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Was the iPhone 4 underpowered?

A

anonymous guy

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 18, 2010
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On release, the phone itself was sufficient with iOS4 - but it felt only marginally faster than its predecessor, the 3Gs. For example - on release I was hoping that the iPhone 4 would process touch typing keystrokes faster than my 3Gs would. In most cases, there wasn't much of an improvement in keyboard responsiveness (in some cases, processing text even slower than the 3Gs when typing on pages with heavy HTML content)

As the iOS release cycles have gone, the iPhone 4 continues to get bogged down with the newer software, as to be expected - but the 4S was the first iPhone 4 that felt like a significant speed upgrade over the 3Gs/4 model and performed up to par with what was being displayed on screen.

What I'm getting at is, was the iPhone 4 underpowered, relative to the "retina" resolution it ran software at?
 
Last edited:
Intell

Intell

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Jan 24, 2010
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The jump between the 3Gs and the 4 was the second smallest bump over the nearly nonexistent bump from the 2G to the 3G. The iPhone 4 was underpowered in regards to the GPU. It used the same GPU as the 3Gs, but had to power about 4 times the pixels. This shows in nearly every graphical benchmark that includes the 3Gs and the iPhone 4. This is also why the 3Gs preforms much better with graphic intense games.
 
B

Brian Y

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Oct 21, 2012
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Intell said:
The jump between the 3Gs and the 4 was the second smallest bump over the nearly nonexistent bump from the 2G to the 3G. The iPhone 4 was underpowered in regards to the GPU. It used the same GPU as the 3Gs, but had to power about 4 times the pixels. This shows in nearly every graphical benchmark that includes the 3Gs and the iPhone 4. This is also why the 3Gs preforms much better with graphic intense games.
Click to expand...

Actually even with 4 x the resolution, the 4 performed ~14% faster than the 3GS graphics wise.

The 4 was ridiculously fast when it was released, but software bloats, and computers get faster.
 
A

anonymous guy

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Original poster
Mar 18, 2010
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Intell said:
The jump between the 3Gs and the 4 was the second smallest bump over the nearly nonexistent bump from the 2G to the 3G. The iPhone 4 was underpowered in regards to the GPU. It used the same GPU as the 3Gs, but had to power about 4 times the pixels. This shows in nearly every graphical benchmark that includes the 3Gs and the iPhone 4. This is also why the 3Gs preforms much better with graphic intense games.
Click to expand...

Makes sense, thanks for the explanation. Reading up on the specs, the highly-touted "A4" was only a slightly upgraded version of the off-the-shelf CPU on the 3Gs.

It seems like the iPhone 4 was only given enough muscle to be up to par with its prior incarnation, rather than a top of the line unit.
 
Intell

Intell

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Jan 24, 2010
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Brian Y said:
Actually even with 4 x the resolution, the 4 performed ~14% faster than the 3GS graphics wise.

The 4 was ridiculously fast when it was released, but software bloats, and computers get faster.
Click to expand...

That would be incorrect. Even though the 4's GPU clock was slightly higher, it produced much worse framerate when benched against the 3Gs. And in some cases, the 3Gs' GPU was up to 3 times better than the iPhone 4's.

11x0402n81sdf.jpg
 
D

DMH3006

macrumors regular
Jun 16, 2011
231
0
Intell said:
That would be incorrect. Even though the 4's GPU clock was slightly higher, it produced much worse framerate when benched against the 3Gs. And in some cases, the 3Gs' GPU was up to 3 times better than the iPhone 4's.

View attachment 394719
Click to expand...

Thats a native resolution test,since the 4 has a bigger native resolution it will obvious perform worse,a true test would be on a off-screen test.
 
Intell

Intell

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Jan 24, 2010
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DMH3006 said:
Thats a native resolution test,since the 4 has a bigger native resolution it will obvious perform worse,a true test would be on a off-screen test.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, iOS only runs at the native resolution of 960x640. Because of that, the iPhone 4 almost always has a worse overall graphical performance. And if I recall correctly, the iPhone 4 has sub-par off screen graphical performance as well, when compared to the 3Gs.
 
E

err404

macrumors 68030
Mar 4, 2007
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The iP4 was given about as much processing punch as was possible when it was released. It was more than good enough to debut a new era of screen fidelity. Also despite not being that much faster in raw CPU speed, I found the experience generally smoother due to it having double the RAM over the 3GS.
I think user will find most annual upgrades don’t revolutionize a device. That’s why I stick to a two year upgrade cycle. Two years of incremental improvements feels great in the hand.
 
Intell

Intell

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Jan 24, 2010
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err404 said:
The iP4 was given about as much processing punch as was possible when it was released. It was more than good enough to debut a new era of screen fidelity. Also despite not being that much faster in raw CPU speed, I found the experience generally smoother due to it having double the RAM over the 3GS.
I think user will find most annual upgrades don’t revolutionize a device. That’s why I stick to a two year upgrade cycle. Two years of incremental improvements feels great in the hand.
Click to expand...

I agree that the double ram of the 3Gs was very helpful. Look at the iPod Touch 4. It has the same GPU and ram as the 3Gs, but the 4's faster CPU. It doesn't cope with iOS 5 or 6 as well as the 4 does and about the same as the 3Gs. Then there's the iPad 1, it had a much faster CPU than the iPhone 4, but the same ram as the 3Gs and iPod Touch 4. It's performance on iOS 5 was abysmal, considerably worse than the iPod Touch 4 and the 3Gs.
 
A

anonymous guy

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 18, 2010
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I only have limited experience with an iPod Touch 4th gen, but I can recall that it did have difficulties with cached Safari tabs and maintaining backgrounded apps.

Haven't touched a 3Gs in years, but would love to compare them if I got the chance.
 
B

Brian Y

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Oct 21, 2012
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Intell

Intell

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Jan 24, 2010
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Brian Y said:
And I can show you numerous tests that show otherwise, such as this one. Benchmarks are relative, I'm not "incorrect" as you say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8jrb6KTSHk&feature=related
Click to expand...

Even though the tests differ, gaming wish most people state that the 3Gs preforms better when playing games. Even more people state that the 3Gs has a more fluid user interface, likely because of the higher framerate its GPU provides. Because of the increased pixels the 4 has to drive more, it suffers from more jitters resulting in worse performance. That coupled with the fact that the 4's GPU was not "ridiculously fast when it was released", being a year old, makes your statements incorrect. Even high end Android phones at the time surpassed the 4's graphical abilities, and yet a few fell short of the 3Gs'. It wasn't until the 4S and the iPad 2 that iOS was once again powered by the most powerful GPU in mobile devices.
 
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