iPhone XS Why are speed tests so close to Android?

[StellarVixen]

How much quicker can an app open ? You get to the point of diminishing returns.

If you ran, say, a video encode and compared that then you would see a difference.

"point of diminishing returns", you worded your thoughts better than me.


I wish more people understood this simple thing.

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

So we can compare our phones? Sounds awesome.

Whatever floats your boat.

 

[44267547]

True, but not everyone sees integration as a fluid approach. Some folks prefer the right fit, which forces people to buy into HomeKit, Apple CarPlay, etc.

CarPlay maybe I see your point, but being ‘forced’ into HomeKit, not even close. The adoption for HomeKit is far less than any other part of Apples integration. A lot of various entities aren’t even HomeKit compatible.

 

[secretk]

Speeds test to the average consumer absolutely mean nothing. In general use, most consumers use their phones with the same daily tasks with media, videos, browsing, etc. They won’t notice a differential of speed test from one processor to the next. The one processor that has made a difference in terms of gaming has been the A12, which allows for ‘60 frames per second’ for sustainability. But overall, unless somebody was upgrading from an older model iPhone, (like the iPhone 6 to the XS), then would they notice a significant difference in terms of processing power.

I completely agree with this. I don't care about geekbench tests because they mean nothing to me. What matters is my user experience with the device on daily tasks.

I have Sony Xperia XZ1 compact phone (Snapdragon 835, 2017 model) and recently the company gave me iPhone 8 (A11, 2017 model). In general I don't see lagging in either phones and their performance is good enough for my needs. However I don't play games (on either devices). I use the devices for phone calls, mails, browsing, skyping, facebook messenger, google maps, taking photos, media consumption (listening to music). Neither phone is faster than the other btw. So if someone expects to see a huge difference in the phones they won't.

There are small nuances (differences) that I see that are more related to preferences than overall performance. For multi tasking I prefer using Android because Android suspends apps less aggressively compared to iOS. Like I can have 30 tabs open in Chrome and they would not reload for hours. With iOS they reload on Safari (on Chrome as well on my iPad) every 30 minutes. Same for open apps. I find this annoying because I switch between apps often enough and this reloading slows me down. Yeah I know that it's part of iOS RAM management but it's something I highly dislike and I interpret this as bad user experience. And for me is unacceptable.

When it comes to photos capturing photos iPhone wins for sure and with a mile. I believe that Apple do use A11 power for this and do it better than Sony (correct if I am wrong and A11 has nothing to with the camera and photos capturing). Overall iPhone offers pretty good experience when it comes to the camera. Obviously it's not DSLR, but it's still good enough. I have not used Pixel so I can't comment on that. While the Sony phone has powerful CPU Sony just does not make good enough photo processing algorithms.

So if I am correct about the relation between CPU and photos processing then for me this is one case where the good CPUs shine for the general consumer. Other case would be of course gaming (though there GPU matters too). I don't think that people do what Geekbench tests are doing. That's not how we use our phones on average.

I would say the same for iPads btw. I particularly do not care how much the new iPad Pro wins over any general laptop because for the tasks I do this power does not matter. What matters is workflow and that highly depends on the OS and the apps available. So in the end of the day it's about the full package - the combination between CPU, RAM, GPU and how fast the storage is on hardware side and it's about process optimization and RAM management on the software part.


So winning geekbench contest is irrelevant. And honestly I think that aside us (that post on forums like this) most people do not even know about geekbench or Antutu or other similar software. I know my mother does not. She cares only if the phone is slow for her usage or not. That's it. If the phone's performance is withing her acceptable range, she would not care what is the score.

 

[nviz22]

CarPlay maybe I see your point, but being ‘forced’ into HomeKit, not even close. The adoption for HomeKit is far less than any other part of Apples integration. A lot of various entities aren’t even HomeKit compatible.

I paid $10 extra to get a Wemo Smart Plug to work with HomeKit. I needed geo-fencing with IFTTT to turn on front lights. The $ is nominal in that one purchase, but it piles up if I want to get more automation done.

 

[Coffee_Time]

Whaat? A12 and SD845 are both 64-bit ARM-based SOCs. They both are v8a ARM (not apple) architecture. Both of them have under the hood ARM Cortex A75 cores. Yes they differ, but are in the ARM licensing compatibility. It really is like 2 v8 engines, one from ford, other from toyota. they both are v8s. Do you even know what ARM is? Whaaaat?

Whaaat? A12 is hexacore, 2 big, 4 little cores, while SD845 is octacore, 4 big, 4 little cores... doesnt this means a12 lacks 2 cores? Whaaaat? Seriously, there's nothing true in what you wrote.

 

[Zaft]

The A12 and A11 chips consistently blow away Android chips like the Snapdragon 845/855.

However, on youtube, it's easy to find plenty of app launches where the performance is near identical, or Android chips actually are faster at launching despite having a chip with 50% lower single core geekbench speeds.

Given that Android should also require even more memory & resources compared to iOS, how is this possible?

There are obviously some app/games where the iPhone does win at load times, but it seems shocking to me that Android ever wins these.

Real world usage is quite different from a numbers game.

 

[s54]

There’s more to speed and smoothness and benchmark scores than just processor speed. It’s how you utilize it as a package that counts.

Same reason why higher horsepower doesn’t equate to a car being faster.

 

[Coffee_Time]

Both platforms are really fast. The advantages one over the other are, IMO, pretty small... But no way in comparing them with desktop machines.