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  • softdrinkviking - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    I wonder if apple is risking backing themselves into a corner by tailoring their hardware so closely to the device. There are all kinds of supply problems that could come up, and, well, it's happened in the past. IBM OS2 died because it didn't support enough peripherals. Obviously, it's not exactly the same, but I think I like the idea of multiple hardware vendors interacting with multiple platform/OS builders.
  • mavere - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    They're still ARM licensees. If things go badly with their custom designs, they can always revert to generic A15 cores or something.
  • MadMan007 - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    I think the screen is supply-limited and that contributed to the pre-order sellout. Of course Apple didn't spin it that way, but if demand really was that much higher than anticipated they did a very poor job of production planning. I don't know why people don't realize that a product selling out when there is still demand is actually a failure by a company.
  • aribencannan - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    it may not necessarily mean failure by the company. 4S was available too much too soon (from Apple's point of view). Queues in form of apple stores were short or non-existent. Considering this in the light of every previous iPhone released, this gave the impression that the demand for 4S was not on par with previous phones. This may very well be a marketing strategy to create demand for the phone by word-of-mouth advertising during the initial period.
  • Sunrise089 - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    I'm sorry, but this simply isn't the way it works with tech products people purchase infrequently and at non-random time points.

    If beer sells out at the local supermarket or in a whole region someone probably did a bad job (forgetting about the Super Bowl, etc).

    New phone releases aren't like that. Lots of customers want the buy the product immediately, such that total lifetime sales are HEAVILY front-loaded. In order to meet all that demand on day 1 you would need either:

    1) Massive production capacity that would run under capacity for 75+% of the product's life cycle.

    2) Lower production levels that start very early, such that a huge number of phones are available by release.

    Option 1 isn't cost effective, and option 2 means you're late to market and EVERYONE has to wait for the device rather than SOME people.

    The real solution, if you don't like queuing (which essentially makes people pay a 'waiting in line' cost to decide who gets a phone right away) is simply to charge a higher price at first and lower it dynamically as demand falls. That's considered unacceptable for various business reasons I don't pretend to be an expert on, but it's clearly not something any of the major players are willing to do.

    Given that, long lines and shortages at launch that then clear up are pretty much the ideal solution.
  • iwod - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    How is that risking it when the SoC will be produced by Samsung whether it was apple designed or not?

    And the only ones that could afford to design their SoC for two different Fabs, Samsung or TSMC will only be Apple or Qualcomm. Other dont have the volume to afford it.
  • Monkeysweat - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    I also don't think OS2 sold 2 million devices in one weekend.

    With the volume that Apple ships, they are not backing themselves into any corner, they are the designer from what you see and interact with all the way down to the corner, even if they don't manufacture 100% of it, they at least control every aspect. Not many companies can do this.

    The tailored designs will be what they want so there is as little waste as possible in size or battery drain,,, if a SoC has even a couple features Apple won't use, they are taking up space and possibly some battery drain.
  • vol7ron - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    who said OS2 died?
  • Yorgos - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    How about getting a comparison chart with other high-end smartphones?
  • dagamer34 - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    We will probably have to wait for the full review in 2-3 weeks.
  • Samus - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    There won't be much comparison to other smartphones. The iPhone5 is only clocked at 1GHz, most highend smartphones, even new WinMo phones, are clocked at least 200MHz higher. Yes, I'm aware clockspeed isn't everything, but with ARM architecture it means a LOT.

    Fortunately the iPhone GPU is still very capable, and it has to be to drive that resolution.
  • KoolAidMan1 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    As the article stated, IPC means a lot as well, ditto OS optimizations. The iPhone and Windows Phone devices both ran faster and smoother than higher clocked (and ostensibly faster) Android phones released at the same time.
  • MrSpadge - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Starting from dual-issue in order designs with bad cache and memory performance there's a lot of room left for massive IPC increases. They just have to decide which ones to implement now, balancing performance with size & power.
  • akdj - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    You can check out the comparisons to other high end phones (including GSIII ad Nexus) at the site Anand referenced initially. Macrumors. Careful though...I like Apple but Many of those folks covet Apple:-)
    Probably best not to get involved with the 500 very happy iOS posters. I'm proud of Apple and their engineering feat here. But I'll proceed with caution until we've had Anand and others that know what their doing break everything down over the next several weeks. In detail.

    Otherwise, kudos to Apple's SOC engineering department. They deserve it. Definitely the biggest 'gains' in spec sheet performance since the beginning. Kinda like Moore's Law:-)

    J
  • jwcalla - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    So it's on par with year-old chips. :)

    2x the performance of the 4S doesn't seem like much of a challenge.
  • Formul - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    those year-old chips being ... what exactly? its dual core not quad core and on 1GHz at that
  • KoolAidMan1 - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    And it is apparently beating 1.4ghz quad-core smartphones released only 2 months ago by a good margin.

    Efficiency has always been a strong suit of iOS, so we'll see how these translate to practical benchmarks in a few weeks.
  • WinProcs - Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - link

    Macrumors reported that the iphone 5 was faster than the Galaxy S3 to the delight of the Apple happy clappers. Many were ecstatic that the iphone 5 scored 1601 on Geekbench. Apparently the S3 scored 1560. Quite a number were downright nasty. Many said it proved the iphone 5 was the fastest phone in the world.

    I download Geekbench and ran it 3 times.

    I got 1880, 1612 (email received during test) and 1903.

    It is the international quad core running 4.04 and has been rooted. It has not been modified in any other way.

    Numerous other people ran the test on their S3s. All got significantly higher scores than the iphone 5.

    The comments changed quickly to disbelief, accusations of fudged figures by the S3 owners and also that the numbers didn't mean much. Some of the "numbers don't mean much" comments came from the same people who earlier were putting down the speed of the S3!

    Check out http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=14432...

    Perhaps they should have called it the iphone 4S2 instead!
  • Samus - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Right, I mean, it'll run iOS 6 super fast, but that's like running Android 2.3 on a Galaxy S III.

    iOS 6 brings no visual improvements to the table, so the GPU, outside of gaming, it really being underutilized.
  • MrAwax - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    You mean "since iOS is GPU accelerated since 1.0, there is no need to add this feature later like it has been done on Android at last in its 2012 version".
  • lkm32 - Sunday, September 23, 2012 - link

    Android has been GPU accelerated since Honeycomb in tablets or 4.0 in handsets (the reason why a lot of handsets never got 4.0 ... no GPU).

    Though 4.1 is so smooth I guess you can be forgiven for thinking it was the first. (and please don't be hipster troll and say that you still see it jittery, please don't be that guy)
  • tipoo - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Not sure about the only advantage being gaming, the new vector based maps are one example of where a fast GPU makes things fluid. You can think of lots other uses if you think about it.
  • doobydoo - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    What jwcalla said:

    'So it's on par with year-old chips. :)'

    The reality:

    'This one score also places the iPhone 5 ahead of the average scores of all Android phones on Geekbench'
  • akdj - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Really? Have you actually used a '4s'? I develop for both, Android and iOS. As such I own a half dozen devices of each (3gs, 4, 4s, iPad 1, 2 and 3--as well as a GNote, GSIII, Nexus, Nexus 7 and a Xoom). To date, the speediest, most 'fluid' phone on the market is the 4s. Bar None. I love my GSIII, I really, REALLY love my Note...but let's be real here. This isn't a 'fanboy' site or a silly forum for phone lovers. We are all geeks by nature, that's why we're on Anand's site:-)

    The way iOS and Apple's hardware work together is incredible. Benchmarks aren't necessary to achieve this fluidity...the A6 is twice as quick as the 'new' iPad! And that, to me, is the pinnacle of speed as far as the tablet community is concerned.

    To double the speed of the 4s in a lighter, thinner package is a HUGE challenge!!! To maintain the battery life or increase it is an even BIGGER challenge!!! I take it you're not an engineer or a software dork? (I am, both:)). It does take a bit of looking 'under the hood' to appreciated these challenges and accomplishments.

    Hang Tight! Their coming---the reviews, benchmarks and comments from those that DO know what they're talking about:)

    J
  • Brian Klug - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    We've run Geekbeench on Android phones (there's an Android port) but I'm not totally convinced it is directly comparable with iOS or as cross platform as they hope it is.

    That said, here's their table for Android devices: http://browser.primatelabs.com/android-benchmarks, and iOS benchmarks: http://browser.primatelabs.com/ios-benchmarks

    -Brian
  • Guspaz - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    True enough, but the results seem to be in-line with the "A15-like cores such as Krait perform on-par with quad-core A9" as expected.
  • tipoo - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    The highest Android score I can find is the N7s Tegra 3 at 1550 points. So it's pretty impressive that this beats it with only two cores at 1GHz. Even Krait comes in behind the Tegra 3 just because of core count, it's obviously faster per-core but with twice the cores T3 beats it in raw compute, but the A6 is supposedly ahead of both. Most impressive, if true.
  • Shadowmaster625 - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    Apple is just pig vomit, no matter how fast it goes or how much lipstick they put on it. I tried to go to the qdoba home page on my iCrap. And guess what? It crashes. Every single time. I can do it over and over and over. Just one of many sites that crash. What a piece of trash.
  • vshin - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    Apple sucks because you can't access the home page of your favorite mexican restaurant chain? By the way, it works on my iCrap just fine.
  • Spoony - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    Works fine for me on my iTrash 4.
  • akdj - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    Why not just drive to QDoba yourself? Pick up your own burritos.
    No matter which Apple/Mac or iOS product I've ever purchased, I'll agree. They can't cook worth a shit!

    :-)
  • cdoubleu - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    I tried going to qdoba on a couple of iDevices and they work fine so it doesn't seem to a generalized problem. I'd suggest you call or visit Support and have them look at your device.
  • Andhaka - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Curious. It works quite well on my old 3Gs crap. :)
  • kmmatney - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    It seems to work fine on my iPoop 4S....I was able to order online, go to all the main pages, etc... I think you just have an issue with your iFart.
  • ahamling27 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Have you ever rebooted your phone? People think you can still power your phone up on day one and never turn it off until you replace it. Smartphones are so much like computers it really helps to reboot daily. I take it a step further and turn the dang thing off for 1 night a week.
  • mrtanner70 - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    Now Apple has brought its own cores to market will the A7 power an Air?
  • Impulses - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    That'd be a huge downgrade from any Intel i-series CPU... Unless this imaginary A7 is no longer ARM based.
  • doobydoo - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Imaginary?
  • MrAwax - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    "Imaginary" as in "just wait for this AWESOME A7 CPU that will fly unicorns and make coffee".

    There is no doubt that Apple will sooner or later upgrade their CPU and that they will (surprise) call it the A7.
    Now, except for Apple own ARM team, no one have any credibility telling anything about this A7 to be.
  • bjacobson - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    Finally a phone with some oomph behind it!
    -4" screen (check)
    -dual core A15-like performance (check)
    -1GB RAM (check)

    aside from having to pollute my PC with iVirus this is everything I ever wanted from an Apple phone-- enough RAM and CPU for the future, and a 4" screen.
  • MrAwax - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    btw, how could Samsung have made a "it doesn't take a genius" ad listing 1GB of RAM while no one has talked about this and this "credible but not confirmed" Geekbench score wasn't out yet ?

    That's a pretty efficient firewall you have in place between your component and cellphone divisions, Samsung.
  • piroroadkill - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Uh, sorry, there have been phones with dual core CPUs and 1GB RAM for a while.
    There are even phones with 2GB RAM and a 4.3" display (Xiaomi Mi-Two).
  • agoyal - Sunday, September 16, 2012 - link

    Give the numbers this 1 GHZ processor is performing at about 1750mhz level or about 1.75 times faster than A9. Krait is about 1.3 times as fast as A9. Is apple is able to achive this kind of performance at this power levels, this is nothing short of amazing. Wow!! And this is there 1st custom ARM chip.
  • kpb321 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    It's different targets. The Krait or A15 processors are designed to run at higher speeds. Krait runs at 1-1.7 ghz so far and I wouldn't be surprised to see it hit 2ghz. The a15 is suppose to hit 1.5 ghz in phones and 2.5 ghz in server/router uses. Going higher mhz almost always means some loss in IPC if everything else remains roughly the same. Apple clearly wants to keep the clock speed lower on the A6 to keep the voltage down which lowers the power draw.
  • serversurfer - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    How do you know how high Apple plan to scale the clock in the A6? You seem to be assuming it'll be 1GHz forever. Maybe it'll be 1.5GHz in the iPad Mini, and 2.2GHz in the iPad 4. /shrug
  • Zink - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Wow yeah with the big battery crammed into the new iPad it would be neat to see them go all out on CPU performance next gen and have twice the frequency and twice the memory bandwidth of the iPhone 5. Maybe a companion core set up to keep the high clock sections off most of the time?

    The next gen iPads are probably just going to get thinner with 2x performance boost like the iPhone and iPods did though.
  • MrAwax - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    We'll maybe because it will burn too hot in the iPad and we'll get another warmgate.
    The iPad 4 will be blazingly hot, like 80 freaking degrees (F).
  • serversurfer - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Well, I don't think it'll actually be 2.2GHz. My point was, we have no idea how high Apple intend to scale this thing. For that matter, we also don't know how much heat it produces. We do know that Apple said per-Watt performance was one of their primary design goals, which would have the knock-on effect of reducing heat output.

    In any case, kpb321 points out that Krait is running at 1-1.7GHz, but then looks at the very first A6, running 1GHz, and assumes that at or near its top speed. That strikes me as a fairly baseless assumption. They bump the clock speed of the A5 by 25% when moving from the iPhone to the iPad. If they do the same with the A6, then you're looking at a score in the 2000 range, and that's with no other memory improvements, etc. (The iPads have a lot more memory bandwidth than the iPhones, mind.) And who knows if Apple's aggressive power saving measures will allow them to clock it even faster than that? At only 1.5GHz you'd be looking at scores of 2400 or so.
  • kyuu - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    It's not that interesting, really. Krait is clocked at 1.5GHz in recent phones, and at that clock speed it should equal if not beat the custom SoC in the iPhone 5 in terms of raw compute. Given that the rated battery life of, for example, the Nokia Lumia 920 is equal or better than the ratings for the iPhone 5, it seems to do it with a roughly equal power draw (though of course there's much more to battery life than the CPU).

    So, basically, it's probably roughly equal to Krait while coming much later, but with a better GPU than the Krait S4 (though I'm not sure how it compares to the Krait S4 Pro).
  • doobydoo - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Isn't the point of these benchmarks that it's beating the performance of all the Android phones?

    GPU wise yeah it will beat them all by a large margin too.
  • kyuu - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    The benchmarks only show scaling of the supposed iPhone 5 Geekbench results versus the iPhone 4S. It isn't compared against Android phones at all.

    Also, it's highly debatable whether the benchmark results between iOS and Android on Geekbench are even comparable. Anand specifically mentioned that when attempting to do so, things didn't add up, meaning it's likely Geekbench isn't OS agnostic and results, therefore, aren't directly comparable between different platforms.
  • robinthakur - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    It's never seen as interesting when iOS wins, don't you know anything? The Samsung genius ad makes me laugh as an owner, especially all their pointless bullets they stick on the end like "Smart stay" which I could hardly say works as intended and the absurd claim that S Assist is anywhere like as good as Siri. Wow, you can pan between screens to move an app icon using your gyroscope and zoom in photos, how...useful. It's clearly not at all because you have to come up with workarounds to Apple's patents.
    They forgot to add:

    -a handful of apps that take advantage of the powerful graphics and quad core. Lots of major apps on iOS are missing. Others are the poor cousins of their iOS equivalents (e.g. Facebook, Shareprice)
    -No practical way to put music on the phone other than old fashioned drag and drop which will lock your phone for the duration of the copy. Either that or attempt to piggy back on iTunes using DoubleTwist or iSyncr which are hit and miss and didn't support ICS when I tested. If iTunes is so bad, why not code your own solution Samsung, or is that what Kies is meant to be?
    -The way the device begins to pause all the time when its internal memory approaches 3/4 full.
    -Fragmentation and delay for the next OS when it was released back in June. Jelly Bean might well arrive just in time for the Galaxy 4's release
    -A cheap plastic phone back that feels like it came in a christmas cracker. When the iphone 5 weighs less and is better constructed from quality materials it's time to fire your designers.
    -Jealous and miserable owners. Every Android person I asked to try and help get my S3 working as I wished seemed shocked that I didn't prefer it to the iPhone while obsessed with the superiority of their device, sort of like they accuse iPhone owners of being. Anyone who thinks otherwise is labelled an iSheep or a moron, which is beyond deluded. I think this comes from a deep-seated fear that their device will be outdated within a couple of months when the latest and greatest is refreshed by HTC and Samsung, which is probably justified.

    I'm not really bothered that you can flash it with a custom rom and use a small selection of widgets on the lock screen. I'm not even bothered that Android does "proper" multi tasking when it works so much worse in practice than Apple's "fake" multi tasking which doesn't muller the battery life. Considering this is Samsung's flagship device (for now) it feels unpolished and cobbled together in some places, like the support software. Most of the benefits of Android can be summed up for most of them by saying "It's not Apple".
  • Sufo - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link

    I completely agree with the criticisms concerning device polish. I'm certainly with you on your points about handset quality, too. However, to criticise an Android device for using drag and drop to transfer files seems crazy to me.

    This feature is one of the biggest selling points for me. I can drag and drop any type of file (FLAC, Vorbis, anything) without having to launch any shitty 3rd party application. Having done that, I can then listen to my music with *true* gapless playback.

    Android has its fair share of criticisms and I think it's as simple as, until you're a legitimate power user (you're going to flash a custom ROM, you're going to be using linux features etc) then an iPhone is more likely better suited to you.
  • agoyal - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Krait was an improvement over the A9 but required a process shrink to 28nm. A6 is 1.35x krait despite the same process node (if not higher at 32 nm - Samsung).
    There is no reason to believe that apple could not have gone with higher clock. They have always chosen battery life and small form factore over performance. Suspect Ipad will see slightly higher clock. Once the process node shrinks to 20-22nm, this will likely get clocked higher.
  • SanX - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    iphone will get down the drain starting from April quarter if Apple will give up larger formfactor models to the competition. Should make 4.5" and 5.0" phones and phablets asap, current gear is not usable for any serious work at all.
  • serversurfer - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    So you're predicting that iPhone sales will start to drop off 6-9 months after the new models are released?

    That's a pretty bold claim there, champ.
  • reddog007 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    I'm a little iffy On that benchmark.
    1 what is geekbench? Barely been downloaded on Play Store. A few thousand times.
    2 a Samsung nexus at the same clocks is just 200 points away from the SGS3 Krait edition.
    3 the krait version of the SGS3 scored a lot less then the tegra 3. We all know, especially in single thread performance that the krait beats a tegra 3. Even nudges it out in multithreading.
    4 if the A6 is 1ghz and does own any CPU, apple skipped the A15 generation. Leaped frog it. I find kinda hard to believe as Intel can't even beat ARM still.
    5 If it is at 1GHz, and 32nm, dual core, with just a 4in screen, how the heck does it not improve battery life over the smaller older tech 4S? The SGS3 is just 20g heavier with a much larger screen and owns it in terms of advertised battery life.
  • doobydoo - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Advertised battery life being the key word.

    The SG3 is a brick - it's heavier, wider, taller and fatter.

    As a result they managed to fit a larger battery in, but Anandtechs own real world tests prove that even the iPhone 4S beats the SG3 in battery life benchmarks (winning in 2 of the 3 tests, and overall), despite having a far smaller capacity battery.

    Since Apple claims to have improved battery life, we can be relatively confident that the iPhone 5 battery outperforms the SG3 in the same way.

    You have to remember that the iPhone 5 is the thinnest smartphone in the world, and way lighter than most Android phones.
  • kyuu - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    "You have to remember that the iPhone 5 is the thinnest smartphone in the world, and way lighter than most Android phones. "

    Sure... but at what point does thinner and lighter cease to be desirable? I've carried an iPhone 4 since its release and the thought of carrying a device that's thinner and lighter just isn't something I find appealing. I'd much rather have a bigger, better screen and more features. Plus, iPhones are so fragile that you have to slap a case on them if you want it to survive an accidental drop, which adds bulk anyway.
  • web2dot0 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    So you are saying that iPhone 5 is "too light".

    What's next, the GPU is "too fast"?

    I guess that is a hugely undesirable feature. hahaha.

    Why don't you wake up to the real world. People like lighter phones. Longer battery life.

    "Survive in the case of a drop"? It's called getting a protective case with your iPhone. That's what "AFTERMARKET" assesories are for! You wouldn't want Apple to kill that market too right? ;-D You need a lesson on business buddy.
  • amdwilliam1985 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    "So you are saying that iPhone 5 is 'too light'."
    Yes, that's right, iPhone 5 is too light. You won't believe how many people said S3 is too light as a negative point against iPhone 4S. Now that iPhone 5 is lighter, it will produce the inferior product feeling. Of course, iSheeps always back track and find other arguments. "Oh yes, 3.5" is perfect. " turns to "hell yea, 4.0" is the king." LOL

    Let's not forget how "inefficient" Apple utilize their phone. We're only comparing screen sizes here, 3.5" to >4.5" screens of most Android phones. We forget to compare the actually size of the phone. iPhones are large phones with tiny screens by many standard. My gf's iPhone 4S is only fractionally smaller than my 4.5" TMobile SGS2 in terms of physical size.
  • KPOM - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link

    As soon as you use the word 'iSheep," you've lost the argument.
  • Stas - Sunday, September 23, 2012 - link

    You like a lighter phone...
    I found my SGSII too light. It was too hard to operate with one hand, as it didn't stay put - due to light weight it would slide easily. Grippy case helped, but I would prefer extra 15-20 grams.

    So you're saying Apple purposely makes a fragile device to feed the 3rd-party companies? You're delusional.
  • robinthakur - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    I quite liked the lightness of the S3 despite its cheap construction, so the fact that the metal IP5 is actually LIGHTER than the S3 is mind boggling to me. Agree that you reach diminishing returns at some point though. I'd like a bigger battery in there, but whenever they do something like that a la iPad3, all the whiners and Android jihadists come out in force. I think the iPhone will still be a bit more fragile than the S3 though, as even though it won't crack if you drop it, it will dent now. I suppose that is better, but the best solution as with any phone is "don't drop it" without a cover on. I've dropped my 4S a few times onto concrete from standing height, and the case has prevented any damage to it.
  • KitsuneKnight - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    I've dropped (more like tossed, since it flew out of my hand after tripping) my 4S a few times on concrete, without a case, and it survived perfectly fine. There's a couple scratches on the metal band on one corner, but you'd never notice without inspecting it closely. Luck probably played a bit of it, but it's certainly not super fragile as people like to imply.
  • lilmoe - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    spoken like a true fanboy... no use arguing with you.
  • doobydoo - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link

    spoken like a true fanboy... no argument was presented by you.
  • reddog007 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    That is the key word for battery life: Advertised!

    SGS3 is not a brick, far from it. How is 20grams heavier than the iPhone 5 a brick? It is one of the lightest, if not the lightest Droid phone with the largest screen before being a phablet.

    I guess that the iPhone 4S is one small fat brick then. Screen is 1.8" smaller with a much smaller battery and the thing still weighs more.

    Yeah, it is taller and wider, but lets think here. Oh yea, it has a 0.8" larger screen. Wouldn't that be why it is taller and wider?!

    Ok, yep the SGS3 is fatter, but also just by 1mm. Im actually surprised that it isn't more because the new LCD tech Apple uses plus the nonremovable battery.
    If you wanna get a little more technical in terms of who is more a brick, lets take screen size into account. SGS3 actually weighs less per inch of screen then the iPhone5. SGS3 is more than likely also going to have the larger battery.
    Sure it uses a lot of plastic, but don't underestimate plastic.

    The only reason why the A6 did so well in Geekbench is because it owned in the memory tests. As far as CPU tests, 33% slower than the Tegra 3. Sure, it is Quad, but Cortex-A9 quad. We all know already in benchmarks that the S4 in Multithreading is still usually faster than Tegra 3. That is what makes me iffy about this Geekbench.
    Plus for phones, I'm more interested in single threaded performance, and the A6 should still own a Tegra 3 in single threaded tests easily.
  • sansh1r0 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    "You have to remember that the iPhone 5 is the thinnest smartphone in the world, and way lighter than most Android phones."

    Both the Huawei Ascend P1 and the Oppo Finder are thinner than the iPhone 5.

    http://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_ascend_p1-4410.php
    http://www.intomobile.com/2012/05/25/oppo-smartpho...

    Apple lied in their presentation and the media and readers didn't care to get facts straight.
  • PeteH - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    According to that first link, the Huawei Ascend P1 is 7.7mm thick, which is not only thicker than the iPhone 5 (7.6mm), but also significantly thicker than advertised (6.68mm).

    I dug around a little, and from the photos I found it of both phones it looks like they have "bulges" either at the top or bottom of the device. I'm betting both companies are defining the overall device thickness as the average thickness of the entire device.

    Does anyone happen to know the worst-case thickness of those devices? I wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone 5 is actually the thinnest smartphone when measuring worst-case thickness, while these phones are both thinner when measuring average thickness. In other words nobody lied, they just used different definitions of thickness.
  • doobydoo - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link

    You are correct.

    The Huawei Ascend P1 is much. much thicker at its thickest point.

    There seems to be no consensus or authoritative documentation on the Oppo Finder - in terms of how fat it is at the bulge, some say 7.1 some say 7.8 having navigated around.

    What all these phones which people are claiming are thinner have in common, as you state - is thicker points so they shouldn't really claim to be as thin as they are.

    Either way - when you have to cite the 'Huawei Ascend P1 or the Oppo Finder' to find a questionably thinner phone - I think you make Apples point :-)
  • xype - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    I like it how short of being ~8 times faster than anyone else in the market for the next 4 years a custom Apple-designed CPU seem to be a dissapointment to the enlightened audience of AnandTech. :)

    Good thing it’s built into an iPhone 5, too, since that’s obviously going to sink Apple as well, being as lame as it is, eh?
  • KoolAidMan1 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    They mad
  • tipoo - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    I'm not disappointed, if this is true I'm pretty impressed.
  • nitram_tpr - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    The only people who care are geeks who can run benchmarks. Normal punters really don't give a rats ass, the majority of people who have pre-ordered or are gonna queue are doing it because they have to have the latest version, because it's the latest, not because it's the quickest.
    iPhones (iDevices as a whole) sell in huge amounts regardless of the performance. I think the 5 will sell better than the 4s because it is visibly different, you can put it next to a 4 / 4s and other people will see and say 'ooooh thats the new iPhone'.
    the 4s is a pretty smooth running phone, it makes me laugh, every single increment of the iPhone has been smooth running comapred to the last. When being reviewed the new one makes the last one seem like a piece of crap.
  • doobydoo - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    I think you make a good point.

    But there's a reason why iPhone users don't generally concern themselves with performance - for them, performance has never been an issue - as you state.

    Contrast to Android phones, the vast majority of which are laggy and glitchy when being used - particularly those which run older versions of Android (which is the majority). iOS users can almost forget hardware specifications as an issue because everything just works smoothly on their phone and apps are designed for their hardware. Android users aren't so lucky - which is why they need to focus so much on benchmarks.

    A large part of why Apple managed this is the optimisation of iOS for their specific hardware, and lack of fragmentation. For example, an app developer for Android can't optimise the app for every Android phone to make sure it doesn't lag - but iOS developers can.

    The second reason is that the GPU's in iPhones of late dominate the benchmarks, and I believe a faster GPU is more perceptible for the end users, as it affects the graphical rendering (the part which can appear stuttery). An end user doesn't feel if an app takes 0.1 seconds longer to load. But they sure as hell feel it if graphics start to stutter.
  • pjc78 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    What's sad is that the realization that good GPUs give a good user experience does not extend to the iMac or Mac Pro, and even the MacBook Pro to a lesser extent. Seriously, Radeon 5870 is the best Mac Pro GPU?
  • web2dot0 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    How the hell are you gonna put a 300W GPU into a iMac buddy or in a MacBook Pro? What you some sort of thermo genius?

    The target market for iMac and MacBook are people trying to get 100fps in Crysis.

    What's sad is you still don't get it.
  • lkm32 - Sunday, September 23, 2012 - link

    Engineers kind of need some sort of GPU processing for simulations.

    Also, they don't seem to be doing that well when it comes to heat anyhow, with some of my colleagues with Macbook Pros getting the things damn hot.

    I personally have a T430s and a W520 ... most reliable things I have ever bought (Other than my sonofagun Moto Defy running CM10 ... that thing has been to the Arctic, mountain climbing, deep sea fishing and back and still runs smoothly thanks to Jelly Bean).

    On that note, I need a new rugged phone with a bit of oomph. Not the iPhone5 as somebody got it and showed it to me and it is nowhere as rugged as I want ... sure metal is great to touch, but it feels a bit too fragile (I guess it's awesome for most people, but I need a heavy duty phone and that it is not).

    Any suggestions (since you get it and all)?
  • robinthakur - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    True that, having put Jelly Bean onto the Nexus 7, it still isn't as smooth as even the first iPhone, which is completely mental. Scrolling in Chrome is hardly "buttery smooth" as Google would have you believe, its more like vaseline mixed with sand. The G3 behaves differently depending on how much free internl storage it has available also. 2/3 full, and it starts to lag and stutter in a way i've never experienced on iOS. Even loading times should be positively impacted by the faster Nand in the IP5 which is great. Due to the fragmentation, there are hardly any apps which can be used to demo the extra speed on Androids other than benchmarks. The main game I used to show off the power of my old quad core Exynos Galaxy 3? Angry Birds Space. It ran almost as smoothly as it did on iOS. I'm very glad Apple have pushed the capabilities of the GPU, as it should be very noticeable to end users.
  • Touche - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Please, give us more iPhone 5 articles. Surely I should scroll much longer to find any other topic. At least five articles daily, covering every separate detail as you miraculously discover it.
  • krumme - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Yeaa like:

    Ip5 have a15.

    No its not

    Its better - its a a7v custom custom custom custom custom !!!

    I look forward to the geekbench scores

    Ohh here they are

    Look its 2.3 times as fast
  • Stas - Sunday, September 23, 2012 - link

    This. Or just incorporate aPPLE logo into the header of the main page, so I can just skip to the forums.
  • darrenliew96 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    You should use my iPhone 4s benchmark:
    http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/1003361
    So its 2 times faster, the iPhone 5.
  • WuJen - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/compare/...
  • Aenean144 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Your link shows a comparison between an iPhone 4S (835) and Galaxy Nexus (1513) overclocked to 1.65 GHz. You're not proving anything other than Apple's done an awesome job designing a CPU that can generate a 1600 score at 1 GHz.

    A Galaxy Nexus would score about 1100 at its stock 1.2 GHz frequency.

    Geekbench looks pretty variable depending on what else is running on the system. I presume one can go in and stop all extraneous processes running (turn off phone, WiFi, Bluetooth, all notification, timer, push/fetch processes, anything auto) and can probably get something 10% better than a run of Geekbench on a vanilla system.
  • WuJen - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    I wouldn't read too much into the scores on Geekbench, my year old Samsung Galaxy Nexus gets a 1513 on geekbench2. What I'm more interested in is how it will hold up under LTE data transfers. My poor little sammy nexus will burn out downloading on LTE in short order, the only problem I really have with the phone.
  • Achtung_BG - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Apple A5 SoC 2 core cortex A9.......... =>2*2.5*800=4000 DMIPS
    A6=4000dmips*2=>8000DMIPS=>4000DMIPS per core(1GHz)=> 4 DMIPS/MHz

    Perhaps Apple core is more powerful than the cortex A15 per MHz?
  • RogerShepherd - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    The integer performance doesn't look like 2x the A9 in the iPhone 4S. It's clear that a lot of the "2x" performance is coming from memory which doesn't get reflected in dmips.

    I still think this could be an A15.... It will be interesting to see Cortex A15 v. Apple A6 benchmarks.
  • tipoo - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    The highest Android score I can find is the N7s Tegra 3 at 1550 points. So it's pretty impressive that this beats it with only two cores at 1GHz. Even Krait comes in behind the Tegra 3 just because of core count, it's obviously faster per-core but with twice the cores T3 beats it in raw compute, but the A6 is supposedly ahead of both. Most impressive, if true.

    Then again Krait is pretty old now and there is also a quad core Krait coming out.
  • UsernameAlreadyExists - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    I've probably missed something, what is this Microsoft reference about?

    "Many smartphone workloads (under Android, iOS and Windows Phone despite what Microsoft may tell you) are still very CPU bound. "
  • tipoo - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Probably them using single cores in WP7.5, but in WP8 they will be using Snapdragon S4 so they're among the fastest now.
  • mikelsyn - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link

    probably microsoft's claim that windows phones aren't really CPU bound, thus justifying them using single core in the era of dual core and practically transitting into the quad core era.
  • edsib1 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Geekbench shows a SG2 as scoring 1133, and a GS3 as 1700 - x1.5 increase

    CFBench shows SG2 as getting 11200, and SG3 as 24000 - x2.2 increase
    Antutu shows SG2 as getting 6000, and SG3 getting 12000 - x2 increase

    Suggests to me that Geekbench has some issues.
  • reddog007 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Plus if you look into detail in geekbench, the A6 doesn't do well in CPU tests vs Tegra 3. 33% slower in float and integer. We already know that Krait owns Tegra 3 in single threaded, and usually does better or just as good in multithreading from other better known and uses benchmarks.

    The A6 scores so high because it just basically owns in the memory tests. 2x and 50% faster than what Tegra 3 scored.
    The A6 should also do a lot better than Tegra 3 in at least single threaded apps.

    A6 scored 100 points less than the high SGS3, but got owned in CPU tests but returned the favor in the memory tests.
    I think the A6 will be faster clock for clock than the Krait, as I expect any other Cortex A15 to do, but overall CPU performance I think that it will still be slower because of its clock speed.
  • edsib1 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    If I look my HOX for the memory scores,

    geekbench gives my read sequential as 290.8MB/s, yet the write sequential is 1.55GB/s

    Theres something funny going on there - the read should faster than the write speed.
  • zero71 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    I think a lot of people are in danger of splitting hairs here, no?

    The current king of Android Handsets is clearly the S3, ios it's iPhone 5, and Windows it looks like the new Nokia. These are all phones with really similar specifications - for example the difference in Geekbench results between the S3 and iPhone 5 range from nothing to 20%. If you are upgrading from a two year old phone then there's a far greater differential between your old phone and new than on any competing phone you might buy.

    What it comes down to for most, is what OS they prefer. I like iOS. I don't like Android. The girl that sits to my left prefers Android and loves her unpocketable Galaxy Note, and the guy on my right, he wants the new Nokia because OS be damned, he's a Nokia fan.

    You choose your OS and your phone choice will naturally follow suit,

    Is the S3 faster than the iPhone? Probably. Is it fast enough to notice, in real world use, on an OS not necessarily optimised for it? Probably not. Does it really matter?

    I want a phone that will integrate with my Mac and iPad more so than my company Linux loaded laptop. I want a phone with iOS because I like it and am heavily invested in apps for it. I need a phone that integrates into my corporate email service and security requirements. That last one alone rules out the S3 and favours the iPhone. Doesn't mean I think all other phones are shit.
  • Stas - Sunday, September 23, 2012 - link

    I agree. There is no reason to argue about performance when the OS is what really sets the devices apart. I mean, seriously, would any tweaking/customizing Android user consider an iphone, if it was 20 times faster than SG3? Would any iphone user switch to Android because the latter rendered more pixels per second than former (something they likely don't even understand)? The answer to both is - of course not.
    I would never use iOS for countless reasons, no matter what phone it was on. Neither would I use MacOS no matter what laptop it was on. And that's what dictates my choices.
    Now, if I actually liked macbook or iphone, I wouldn't be opposed to using it with Ubuntu, Win7, or Android OS. But that's a different story.
  • edsib1 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Lets face it Geekbench is a rubbish benchmark tool, and is not suitable for cross platform comparisons.

    My HTC one X scores 1500, an SG2 scores 1100 - even though my One X is clocked at 1.7Ghz, and has 4 cores.

    On other benchmarks my hox is around 2.5 times faster than an SG2 - 13,300 on Antutu, 27,600 on CFbench

    The Geekbench benchmark is almost certainly badly written, and inaccurate.
  • Wilco1 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Geekbench uses a mixture of single and multithreaded integer/fp benchmarks as well as single threaded memory benchmarks. So you would never get 2x scaling with twice the number of cores - the memory scores stay the same and only half of the int/fp benchmarks are ~2x faster.

    So I don't see any reason why Geekbench would be bad for cross platform comparisons - as long as you understand what the score means. So the Galaxy S3 score of ~1900 and the iPhone 5 of ~1600 doesn't accurately show how much faster the S3 is due to being quadcore.
  • vision33r - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    There are so much ignorance here because the Apple hatred has clouded their visions.

    A lot of people can't understand efficiency > raw power.
  • edsib1 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Looks like someone has posted a real Iphone5 Benchmark score - 979

    Integer Processor integer performance 924
    Floating Point Processor floating point performance 1055
    Memory Memory performance 1143
    Stream Memory bandwidth performance 583

    http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/1041269
  • Aenean144 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Here's a third benchmark:

    http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/1037166

    Geekbench score: 1645

    Processor integer performance 126
    Processor floating point performance 2107
    Memory performance 1854
    Memory bandwidth performance 941
  • doobydoo - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link

    The 1645 and 1601 suddenly look credible - and the 979 looks like the work of some angry rival, lol.

    These tests can easily be faked and you can't compare cross-platform anyway.
  • RazelDazel2 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    thanks, looks quiet different
  • mytexel - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    Humm... Galaxy S III running 4.1.1 gets 2062 vs 1601 for iPhone 5.

    http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/compare/...

    If you omit the stream copy portion of the benchmark, which looks suspect; the iPhone 5 processor seems less impressive.

    Cheers

    Gary Jones
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/458
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/439
  • RazelDazel2 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    thanks, this answers my question.
    was this run more then once?
  • RazelDazel2 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    i doubt it is but some of the specs look a bit like the OMAP 5 or like an updated OMAP 4
  • RazelDazel2 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    i am seeing no results in the Geekbench browser for the IPhone 5. The highest result i found was for the IPad, presumably the 3rd gen with a score of 800 which is pretty meager. Even the supposed 1600 for the IPhone 5 is beaten by the SGIII .. clearly
  • PeteH - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link

    It's under iPhone5,2.
  • serversurfer - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link

    People should keep in mind that the Android scores, particularly the GS3 scores, have gone up significantly since the first iPhone 5 score was posted. The GS3 did have an average score of 1560 at the time, but it's since climbed to a whopping 1728. Basically, butt-hurt Android fans have ruined the results for the top Android devices.

    http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=1570257...
  • doobydoo - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link

    The fact that people can influence these numbers and that they can change so drastically shows how little weight we should put on them.

    As Anand states:

    'Although Geekbench is cross platform, I wouldn't recommend using this data to do anything other than compare iOS devices. I've looked at using Geekbench to compare iOS to Android in the past and I've sometimes seen odd results.'
  • big_adventure - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link

    I've got a GS3 i9300 and here are the results running CM10's latest experimental:

    System:
    GT-I9300
    Android 4.1.1
    Exnyos 4412 1.40ghz
    Memory: 779MB

    Score: 1812
    Integer: 1565
    FP: 2782
    Mem: 1136
    Stream: 636

    Blowfish
    single-threaded 655
    28.8 MB/sec
    Blowfish
    multi-threaded 2127
    87.2 MB/sec
    Text Compress
    single-threaded 616
    1.97 MB/sec
    Text Compress
    multi-threaded 1858
    6.10 MB/sec
    Text Decompress
    single-threaded 613
    2.52 MB/sec
    Text Decompress
    multi-threaded 1191
    4.75 MB/sec
    Image Compress
    single-threaded 771
    6.37 Mpixels/sec
    Image Compress
    multi-threaded 2525
    21.2 Mpixels/sec
    Image Decompress
    single-threaded 630
    10.6 Mpixels/sec
    Image Decompress
    multi-threaded 2265
    37.0 Mpixels/sec
    Lua
    single-threaded 1195
    460.4 Knodes/sec
    Lua
    multi-threaded 4339
    1.67 Mnodes

    Mandelbrot
    single-threaded 584
    388.6 Mflops
    Mandelbrot
    multi-threaded 2214
    1.45 Gflops
    Dot Product
    single-threaded 1120
    541.2 Mflops
    Dot Product
    multi-threaded 4455
    2.03 Gflops
    LU Decomposition
    single-threaded 242
    215.4 Mflops
    LU Decomposition
    multi-threaded 490
    429.7 Mflops
    Primality Test
    single-threaded 1393
    208.0 Mflops
    Primality Test
    multi-threaded 3018
    560.3 Mflops
    Sharpen Image
    single-threaded 1904
    4.44 Mpixels/sec
    Sharpen Image
    multi-threaded 7016
    16.2 Mpixels/sec
    Blur Image
    single-threaded 2339
    1.85 Mpixels/sec
    Blur Image
    multi-threaded 8616
    6.77 Mpixels/sec

    Read Sequential
    single-threaded 474
    594.7 MB/sec
    Write Sequential
    single-threaded 2073
    1.42 GB/sec
    Stdlib Allocate
    single-threaded 773
    2.89 Mallocs/sec
    Stdlib Write
    single-threaded 843
    1.75 GB/sec
    Stdlib Copy
    single-threaded 1521
    1.57 GB/sec

    Stream Copy
    single-threaded 558
    781.6 MB/sec
    Stream Scale
    single-threaded 708
    941.2 MB/sec
    Stream Add
    single-threaded 634
    981.4 MB/sec
    Stream Triad
    single-threaded 645
    913.8 MB/sec
  • serversurfer - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link

    Engadget has confirmed the score, saying they averaged 1628. No link to the breakdown, unfortunately, but the ~1600 scores on primatelabs.com are likely legit.

    http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/18/apple-iphone-5-...
  • serversurfer - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link

    Oh, Engadget also clocked a 924 on Sunspider.
  • Aenean144 - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link

    Sub 1000 score on Sunspider? Wow! Was expecting that actually. So not that surprising.

    What I would like to know is how does Samsung get 1400 on an Exynos 4412 at 1.4 GHz. They must have added some special sauce to the Android JavaScript JIT compiler.
  • Qciphone 5 - Monday, September 24, 2012 - link

    I actually got higher scores on almost every one of your results.

    Not too much higher but still higher.

    iphone 5, 1 (at&t)

    I posted my results Saturday on both Geekbench and GLBenchmark (offscreen)

    Geekbench overall 1646 score. It consistently shows 1.04GHz

    Its my wife's phone LOL!!
  • Qciphone 5 - Monday, September 24, 2012 - link

    http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/1071508

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