iPhone 4S Geekbench Benchmarks ~68% Faster than iPhone 4

[mthanded]

I guess that confusion comes from you don't know how OS works. So you compare RAM usage between 2 different OS and think it comes from "memory optimization deficiency" by one.

As matter of fact, OS do not optimize the RAM usage of an app. OS just try to allocate as much as app request, no more no less.

That is not entirely true. Also the OS consumes memory too. If you can create an OS will a more stable and smaller memory footprint you can improve device performance. Its a very intricate balancing act. Using resources and saving resources for applications.

I don't know how OS works? I am embedded device engineer... Not going to get in a pissing match about this though.

 

[Iconoclysm]

Other than games what are the real use implications of better graphics processing? I don't really game much on my iPhone. I would probably rather have 1GB of RAM instead.

For what purpose? What is that 1GB of RAM going to give you on a phone that backgrounds applications the way iOS does and utilizes flash storage? It's almost to the point of being nonsensical.

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Actually, it's much more than that. There's tons of things the OS can do with free RAM that is much better than just letting it sit there unused. Take Linux for instance. Looking at a dev box at work right now configured with 14 GB of RAM, I see the following values :

# cat /proc/meminfo | egrep "MemTotal|MemFree|Cached"
MemTotal:     14369696 kB
MemFree:         97904 kB
Cached:        7186040 kB

So essentially, it has 100 MB of Free RAM. Linux is a pig right ? Look at the 3rd value... It's about half of the RAM in the server. What does it mean ? That's the file cache. Basically, Linux is using 7 GB of free RAM to cache files and thus speed up I/O by not having processes wait for slow disk/network access.

Now, some might say because the RAM isn't free, the OS is a pig. Others would realise the OS is smart and speeding up I/O by using unused ressources and thus making the whole experience better in the end. The file cache is also not really "used" RAM, the OS can deallocate older objects quickly and move the RAM to user space processes as allocations get requested, so it's a complete non-issue.

RAM usage is not an indicator of poor optimization, you are right about that. In fact, quite the contrary, RAM usage can be an optimization in and of itself.

This very thing (caching) was confused with Windows Vista "hogging" memory.

 

[Taz Mangus]

Those test do have merits but then all these browsers are free Besides, the software is easily upgradable. SGSII will get ICS update in a few months and the score even for stock browser will improve drastically while iPhone's hardware obviously will still be the same.

You sound like someone who is throwing a temper tampture. Grow up and stop trying to twist the data into looking a certain way. I really hope you enjoy your Android phone, there is no reason why you need to get this constant attention about it. I know I will be enjoying my new iPhones 4S. I guarentee that I won't be running over to the Android forums and proclaiming as such as I have no ego to feed and nothing to prove to anyone.

I really don't understand the deep seeded hatred some people have for Apple.

 

[KnightWRX]

For what purpose? What is that 1GB of RAM going to give you on a phone that backgrounds applications the way iOS does and utilizes flash storage? It's almost to the point of being nonsensical.

Loading larger textures/more mip maps, you know, to fully utilize that nice fat SGX543MP2, the Retina resolution and that Dual core processor.

There's always something to do with more RAM.

 

[twcbc]

For what purpose? What is that 1GB of RAM going to give you on a phone that backgrounds applications the way iOS does and utilizes flash storage? It's almost to the point of being nonsensical.

How about no reload between web pages? Keep more data in RAM, so that next time you open app, it starts from fast RAM, not slowly flash?

More RAM do no harm.

 

[oghowie]

How about no reload between web pages? Keep more data in RAM, so that next time you open app, it starts from fast RAM, not slowly flash?

More RAM do no harm.

Exactly. The most annoying thing about the first ipad was that it had to constantly refresh webpages because there was not enough ram.

People that say more ram wouldn't be useful are kidding themselves.

 

[Sean4123]

iPhone vs android phones
Macbook Pro vs windows laptop
iMac vs desktops

sleek+style+deep hardware+software intergration vs tech savy omg speedy processors

get it?

this shows iPhone 4S can hold it's on against tech savy machines.... (and so does other Apple products)
I don't need the latest and greatest... I just want something that works.

And I think iPhone 4S (using sorta old tech), can last 1 more year until everyone's "oh I'm cravinggg" iPhone 5 comes out.

Siri + super phone camera justifies an upgrade for me.

I agree 100%, but i've noticed that logic and clear thinking doesn't compute with Apple haters.

They are a really rare and pathetic breed of people. They feel that since they bought a phone that was heavily influenced by the iPhone (though they'd never admit it) but is "open source" that they are sticking it to the man or something.

I work for AT&T and they gave us the Samsung Infuse 4G as our company phones, and I thought it was hilarious how many people were wowed by the "vibrant screen."

Once I pulled up the New York Times website on both phones (iPhone 4 vs. Infuse 4G) you could clearly see the jaggies in the letters on the Samsung.

One Android enthusiast told me to "turn up the brightness on the Samsung." Well the brightness was already set to max and the iPhone was only at about 75%.


What was the Fandroid's response? He doesn't read very often on his phone, he only watches video....

Wow.

 

[lilo777]

I agree 100%, but i've noticed that logic and clear thinking doesn't compute with Apple haters.

They are a really rare and pathetic breed of people. They feel that since they bought a phone that was heavily influenced by the iPhone (though they'd never admit it) but is "open source" that they are sticking it to the man or something.

I work for AT&T and they gave us the Samsung Infuse 4G as our company phones, and I thought it was hilarious how many people were wowed by the "vibrant screen."

Once I pulled up the New York Times website on both phones (iPhone 4 vs. Infuse 4G) you could clearly see the jaggies in the letters on the Samsung.

One Android enthusiast told me to "turn up the brightness on the Samsung." Well the brightness was already set to max and the iPhone was only at about 75%.


What was the Fandroid's response? He doesn't read very often on his phone, he only watches video....

Wow.

It sounds like you have difficulties telling apart screen resolution and contrast. Yes OLED screens have several orders of magnitude better contrast and black levels that make them look vibrant and yes there resolution is not as hight as that of iPhone panel. It is expected however, that the next Samsung phone will have it both ways - OLED and higher resolution than iPhone.

So, you say people were really impressed by OLED screens? Those screens are known to produce this effect. Usually people who had a chance to use OLED screens hate using regular LCD panels.

 

[fertilized-egg]

Usually people who had a chance to use OLED screens hate using regular LCD panels.

There are exceptions like me I really much prefer good LCD displays over my Super AMOLED phone screen. Too much inaccuracy in colours, not as bright, and while I know the new ones don't have it, pentile sucks.

To me the AMOLED is almost an equivalent of over salted spicy restaurant food. Wow factor, yes, but I prefer something milder for continuous consumption. The real advantage to me is the black level, but in most places where I use the phone, there is enough ambient light to negate much of the advantage.

Back to the topic of iPhone's speed. As expected no one is really arguing over the powerful GPU because it's so obviously ahead of other phones currently available. (Funny how anti-iPhone spec lovers mostly just ignore that biggie) And this is a topic that excites me because of the lively dev scene of iOS.

I have an Android phone that had the fastest GPU by far in its time but at no point I realized the power as there was simply no app or game that took advantage of it. On the other hand, with iPhone 4S and iPad 2 selling out fast, I see a lot of hope we'll see some games that really start to take advantage of this powerful GPU. The slower GPUs in the older iPhones and iPad will hold them back to an extent, but I personally expect there to be a truly A5 optimized game sooner or later to wow us.

Is it just me or does the post show 716MHz for proc clock speed... not 800.

Geekbench is well known to report inaccurate clock speeds. Happened with iPad 2 and other iOS devices as well.

 

[firewood]

As matter of fact, OS do not optimize the RAM usage of an app. OS just try to allocate as much as app request, no more no less.

The problem is that some OS's will allocate as much as any app requests, even if it's more memory than physically available, and end-up doing power-wasting VM swapping to backing store that bogs the UI. iOS will just kill an app stupid enough to do that and not back down in it's memory usage as needed. Very smart optimization.

And for the clever enough developer, backing VM store is still available under iOS if useful.

 

[hchung]

APK can root the device if they use an exploit, not because sandboxing is looser. Exactly like PDF exploit jailbroke iOS devices

I stand corrected. I'm interested in looking at the source code for the rooting packages, know of where I can get those?

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

Ha ha, indeed! I do wonder about the big screens and fast processors when it comes to battery life. I didn't have an iPhone 4, but my 3GS battery still lasts a long time (much longer than my Palm Pre). I would not trade battery life for a bigger screen or higher spec'd processor. Apple seems to excel at finding the balance between all these things better than anyone else.

Agree 100%. The battery life on the 3GS is excellent compared to other phones available at the time. The Palm Pre I tried was awful on battery life, and, the email client was awful, too. Battery life is a key performance item for a cell phone -- I don't plan to compile Macports on it, and, the only time I care about 3 GS CPU speed is if it seems slow -- which, it doesn't. And, for those clamoring for double the RAM -- why? What app is compromised by 512 MB RAM?

 

[hchung]

By the way, Android 2.3 and 3.x has GPU accelerated UI

3.x yes. 2.3 no.
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=20278

 

[twcbc]

The problem is that some OS's will allocate as much as any app requests, even if it's more memory than physically available, and end-up doing power-wasting VM swapping to backing store that bogs the UI. iOS will just kill an app stupid enough to do that and not back down in it's memory usage as needed. Very smart optimization.

And for the clever enough developer, backing VM store is still available under iOS if useful.

Not exactly. First, iOS will kill app that occupied memory for a while, without activity. Making it release memory for upcoming app. If there was no more memory available, it uses VM.

As I know every modern OS doing, more or less, the same thing. So I won't call it "very smart" optimization. To prevent OS using VM swapping, the best way is supplied it with more RAM. That's why people want more than 512MB on iP4s.

 

[Oletros]

3.x yes. 2.3 no.
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=20278

I also stand corrected

 

[techconc]

How sad...

Who cares? The screen is the size of a credit card, the OS sucks as does the battery and proximity sensor and the tech inside it is 18 months out of date, my calculator has more RAM, 512mb is laughable.

The Nexus Prime takes a dump on the iPhone 4(with better camera).

That's the on-going theme with you droid-tards. "Just wait until the next (insert piece of crap Android system), it will be the next iPhone / iPad killer wannabe... just wait!". Really, how many times have we heard the same thing only to see the iPhone / iPad killer never ever live up to the hype. Really, it grows tiresome.

What's more funny is that essentially everything inside the iPhone 4s (except the screen and the case) are new, yet we hear about it being "out dated" tech. Yet, this "out dated" tech seems to have no problem mopping the floor with the latest Android crap.

Finally, when it comes to memory, has it ever occurred to you that Android systems REQUIRE much more memory in order to do the same thing? There are all sorts of design trademarks. iOS was designed to be lean and mean, yet still be best in class in terms of features and capabilities (Siri anyone?). In the end, products will be judged by what they can do, not by their specs on paper. As such, your iPhone envy seems pretty clear.

 

[techconc]

Not exactly. First, iOS will kill app that occupied memory for a while, without activity. Making it release memory for upcoming app. If there was no more memory available, it uses VM.

As I know every modern OS doing, more or less, the same thing. So I won't call it "very smart" optimization. To prevent OS using VM swapping, the best way is supplied it with more RAM. That's why people want more than 512MB on iP4s.

Just as iOS devices have evolved from 128MB to 512MB devices, the memory ceiling will continue to increase over time. With mobile devices, the trick is to do more with less. For example, Apple made a conscious decision to not allow Flash. The overhead with Flash would surely require more memory. The whole concept of auto save / resume / fast application switching came about as a response for the need to do multitasking in low memory environments. The easy solution would have been to just jack up the memory on each device. As we've seen with other mobile OS's that solution doesn't scale very well.

Mobile devices will always be about conserving power and minimizing resources. That helps save power and keep costs down. That's why an iPad with half the memory and half the CPU power feels much more responsive than any Netbook, etc. Apple understands this. I believe Microsoft is getting the message as they seem to be following Apple's direction and I believe even Google understands this.

Apple seems to be putting the memory on the SoC (A5). As the complexity and power of these SoC increases, I'm sure the built in memory will increase as needed overtime. 512MB seems to be fine for the current generation. Also, keep in mind that Apple is still selling the 3GS which only has 256MB. As such, developers need to keep in mind the lowest common denominator. When the 3GS drops off, presumably next year, it would make sense to have 512MB devices as the new low end.

 

[wutang61]

No, no one forgot. Overclocking goes one way and that is up.
Lowering the clock rate is underclocking, hence the terms over and under.

you think?