need a monster battery. Lithium will not do anymore so we will need to wait for battery manufacturers to create something smaller and more efficient.

the android phones suffer, true, but not so much from the reasons you stated, but because of the nature of the OS. The entire thing...apps, widgets, springboard, everything, is running inside of a Java emulator shell over a linux based root OS. None of it is optimized for the specific device (except the nexus 1 and S devices), and (at least from what i read) it is not coded nearly as well as iOS is

infidel69 · Apr 9, 2011

anonymous guy said:
Looks like "1 GHz processor" may be part of the selling point for the summer upgrade.

It better be a dual core 1+ GHz processor or people are going to be pissed.

I haven't noticed any lag with my Atrix. Compared to the iphone4 the Atrix is a speed demon anyone who says otherwise is in denial. Look at the youtube comparisons if you don't believe me on this. This is with Froyo which doesn't make much use of multiple cores. When the Atrix gets GB in a few months we should see a nice boost in performance for sure. dccorona and fugimself are just talkin out their asses.

chiefpavvy · Apr 9, 2011

infidel69 said:
It better be a dual core 1+ GHz processor or people are going to be pissed.

I haven't noticed any lag with my Atrix. Compared to the iphone4 the Atrix is a speed demon anyone who says otherwise is in denial. Look at the youtube comparisons if you don't believe me on this. This is with Froyo which doesn't make much use of multiple cores. When the Atrix gets GB in a few months we should see a nice boost in performance for sure. dccorona and fugimself are just talkin out their asses.

iPhone 4, whatever speed the CPU runs, is fast. Very fast. It still holds it own against the newer 1GHz+ chips and we know Apple will put the dual-core 1GHz A5 chip from iPad 2 in the new iPhone 5.

It really all comes down to software, as has been said.

kdarling · Apr 9, 2011

dccorona said:
it is underclocked. The A4 processor is identical to the one used in the iPad, but on the iPad it runs at 1ghz

Or they simply take the chips that tested okay at 1GHz and use them in the iPad, and take the ones that only tested up to 800MHz and use them in the iPhone.

Use the same chip in a range of devices, from iPod to iPad, and you can save all sorts of money by throwing away less production output.

iAmYou · Apr 9, 2011

System monitor for iPhone reports 1Ghz

SnowLeopard2008 · Apr 9, 2011

It's not really the frequency that matters. A 3.0GHz Pentium 4 isn't going to crush a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo. The frequency does matter, but it's not the only info you should consider when looking at a device's performance. There are other factors. Just something to keep in mind. Apple does have a history of customizing things to deliver better battery performance while not killing the overall CPU/GPU performance. Tradeoffs you know?

SnowLeopard2008 · Apr 9, 2011

kdarling said:
Or they simply take the chips that tested okay at 1GHz and use them in the iPad, and take the ones that only tested up to 800MHz and use them in the iPhone.

Use the same chip in a range of devices, from iPod to iPad, and you can save all sorts of money by throwing away less production output.

Very good point. This is one of the strategies that Intel uses. I remember some of those Celeron and other low end chips were basically high end chips with small defects in them. All they had to do was permanently disable or physically cut off the defected sections and rebrand them as low end chips.

kdarling · Apr 9, 2011

SnowLeopard2008 said:
All they had to do was permanently disable or physically cut off the defected sections and rebrand them as low end chips.

That's true, they do that with memory chips as well.

For example, for the inexpensive type of Flash that Apple uses, each 8GB can have up to 200MB bad from the factory and still be considered "okay". Less than that, and they could set/sell it as a smaller memory if they wished.

Which I find interesting, because one person's 32GB phone could really have 32GB, while the next person could have 32GB - 800MB = 31.2GB. Sometimes I think that's why Apple goes ahead and chops off the extra space just to hide the differences. (It's definitely not about that decimal vs binary counting nonsense, as Flash chips only come in binary powers.)

JulianL · Apr 10, 2011

SnowLeopard2008 said:
Very good point. This is one of the strategies that Intel uses. I remember some of those Celeron and other low end chips were basically high end chips with small defects in them. All they had to do was permanently disable or physically cut off the defected sections and rebrand them as low end chips.

The most obvious example might be AMD's triple-core Phenom parts which are cast-offs from the quad cores that have a failure localised to a single core which is then disabled to give an X3 that passes the quality tests. In the wild it is even possible to re-enable the disabled core and in some cases, where the failure was marginal on the faulty core, people have run it quad core (http://guru3d.com/news/phenom-ii-x3--enable-the-4th-core/).

- Julian

JulianL · Apr 10, 2011

kdarling said:
Which I find interesting, because one person's 32GB phone could really have 32GB, while the next person could have 32GB - 800MB = 31.2GB. Sometimes I think that's why Apple goes ahead and chops off the extra space just to hide the differences. (It's definitely not about that decimal vs binary counting nonsense, as Flash chips only come in binary powers.)

Didn't some fairly recent generation of one of Nvidea's GPU architectures have 240 shaders/cores? To me as a computer scientist that is a strange and ugly number. I saw speculation that the design had 256 shaders but that the spec was set at 240 so that they could tollerate up to 16 dead shaders on a part before they had to reject it completely. I suspect that manufacturers do detailed modelling in these cases to find the right balance of how far to deliberately cripple good parts in order to increase overall yield, particularly important in high-volume cost sensitive parts since raising the yield reduces the cost per part.

- Julian

peoe2 · Jul 18, 2011

CPU dynamic frequency

Is there a way to read the actual CPU frequency at any given moment? It's my understanding that the frequency is dynamically adjusted by iOS.

Intell · Jul 18, 2011

peoe2 said:
Is there a way to read the actual CPU frequency at any given moment? It's my understanding that the frequency is dynamically adjusted by iOS.

No

iPhone 4 processor speed can now be measured: 800MHz

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