Galaxy S4 way faster than iPhone 5: Which? UK consumer magazine Which? has dropped a benchmark bucket on the iPhone, rating it the slowest of seven smartphones under test. The magazine ran the Geekbench 2 test on seven phones – the iPhone 5, Samsung's Galaxy S4, the HTC One, Sony's Experia Z, Google's Nexus 4, the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, and the BlackBerry Z10. With a …
Microsoft and AMD went through the 'mine is faster than yours' thing a few years ago.
Ok so you might have bragging rights but does it allow you to make quicker calls? Do messages appear quicker?
Does the clock make the minutes pass faster?
It won't be long before consumers wise up to this and buy a phone based on how well it is put together as a package.
A formula one car only lasts one race, I need something to do 100,000 without unnecessary intervention.
Sure it's good enough for most people, but if you just want good enough, why pay for one of the most expensive phones on the market? Samsung have plenty of cheaper offerings if you don't need a full S4. (Also consider future use - older iphones and Android slow down with the latest OS updates or due to more demanding software, don't you want one that will last better?)
It's also a rebuttal to all the years where the media have falsely assumed all along that the iphone was the best phone, including from a pure hardware point of view. It's long been known that it specs like resolution and RAM it's lagged behind, because we can easily compare these - but this shows even on CPU, it's not true either.
I wonder how the ipad mini compares to other Android tablets - again, we see the same thing where much of the media portay it as one of the most advanced tablets, despite poorer resolution and RAM (and at a higher price). Is it at least giving you the fastest CPU for the money?
I'll start with the standard stock warning that past performance is no guarantee of future earnings.
What the higher price from Apple has gotten you in the past is a stable platform. If you wanted to keep your phone for 4 years you could. The cost was a performance hit. As a lot of hardware vendors have been finding out in the PC world, most people just want something that works, not necessarily the fastest latest toy to one up the Joneses. But yes, if you do want to always own one of the fastest toys on the block, buy a new Android at least once every 2 years. No skin off my nose either way. I had an Android HTC that worked well on the rare occasion when I had 4G signal, tolerably when I had 3G, but I was still paying too much so I traded it in for a flip phone that pretty much just makes a rare phone call.
But a phone that's more than fast enough now will have the advantage of lasting longer due to being more future proof. I'm not sure what you mean by stable platform, and people are free to keep their Android phones for 4 years too. It's not clear to me that the iphone platform is better in this regard. If you mean that older iphones can get the latest OS, that's a myth, as they don't get all the functionality.
Android barely existed 4 years ago so it's hard to compare that timescale. But I don't see that a 2 or 3 year old Android phone gives a worse experience than a 2 or 3 year old iphone, if we compare like with like (i.e., comparing two phones that were high end when bought). There are loads of people worldwide still using 4 year old Symbian phones, I'm not sure there are as many people on iphone 3G phones.
Most people want phones that work, and most people do that with Android phones.
"I was still paying too much so I traded it in for a flip phone that pretty much just makes a rare phone call."
Yes, exactly - if one doesn't one high specs, there's no need to spend high prices at all, S4 or iphone or otherwise.
Re the comment about the "myth" of iPhone updates - no, sorry, not a myth. It's true that not every iPhone gets every new feature, but it's also true that many new features do come to older iPhones via updates, along with a continual stream of improvements and security patches etc. Look at ios7 - literally the biggest overhaul to the platform since the first iPhone, with major changes not only to the look and feel of the UI but also the background stuff like multitasking, power management, networking etc - it'll come out on the inevitable iPhone 5S, but not only will it also be downloadable the same day for the iPhone 5, but the 4S from 2011, and even the 4 from 2010. What new OS will be released to the Galaxy S3 this year, let alone the S2 - and how about the Galaxy S, what update is that getting? Jack Schitt, that's what that's getting.
Personally I find it a bit laughable that a supposedly reputable review mag like Which would try and build a review based on some meaningless abstract benchmark that anyone could run - surely there's nothing here that isn't all over the web anyway. To the average Which reader (and in fact the average anybody) the raw CPU performance of these phones, which is all that's being testers here, is utterly meaningless. What happens is how quickly, and how well, the device actually performs its tasks as a smartphone - and a LOT of that has nothing to do with the CPU and everything to do with the software and the rest of the hardware package.
"What new OS will be released to the Galaxy S3 this year, let alone the S2 "
Android 4.2.2 official update is coming to the S3 any time now and probably the S2 (of course there is XDA for those who can't wait). Then Keylime Pie (Android 5.0) should be on the way next. So that's Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean and Keylime Pie major OS updates for the S3 for starters.
I used to have a Iphone 3G running IOS4, IOS4 was released in 2010, 2 years after Android Gingerbread. My Android Gingerbread phone is still going strong.
Now I had to finally abandon my 3G earlier in the year , as the storefront was removed of all IOS4 compatible apps. It is not possible to upgrade the Iphone 3G.
So although android doesnt update as frequently, I can still get apps for it.
The point is that Apple phones have at most a 3 year shelf life, after which you are forced to upgrade as you cannot get any further apps nor can you update your existing apps.
" If you wanted to keep your phone for 4 years you could. "
Eh? Two iPhone 3GS died (well, the batteries died) 53 weeks after purchase. Replaced (at a cost and a shed-load of hassle) by "refurbished phones of similar condition".
No thanks, no fixed battery ever again. Samsung? Plasticy, but do what they say on the tin. Still loving my Galaxy SII. Thinking of Xcover II (or some other water-resistant phone) as a replacement when I lose or break the SII.
"I really can't imagine anyone doing a real world test would conclude the iPhone was a slow-coach."
Once iOS7 appears then we shall see how the current iPhone hardware handles real-world tests once *full* "proper" multi-tasking comes into play like Android has been doing for a very long time. That is when you realise that you suddenly need plenty of RAM, CPU grunt, battery power and good power management (which the S3, S4 and HTC One actually do very well at). It will be interesting to see what iPhone hardware actually gets the iOS7 update with full multitasking.
My phone is fast than my voice and I wish it would slow down the voice of my missus, any apps for that. But seriously my cars is also faster than what I am allowed to drive. So where does this faster actually make any difference. A video moving alone faster than than you can see. What the hell, go for it, we all love "Top Gear" although I cannot stand that guy for even one second any more.
Time to get some of that "innovation" into useability Apple, rather than tinkering with the form factor so much it's now hard to produce. Time to admit you misread the market, and get back to what people want.
Though in their defence - my iphone 5 is hardly slow in my usage model, so one does wonder why we need nearly 2ghz of quad core in a phone?
Years ago people wrote fast code or wrote code then optimised it.
It's a sad day when you need stupid amounts of processing power on a phone. But then it's no wonder we need such power given the latest batch of phones have a display with as many pixels as a full HD TV. They have more pixels than many laptops and desktop machines.
Take a screen shot on your 1080 HD phone and email it to your computer, it's a perfect illustration of how crappy computers are now. You'll have to zoom out the image to see it.
> That's because you bought a top end phone and a low end laptop
Perhaps, but how many laptops on the market have a better screen resolution than a current generation of mobe screen?
Looking at Insight's website (coz you can search on screen res) it shows only 6 and that includes tablets, so
1920x1200 (cica 2003 spec laptop) 1, a Tosh Tough book
2560x1600 a pair of Apples.
2880x1800 oh look another pair of Apples.
(I might hate their business practices but they seems to be the only people trying to make a 21st century laptop at the moment)
Anyone know of any others?
I'm doing loads of work with a major corp at the moment and all the new laptops screen res is too low to show the windows they need to run the SW they've written themselves. Left Hand, meet Right Hand, you know, you guys should talk sometime.
> My 2009 yes thats right 4 years old gateway has a 1920x1200
This is precisely my point. Your 2009 Gateway has a reasonable screen res. Does Gateway make a 2013 laptop with anything other than crap res screens?
My 2003 Dull has a 1920x1200 screen.
My 2009 HP has a 1920x1200 screen, and drives a second external one at the same time.
Last year when I need a replacement is a hurry I couldn't find one and had to go out and buy 2nd hand as being the only way to get the spec I needed.
This new Samsung looks interesting. The pair of HP mobile workstations are damn heavy to lug around when I occasionally need to do so. So thank you for answering my question. I just hope you don't have to suffer W8 on it and it'll run something useful too.
>> It's a sad day when you need stupid amounts of processing power on a phone.
I take it you still use a nokia 3310 and a 286 then?
It sure us a sad day when you need such power as a modern Core processor just to run a desktop OS and an office suite.
Alternatively you could look at it as progress, you know, like we have been doing in tech since the whole thing started. Faster = able to do more.
It sure us a sad day when you need such power as a modern Core processor just to run a desktop OS and an office suite."
True... If I could run a desktop & word processor on an A1200, why does my Windows 7 machine become unresponsive on a 3Ghz CPU with 16GB ram running of an SSD?
And when it does, it is the damned pop up UAC stuff...
it's probably a combination of:-
1. Lower manufacturing costs of faster CPUs, HDDs and RAM chips
2. Marketing teams exploiting the Kano model and providing the cpnsumer with loads of features we don't actually use. How much of all the features of Office 2010 suite do we actually use regularly ? I'd guess at < 50%
3. Programmers exploitting 1 & 2
"I take it you still use a nokia 3310 and a 286 then?"
I have a 6310i. up to 1 month between charges, or several hours on a call and rock solid call quality.
I guess on a phone the most important thing i want is to make and receive calls. Guess I'm out of touch as well.
Faster = able to do more charging
>> I have a 6310i. up to 1 month between charges, or several hours on a call and rock solid call quality.
Good for you. I make about 3 calls a month but have endless uses for a pocket-sized tablet.
>> I guess on a phone the most important thing i want is to make and receive calls. Guess I'm out of touch as well.
Pretty much, yup.
>> Faster = able to do more charging
Or run a variety of foreground and background apps without choking utterly. Either way, The criticism that "OMG how terrible is your phone you need all that power" is nonsense.
It's not a case of "need", it's a case of want, can have and "ooh shiny!".
We don't! But like PC days of old (and Amiga* days before that) it seems as though Android is all about having the biggest numbers and best stats! My phone is faster than yours, ner ner! Candy Crush still plays at exactly the same speed though...
* "Ah but my memory card has a co-processor. I have a 68882 with blah blah blah." Did it actually make a difference to how I used the damn thing? Did it buggery.
*Did it actually make a difference to how I used the damn thing? Did it buggery.*
It will make no difference whatsoever. But maybe it will force marketing drones to think about new ways to justify an overpriced kit? They won't be able to stick to "it's so easy to use" forever...
"Though in their defence - my iphone 5 is hardly slow in my usage model, so one does wonder why we need nearly 2ghz of quad core in a phone?"
Then the new iFolly is released, you rush out to purchase a new status, and suddenly this observation becomes void. Funny That!
The ipHone did not even have the faster core or the most cores when it was released , so what are you wittering on about ?
Personally I think your using your phones specs to make up for a shortage in other departments ;)
Paris becuase she knows what I'm talking about!
Different phones with different operating systems - hardly a realistic benchmark. It would be like putting two cars on a dyno - pulling off their BHP and deducing how well they will drive and how fast they will get around a track. Caring nothing for how much they weigh, how well they steer or the other components that make up the total package.
Then the new iFolly is released, you rush out to purchase a new status, and suddenly this observation becomes void. Funny That!
That's a sweeping assumption on your behalf, and you missed by a country mile.
Actually I came to the IP5 as an experiment after a Galaxy note. Naturally the fandroids will downvote this as a failing on my behalf, rather than - god forbid - find fault with the Note. But that's a very long post for another time.
That's you Obviously! hiding behind an anonymous mask isn't it. People buy products that best match their tastes, requirements and budget. There's nothing wrong with people choosing an iPhone just like there's nothing wrong with them choosing a Galaxy, a Blackberry or a HTC. It's only people like you who give fans a bad name.
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