What are Samsung doing with all that power? iPhone 5 - 1/2 the specs as S3 and faster

gwelmarten · Sep 16, 2012

Hi
I thought I'd open this thread for people to talk about the difference in Geekbench scores between the iPhone 5 and the Samsung S3. There's a rather odd thing going on.

[RANT]

So, the iPhone 5.
Has: Dual core 1.02GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM.
Apple do not heavily advertise the specs, as it doesn't matter to consumers.

and the Samsung S3
Has: Quad Core 1.4GHz CPU and 2GB of RAM.
Samsung advertise this heavily, making out to the consumer that the extra power will make their life better.

BUT...
the Geek Bench scores show something different. This test is renowed for being the best test of the performance of a device. The scores are as follows:
iPhone 5: 1601
Samsung S3: 1560

What are Samsung doing with all this extra power? Leaking memory and sending your personal information to advertisers? How can they sleep at night advertising that a phone is more powerful when it's just slower? Do they just think "Hmm - phone seems to be running a little slowly... maybe we should consult our software - look for leaks and more efficient ways of doing things. Naaaa, lets just throw more POWER at it and advertise it!!!"

[/RANT]

I'd be interested to hear other people's opinions on this. Any other thoughts?

Sam

jabingla2810 · Sep 16, 2012

Samsung throw faster processors and more RAM into a phone to make it run smoothly.

Apple optimise software and hardware to work well together.

617aircav · Sep 16, 2012

Who cares enjoy your phone

matttye · Sep 16, 2012

Full multitasking, widgets, smart stay, numerous gestures, application voice commands,... These are just a few of the things constantly running on the S3 that aren't on the iPhone.

gwelmarten · Sep 16, 2012

matttye said:
Full multitasking, widgets, smart stay, numerous gestures, application voice commands,... These are just a few of the things constantly running on the S3 that aren't on the iPhone.

Yes, but this seriously results in a degraded battery life.

jav6454 · Sep 16, 2012

Ok, this should be in the main thread, but what the hell. I'll bite. Android isn't a resource friendly OS. Much like Windows manufacturers advertise heavily on specs where as Apple doesn't need that much. Reason?

Android is a general OS for all types of phones. So it is in a sense bloated and has to account for several types of configurations as possible.

iPhone OS, is custom tailored to just one set of hardware. Hell, iPhone OS 6.0 dropped the support for iPhone and iPhone 3G in its entirety. Only support for the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S remain. Apple continuously optimizes iPhone OS to make it as fast and performance efficient with as little as possible.

Result? S3 is beaten in Geekbench scores.

TSX · Sep 16, 2012

I thought the us version of the s3 was dual core and the international was quad?

zachnelson · Sep 16, 2012

Android apps and the framework are written in Java, which requires significantly more processing power than iOS apps and the framework require since they are written in.. C++ I believe.

Oppressed · Sep 16, 2012

Specs don't matter by themselves. Apple makes the software to take full and complete advantage of every piece of silicon in their devices, and this proves it. Meanwhile companies, like Samsung,have no option but to shove more specs into their phones and hope it runs a little better.

I can see how this may be a hard concept to get for some die hard Fandroids who came from the PC spec game of the 2000's.

Domino8282 · Sep 16, 2012

jabingla2810 said:
Samsung throw faster processors and more RAM into a phone to make it run smoothly.

Apple optimise software and hardware to work well together.

^this

It takes better specs to run a clunky OS.

matttye · Sep 16, 2012

gwelmarten said:
Yes, but this seriously results in a degraded battery life.

That wasn't part of your question, but I'll entertain it anyway. Battery life is adequate.

gwelmarten · Sep 16, 2012

jav6454 said:
Ok, this should be in the main thread, but what the hell. I'll bite. Android isn't a resource friendly OS. Much like Windows manufacturers advertise heavily on specs where as Apple doesn't need that much. Reason?

Android is a general OS for all types of phones. So it is in a sense bloated and has to account for several types of configurations as possible.

iPhone OS, is custom tailored to just one set of hardware. Hell, iPhone OS 6.0 dropped the support for iPhone and iPhone 3G in its entirety. Only support for the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S remain. Apple continuously optimizes iPhone OS to make it as fast and performance efficient with as little as possible.

Result? S3 is beaten in Geekbench scores.

This compares Android to Windows (a comparison I had already made). But in this case, there are still massive optimisations that can be made without loosing compatibility with sets of hardware. With a comparatively small effort on Samsung's part (and other Android phone manufacturers) they could modify Android to be 75% more efficient - lots of that code is easily configurable to your platform.

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matttye said:
That wasn't part of your question, but I'll entertain it anyway. Battery life is adequate.

View attachment 358012

View attachment 358013

Ok - point made with the battery. How do they do that compared to the iPhone? Apple always BS'ing about how great their battery is, and comparatively to my other Samsung stuff, my iPhone battery is crap.

vistadude · Sep 16, 2012

How can you say the iphone 5 is faster without having used one? The galaxy S3 can show videos and widgets on the homescreen. The iphone cannot. The S3 can let you talk on the phone and use data, send text messages, run gps navigation, simultaneously, on any LTE network. The iphone cannot do this.

Seems iphone can't even do basic features?

zachnelson · Sep 16, 2012

gwelmarten said:
This compares Android to Windows (a comparison I had already made). But in this case, there are still massive optimisations that can be made without loosing compatibility with sets of hardware. With a comparatively small effort on Samsung's part (and other Android phone manufacturers) they could modify Android to be 75% more efficient - lots of that code is easily configurable to your platform.

Read below please,

zachnelson said:
Android apps and the framework are written in Java, which requires significantly more processing power than iOS apps and the framework require since they are written in.. C++ I believe.

Samsung can not do anything to modify Android to be more efficient. Android is written in Java, an inherently un-efficient and processor heavy coding language.

----------

vistadude said:
How can you say the iphone 5 is faster without having used one? The galaxy S3 can show videos and widgets on the homescreen. The iphone cannot. The S3 can let you talk on the phone and use data, send text messages, run gps navigation, simultaneously, on any LTE network. The iphone cannot do this.

Seems iphone can't even do basic features?

A bench mark was just released that blows the S3 out of the water with pure processing power.

The ability to have power draining widgets on a homescreen, using data + voice at the same time or other silly things fandroids use to buff their phones up are not related to the speed of the device.

gwelmarten · Sep 16, 2012

vistadude said:
How can you say the iphone 5 is faster without having used one? The galaxy S3 can show videos and widgets on the homescreen. The iphone cannot. The S3 can let you talk on the phone and use data, send text messages, run gps navigation, simultaneously, on any LTE network. The iphone cannot do this.

Seems iphone can't even do basic features?

How can you say the iphone 5 is faster without having used one?
The Geek Bench score shows so, and Geek Bench is widely accepted to be right.

The galaxy S3 can show videos and widgets on the homescreen.
Apple choose not to offer this as a feature. And thank god. Why would I want a video of my cat in repeat all day every day?

The S3 can let you talk on the phone and use data, send text messages, run gps navigation, simultaneously, on any LTE network. iPhone now does this. It was only the CDMA iPhone 4 that could not do this, due to a network restriction.

vistadude · Sep 16, 2012

Benchmarks might test raw processing power, but they don't show which is faster. Which phone can boot up faster, which phone can start a skype call faster, which phone lets you make a phone call faster? These are things that actually show if a phone is faster.

I guess you like to run one program at a time, just like a true apple fanboy. In the windows world, when a person opens up a youtube video, you can have 10 other screens open, check email, do instant messaging, and play a game with other friends. I'd sure like to do this on a phone, especially when a video is buffering.

The CDMA iphone 5 won't let you talk on the phone and use data, receive text message, receive notifications, and skype. But the S3 will!

gwelmarten said:
How can you say the iphone 5 is faster without having used one?
The Geek Bench score shows so, and Geek Bench is widely accepted to be right.

The galaxy S3 can show videos and widgets on the homescreen.
Apple choose not to offer this as a feature. And thank god. Why would I want a video of my cat in repeat all day every day?

The S3 can let you talk on the phone and use data, send text messages, run gps navigation, simultaneously, on any LTE network. iPhone now does this. It was only the CDMA iPhone 4 that could not do this, due to a network restriction.

McCool71 · Sep 16, 2012

gwelmarten said:
Hi
BUT...
the Geek Bench scores show something different. This test is renowed for being the best test of the performance of a device. The scores are as follows:
iPhone 5: 1601
Samsung S3: 1560

Really? This is what I get when I search:

Iphone 5 (1601 points):
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/1030202

Galaxy S3 4-core, 1GB (Non-US version) (1847 points):
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/998950

Galaxy S3 2-core, 2GB (US version) (1683 points):
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/884649

That said, pure processing power isn't necessarily a good measuring stick for how a cell phone performs in day-to-day activities.

Technarchy · Sep 16, 2012

As any person that has used android for awhile can tell you the OS requires heaps of high powered silicon to run well. It's a shoddy mobile OS.

It's not efficient and it doesn't scale worth a damn, so no, a jellybean ROM wont solve your problems.

Either way, I don't like Geekbench. I prefer seeing Anandtech's in depth look, but in the end, it really doesn't matter.

I'm never buying another android device, and my iPhone 5 should be here on Friday.

G51989 · Sep 16, 2012

gwelmarten said:
Yes, but this seriously results in a degraded battery life.

Not really

matttye · Sep 16, 2012

gwelmarten said:
Ok - point made with the battery. How do they do that compared to the iPhone? Apple always BS'ing about how great their battery is, and comparatively to my other Samsung stuff, my iPhone battery is crap.

Galaxy S3 has a much larger battery than the 4S, not sure about the 5. My battery would probably be about 10% lower than it is if I hadn't been on WiFi all day.

It's acceptable though, it easily lasts from when I wake up to when I go to bed with what I would consider to be heavy use.

ChazUK · Sep 16, 2012

I've bench my Exynos powered S3 in Geekbench alongside my Tegra3 powered Nexus 7 and the results are as follows:

Nexus 7 = 1554
Galaxy S 3 = 1284

I know from first hand experience that the Galaxy S3 outperforms the Nexus in most intensive games and applicatkons so I won't put too much credence in the Geekbench score. The results of compared to the iPhone 5 have stirred up quite some discussion and chest thumping tho.

Good times at MacRumors.

matttye · Sep 16, 2012

Technarchy said:
As any person that has used android for awhile can tell you the OS requires heaps of high powered silicon to run well. It's a shoddy mobile OS.

It's not efficient and it doesn't scale worth a damn, so no, a jellybean ROM wont solve your problems.

Either way, I don't like Geekbench. I prefer seeing Anandtech's in depth look, but in the end, it really doesn't matter.

I'm never buying another android device, and my iPhone 5 should be here on Friday.

Jelly Bean is a step in the right direction. It's just as smooth as my iPad 2.

Looking forward to iOS 6 though, do they usually release it alongside the new iPhone?

ChazUK · Sep 16, 2012

Technarchy said:
It's not efficient and it doesn't scale worth a damn, so no, a jellybean ROM wont solve your problems.

.

Any reason you say this? My first hand experience with Jellybean on the Galaxy Nexus and 2 Tegra3 based tablets (Transformer Prime on ICS and Nexus 7 on JB) have seen massive performance improvements on the same silicone and architecture.

Given the weaker Tegra3 specification of the Nexus 7 over the Transformer, I'm surprised further by what Google have managed with JB.

Congratulations on ordering your new phone.

matttye · Sep 16, 2012

ChazUK said:
Any reason you say this? My first hand experience with Jellybean on the Galaxy Nexus and 2 Tegra3 based tablets (Transformer Prime on ICS and Nexus 7 on JB) have seen massive performance improvements on the same silicone and architecture.

Given the weaker Tegra3 specification of the Nexus 7 over the Transformer, I'm surprised further by what Google have managed with JB.

Congratulations on ordering your new phone.

I'm using a leaked version of Jelly Bean on my S3 and it's a lot smoother all round. Biggest performance gains can be seen in the browser.

Tapatalk is still a little bit laggy when it scrolls. Seems to be a badly coded app!

Technarchy · Sep 16, 2012

matttye said:
Jelly Bean is a step in the right direction. It's just as smooth as my iPad 2.

Looking forward to iOS 6 though, do they usually release it alongside the new iPhone?

JB is a step in the right direction, the problem is it isn't portable and doesn't scale very well.

Sure, it's fine on a GS3 international, but only 1% of android phones feature that caliber of hardware. The cost of entry is still high because android at its core is resource hungry, so when people say JB fixes everything, what they really should be saying is JB helps if you already have an expensive android phone.

Edit: For what its worth, if it isn't Exynos, I don't consider it a real GSII or GSIII.

What are Samsung doing with all that power? iPhone 5 - 1/2 the specs as S3 and faster

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