iPhone 7 Plus Faster than iPhone 8 Plus at Encoding Video

[FarFromSubtle]

I have been able to replicate the problem that caused the iPhone 8 to lose a speed test in this video:

When I watched that speedtest above, I assumed it was because the "Videoshop" dev had not yet optimized their app for the bionic processor. So when I got my iPhone I did a speed test with iMovie and found that the iPhone 7 was about 20% FASTER than the iPhone 8 while exporting a 1 minute long, HVEC 1080p 30fps video. What the heck is going on here?! How could Apple not have optimized it's own video editing app after lauding the speed performances brought by the new chip?

 

[JPack]

In all likelihood, aggressive power management on the iPhone 8 is to blame. It has a smaller battery and more power hungry features like True Tone and first-gen gigabit LTE baseband.

Every iPhone 8 comes with iOS 11 and Apple built iOS 11 around A11. It doesn't make sense they would optimize iOS 11 for iPhone 7. I would not expect iOS 11.1 or 11.3 to bring any major speed improvements targeted at iPhone 8.

 

[one more]

In my test earlier this morning iPhone 7 was also faster in opening a relatively busy web page in Safari (BBC news).

 

[cynics]

If its not optimization it could be the HEVC profile encoder being used.

Its just a guess but if the iPhone 7 uses main 1 and the 8 uses main 10 this could account for the difference. Like I guess thought just a guess.

 

[mctrials23]

The 8 processor is an utter beast so if the 7 is quicker at anything then its a software or optimisation issue. They will probably fix it in the near future.

 

[FarFromSubtle]

If its not optimization it could be the HEVC profile encoder being used.

Its just a guess but if the iPhone 7 uses main 1 and the 8 uses main 10 this could account for the difference. Like I guess thought just a guess.

This is exactly what I thought, however it looks like they are using the same codec. To reduce the chances of a discrepancy even further, I imported a video file from my point and shoot and exported the exact same footage on a timeline from iMovie. The iPhone 7 Plus chewed through the 3 minutes of footage about 20% faster, and the resulting files from both phones were the EXACT same size.

To add further weirdness to this: when outputting at 360p instead of 1080p, the iPhone 8 plus wins by about 10% This still is not even close to how much better it should be doing, but just an odd note.

 

[FarFromSubtle]

Just want to note that here we are 48 days later and the iPhone 7 is STILL 20-30% faster at exporting video projects from apps such as iMovie and Videoshop. The only thing that confounds me more than the A11 being trounced by its predecessor, is how little tech reviewers seem to notice or care.