Definitely think it's getting the hardware ready for the AR glasses. Hyper precise location tracking just by putting your phone down on a desk and having the U1 chips communicate.
I am dreaming of that the Apple U1 UWB chip could be used in a not too distant future (2020 / 2021) for precise spatial locasization for at (short) distance wireless charging : by knowing where exactly in space an Apple device is, Apple might be able to dynamically and efficiently focus wireless energy transfer maybe through wireless resonant charging (Airfuel) for an iPhone or through RF charging like Energous / Ossia for recharging Apple Airpods from an iPhone...
I think I am dreaming, but just hope that Apple is working hard to make wireless power at a short distance a reality : I would dream to be able to drop my iPhone anywhere on my bedside table, and that it automatically recharge during the night from a base station up to a distance of 1,5 foot / 50cm : it would bring sooooo much more convenience than Qi wireless charging...
@patel21 : How many times do you still plug an Ethernet cable to your laptop to surf on internet instead of using WIFI ? WIFI is simply more convenient...
Similarly, wireless charging at a distance (up to ~ 1,5 foot (50cm)) would be so much more convenient than to have to plug a cable to recharge a device
It also true for Internet of Things (IoT) devices : tjere seems to be some studies showing that consumers stop using many IoT devices that work on batteries because they have to change the batteries
I strongly believe that wireless charging at a short distance is a requirement for the sale of IoT sensors to really take off because managing 10s or 100s or more of IoT devices with batteries is not really manageable by consumers in the long run...
And you just halved the power efficiency of your laptop and devices. EM transmission power is 1/r^2, checking your laptop could cost you 2-3x more than a direct connection at longer distances.
I wonder if they'll do things like heart- and breathing-rate measurement, and counting of people around you (how many hearts). Such as was demonstrated for radar based baby monitoring. Fairly low power, a 'cigarette pack' size device attached to a baby cot could work for half a year by only periodically measuring.
Could be interesting for meetings, that your phone knows everyone has arrived, people were agitated, etc.
Displays aren't actually perfectly transparent, and the light generating devices might absorb some of the energy instead of transmitting it.
Increasing transparency is one way to produce more brightness with less energy. Reducing the amount of energy absorbed by the LEDs (and thus transformed into heat) is another way to produce more brightness with less energy. Changing the LEDs basic chemistry to more efficiently transform electricity into light is a third way.
FYI, while al other new models are rated IP68, the pro’s are listed as having a maximum submerged depth of 4 meters for 30 minutes, vs 2 for the non-pro model. Your spec comparison on the first page lists them all at 2 meters.
I think my perfect phone right now would be all of the 11 Pro's hardware shoved into the body the size of the iPhone 5, but obviously with the full-front screen. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be much will amongst any of the premium phone manufacturers in wanting stuff to be smaller these days :( iPhone 11 Pro Nano anyone?
no iphone 11 pro but *rumors* say there is new Iphone SE2 for 399$ with a13 and 3GB of ram but I doubt it will be full front screen or AMOLED screen. but imo it will sell like hot buns from the oven. there is huge market for budget phone and a new iphone SE with same SOC as flagship, plenty of ram and IOS for 399$ is really compelling I know many people just lurk for used\old gen Iphones just so they can get Iphone for low price, this phone will draw the masses.
unfortunately the rumors seem to paint Apple as being more interested in the price aspect than the size aspect. Like it will be more modern innards in an iphone 8 body. Which misses a great deal about what I liked in the original SE.
I see your point, but you need to understand the current market. Iphone sales and other premium flagship are declining while budget phones are on the rise especially in certain markets where most people can't afford expensive phone so they look for the best phone they can get at the budget lineup. Now there are cheaper options than 399$ but arguably no better options. Apple knows it loses huge market share by not creating option for that price point. Also if they put a13 in that phone it will be overkill. They should either use older chips that cost less now like the a12 or a11 which both are more than enough for budget phones, or they can use smaller more power efficient a13 that would cost less and put the money on newer display design or more cameras which will be better selling point than using a13, imo.
I believe it's time for AT to really upgrade its website to be able to make use of the full width of modern displays. It's excruciating to go through these reviews and click through each camera sample without being able to compare things side-by-side. Even the performance graphs are so cramped. I hope an upgrade is on the way...
"Nevertheless, I do question why Apple decided to be so aggressive in terms of power this generation."
I imagine it has something to do with the much bigger battery they put into the phone; current draw wearing down the battery isn't as much of a concern when it is larger. The little cores are far more impressive this year with roughly A73-75 levels of performance at much better efficiency. They seemed to have listened to users by making the phone a bit chunkier in exchange for a bigger battery.
The inefficient modem is still a sore spot this year which should hopefully be addressed next year with the inclusion of Qualcomm parts and IP. More importantly, the impact of a closed ecosystem with management who care more about profit than users is being felt by real customers in places like Hong Kong or vendors like EPIC who have avenues other than the official OS vendor sponsored app store on Android. Regulators should force Apple to offer an open store API for third parties to set up store fronts so that customers could have more choice based on pricing, quality, and reputation.
I really did not need to see those T Rex scores, it hurt me spirit as a lifetime Android Phone user. My S4 would get 17fps in T-Rex and the iPhone is getting ~16-19x that after only 6 years later.
Why was there no storage performance test? This affects app loading times (esp since Apple doesn't have much RAM), and app installation times, which affect real-world performance.
Understood. Instead of synthetic benchmarks, perhaps just have a table of app loading times of some games? What I have in mind is the following:
1. Compare current iPhones with the previous generations of iPhones (maybe just go two generations back). And use iPhones with different storage capacities. 2. Ensure all iPhones have the same iOS version. 3. Select ~5 games for your test suite, ensuring that the same version is installed on all iPhones. 4. Before loading the game, close all apps and then restart the phone, so that when the game is launched, we can be assured that are no apps already running. 5. Do step 4 around five times. 6. Use a video recorder to measure the time.
Are you measuring number of ports in the L1 RAM or number of address generation units? I guess it depends on having or not conflict to read ports in the RAM. The large uplift in h264 test in SpecInt2k6 could come from an additional LD pipe..
Andrei, thanks for your review! One question/request, both for this iPhone review, but also future phone reviews:. Please test the call quality and reception (especially in challenging situations with a single bar/ low signal strength)! I found a couple of otherwise very attractive smartphones fall flat on their phone function. Since my mobile is my main phone, which I also need for work, call quality is a non-negotiable. Unfortunately, even your otherwise excellent reviews skip that aspect. So, any words on call quality of the new iPhones? Thanks!
" also future phone reviews:. Please test the call quality and reception "
such a Luddite!!!! you actually expect a mobile phone to actually make land-line quality calls????? where have you been for the last decade???? :):) don't worry, though. real 5G will require a receiver on your house's roof and a super-duper wifi thingee to get it to work. real 5G won't work anywhere else, of course. wait... doesn't that sound like a land-line????
What can I say? I'm old-fashioned that way: for me, a smartPHONE has to work as a phone to justify its name. As I wrote, I tried out some otherwise capable mobiles, great screen and all, but they really tanked on call quality and reception.
Forgot to add: And, I'm not even expecting landline quality, just a bit better than Armstrong's voice from the moon 50 years ago. Plus, his call to Earth wasn't dropped. Not too much to ask, is it?
My guess is this is too hard to measure repeatably and precisely. I wouldn't mind some anecdotal opinions, but at that point you might as well get those from a different website anyways.
An anecdotal or purely qualitative statement would suffice. No fancy analysis. "Loud and clear" vs. "hard to understand", spotty, dropped words etc is plenty to go on, and takes only a few minutes of testing.
Internet calls such as Whatsapp / FB calls for me have mostly been inferior to "normal calls" which use the Public Switched Telephone Network. For this reason, I still pay telcos an additional fee to make such "normal calls".
PS: This is from someone who lives in a country where 1Gbps home fibre and 4G+ has been prevalent for many years now, and is about to roll-out 5G next year.
For performance with low signal strength, my building's basement is another, reproducible example (1-2 bars of 5 max), so no walk in the forest required. I believe that Andrei could find a convenient location where his carrier of choice has low signal, and just test it there. I am not looking for dB levels, just a qualitative statement.
Your iPhone 11 Pro GPU efficiency numbers are off. The "warm" values aren't even on the chart. You need to take the sustained values from the chart and redo the calculations in the tables.
"So while the A13 delivers class leading performance, it's probably not going to be very compelling for users coming from last year's A12 devices; the bigger impact will be felt coming from older devices."
Like no shit! I upgraded from an older iPhone 7 Plus to the iPhone 11 Pro and comparatively speaking, the iPhone 11 Pro is stupid quick (that's a good thing!!!) Everything about it is so much faster. App launch times are at least twice as fast on the iPhone 11 Pro (vs. iPhone 7 Plus) and the battery life is just... wow. I don't have words to describe how good it is on the iPhone 11 Pro when compared to the iPhone 7 Plus.
Twice as fast a 4 seconds is 2 seconds. Battery life of a 3600mah battery is still going to require a charge every time you make it to work or home. Bleh.
Did you miss the part of the review where he showed the battery life is the best ever? Beating some 5000mah Android phones? So NO, you don't need to charge it every time you get home or back from work.
if Apple will slow down phone etc as battery ages, IMO they should do like SSD / HDD makers etc do by having X set aside "longevity reserve" to prevent folks from spend more $$$ to bring back new phone that using (doing normal things, let alone higher power req. stuff) chews through a not so "market leading" capacity (seeing as most phone makers and phone in general do NOT slow down / reduce performance as battery ages)
.............
maybe just maybe they can put more "premium" into the thought/design...maybe at some point they can also do a "whitelist" for 3rd party apps etc instead of FORCED purchase / constant update crud just so can use the darn fool thing.
You're asking that the phone under report it's battery reserve and shut the phone down at 40% battery to preserve battery longevity?
Because that would be the effect. So instead of a battery that lasts 14 hours for the first year and then 10 hours the second, it would 'shut down' after 11 hours the first year, and 'shut down' after 11 hours the second year, and 'shut down' after 11 hours the third year, before the degradation actually causes the battery life to actually be 10 hours in year four.
Wow! That makes no sense. All phones slow down over time, and all batteries hold less charge. Apple’s are t worse, if anything, they’re better. My Max, from last year still reads 100% on battery health after more than 11 months of fairly heavy daily use. I’d like to see other phones that do better.
Look at intel /AMD / Qualcomm. They list a "turbo speed" that is not guaranteed. But customers believe it is. That's why they don't need to downclock stuff because they never need to hit their speeds. Apple is the last vendor having a real CPU speed and holds it. I have had a multitude of Intel CPUs that under-deliver in speed and as a customer you can't do anything. The service centers simply don't understand the problem since they only do a CPID check and says "it works". Take any intel laptop and fire up an H265 encode and watch the CPU speed go down. A CPU labeled 2.9ghz /3.9ghz turbo suddenly is a 2ghz part and you can't do anything about it. At least with Apple: get a good battery and it works.
You can get an iPhone 11 with 128 gigs for $749, which pretty much mops the competition with battery life, CPU, GPU, longevity and value.
I know your troll self will say something like “BR0 it’s only GoT a 720P scr33n, my 2015 GaLaXy HaS h1gher Res0lution!
Fact is, most people don’t care about that. That’s why the XR was the most popular phone last year and that trend will continue.
The pro starts at $999. Stop trolling. This site is for adults only. If you only post your lame hate comments, please go to YouTube. There’s plenty of room for your kind there.
This analysis is great but the Whiteknighting is insane.
The design the primary aspect of a device, the display itself is notched no matter what calibration it has it's destroying the proper nature of how we perceive through our eyes and mind. Dead pixel zone for $999
No expandable storage, No Filesystem access - Must use iTunes. This means for every basic work you must rely on your computer and the iCloud, mega ecosystem lockdown.
No 3.5mm jack. Its really a shame how this company made billions by buying up Beats (Sub par garbage audio) and AirPods ($179 of Sub 320kbps audio with limited life due to Li Ion) and making a dongle business out of an Analog standard and whole industry reeks of this greed by dongles snd their own BT products which are massively inferior in sound snd usage and also wear down the only port it has.
Sealed battery, Strong adhesive with new 4m depth rating. $600 for back glass repair if no Apple care and they are forcing you to buy because its $300 only and 70USD per repair. More profit for Apple for $100 battery services. Unfortunate that Apple has brick and mortar rest do not but they want to siphon off. Also did author note how iPhone XS got the new battery throttling with latest iOS update ? Yeah bonus package to wreck all that performance, inherent overdrawing of Voltage and planned obsolescence.
Too much of this price hike and offering measly 64GB base. Next year another $50-100 due to new design or whatever they want to call.
Desktop performance. I want to see, can this A series chip run an Adobe CS6 or Blender or do a H264 Conversion faster or on par with a desktop chip ? Or play high refresh rate gaming or can it execute x86 instructions with ease and replace my PC with this BGA pile of junk ? (It cannot, I think it's too much of blowing into this hot balloon of Apple for mega limelight) same for 9900K or 3950X they can't be fit in a pocket.
Finally the corporation of American back, has no backbone when it comes to China. The $$$$ speaks. Censorship and aiding the Orwellian draconian principles for cash is more than the American culture that spawned the company and its people. A big shame.
Bingo. I think the writer was just happy that he did notice performance improvements in this model. Still, the iPhone lacks innovation and that price tag is absurd. I'd buy it for $600 but $1000 or more? hah!
There is nothing absurd about the price tag. Not a bad price at all for your most important computer that you will use several hours per day for five years, if you want to.
That isn't what I would call innovation. Their CPU is nice but that's about it. There is nothing you can do on the 11Pro that you couldn't do on an iPhone 7 -10.
Just because the visual style doesn't change does not mean there is "no innovation"
There's a bunch of innovation on the chip side from Apple. You can either acknowledge that, or look like an idiot who screams no innovation while the iPhone has a 5x perf/watt lead over other ARM chips. To put that in context, it's 3-4 times the lead that Nvidia has over AMD.
Um, if you're expecting an iPhone with a removable battery, sd card slot and a non-bga socketed processor you're probably making a fairly material category error!!
“ Also did author note how iPhone XS got the new battery throttling with latest iOS update ?”
...which only kicks in when the battery is in bad shape and if it does, you can choose whether to throttle or not. Everybody’s XS models are running at full speed. But of course you know all this.
(Just get the battery replaced when it goes bad and you get five years of these iPhones)
A high end Android is way worse value for money because you simply can’t use it as long as an iPhone. No software updates after couple of years, apart from some rare exceptions.
When it comes to repairability, iFixit gave the new iPhones 6/10 which is better than most of the competition. For example, Samsung’s high end models are way worse when it comes to repairability.
Again, of course you know all this very well.
It’s always amusing how riled up some people get about the new iPhones. You do know that you don’t need to buy them, there are plenty of alternatives.
As someone living in the present year of 2019, I wish you welcome, my time-traveling friend! I hope your time spent here is illuminating before you go back to your "current" year of 2010.
That’s nonsense. You don’t even notice it after a while, and it’s just 2.5% of the screen. It’s a lot worse from companies that still have big bezels on top, and even one on the bottom, like the new Pixel 4 has. Totally wasted space.
Lol. Very funny. Just 2.5% of the screen, why not take a pencil and poke in your laptop/monitor display and say just a 0.3% like Samsung HOLED or this dead pixel zone. And put an RGB strip around/inside it to make it similar to S10 Hole notification led.
A phone's primary component is Display which allows for man-machine interface, and if that itself is ruined no matter how much value the device has, it is a complete waste. Even Google realized this after their horrible Watertub 3XL disaster notch.
Notch, Hole are worse than an Asymmetric bezel on Pixel 4 and Symmetric bezels are much better to look at - V30, ROG II, Note 8, S8 while S9 and Note9, OP7 Pro, Zenfone 6, Nex have asymmetric design but they are fine over the dreaded Notch abomination or holes anyday anytime.
Apple did this crazy thing in 21 century. If engineers from CRT era were there they'd be laughing like no tomorrow. Kudos to Apple for creating something utter miserable and complete bullshit.
Why didn't the CMOS sensors / Panavision or any Film cameras or any Display shape have a notch/hole or any. Or our eyes or any animal eyes, even the insects like spiders with many eyes have full uninterrupted vision without no hole or notch in their eyes, hell even mirrors ? Until this POS hit the market the perception of a display was perfectly uniform with no interruption, it all changed thanks to Apple. They should be ashamed of creating the worst abomination while claiming the best industrial design.
"Sir" Jony Ive should be ashamed of his Knighthood lmao. Wonder he left because of Apple that he couldn't stand this Notchabomination as a black mark on his life forever (Also not note, since Chief Design Officer role doesn't exist anymore and the design teams report to Operations COO, It's interesting as if Andrei says this is the last Notch BS from Apple or whether we will see a smaller notch in 2020 lol)
You have a literal blind spot in your eye where the optical nerve passes through the retina. Really. You just don't see it because it's always there. Same as with the notch by the way...
OK, so then just put a piece of black tape on the parts of the screen left and right of the notch and you have a bezel instead if you like this better.
Seriously, what's so bad about having a bezel on top that still displays a clock and a few status symbols in the left and right corners? Exactly this is what the notch is. It just means using parts of the bezel in a limited but still useful way. I really don't understand what you notch-haters want instead of a notch. A full-width notch (aka "bezel")? Why would this be better? It would just push the status bar down, leaving less room for actual content for apps.
The space is virtually useless and makes for a more difficult user experience. Nothing is gained by forcing information into a tiny nook or to have the user need to stretch to hit a small target. Just keep the display a rectangle. It just works.
Exactly, but look at the Apple apologists they will buy excuse for whatever they seem fit to make the company look great. Any wrong pointing bam personal attacks, eh. New low for AT commenters to be honest. "Insecure Android phone" these noobs do not know how an Israeli company deals with breaking smartphones. Idiots. Only god can help them.
Every time I look at my mother's iPhone X, the first thing that pops into my mind is "why do people fuss so much about the notch?"
It's barely noticeable when you use it. It's just like your nose. your brain will ignore your nose when you're looking, but the moment you realize your nose is in your view, you'll see it again. Same as the notch, don't even think about it, and it becomes a non-factor.
Why so salty? If you hate Apple so much why are you here reading this article? Sounds like you’re insecure with your android phone which basically gets mopped up with by the new iPhones in every area where it counts. Shoo shoo now.
Desktop performance. Do you understand the difference between CPU performance and App performance? X86 has never had the fastest CPUs. They had windows and was good enough / cheaper than RISC stuff. The reason why for example Adobe is "faster" in X86 is that Intel adds more and more specific instructions AVX/AVX512 to halt competition. Adobe/MSFT are lazy companies and don't recompile stuff for other architectures. For example when DVD encoding was invented in 2001 by Pioneer/Apple DVD-R. I bought a 10K PC with the fastest CPU there was. Graphics, SCSI disks and so on. Doing a MPEG 2 encoding took 15 hours. My first mac was a 667mhz PowerBook. The same encoding took 90 minutes. No. G4 was not 10 times faster, it was ALTIVEC that intel introduced as AVX when Apple switched to Intel. X86 dont even have real 64bit and therefore the 32bit parts in the CPU cant be removed. X86 is the only computer system where 64bit code runs slower than 32bit (about 3%). All other real 64bit systems gained 30-50% in speed. And its not about memory like PC clickers belive. Intel/ARM and others had 38bit memory addressing. That is 64gig / with a 4gig limit per app. Still, today: how many apps use more than 4gig memory? RISC went 64bit in 1990. Sun went 64bit / with 64bit OS in 1997. Apple went 64bit in 2002. Windows went 64bit after Playstation4/XboxOne started to release 64bit games.
By controlling the OS and hardware companies can optimize OS and software. That is why Apple/Google and MSFT are starting to use own SoCs. And its better for customers. There are no reason a better X86 chip cost 400 dollars + motherboard tax 100 dollars. Intel 4 core CPUs 14nm cost less than 6 dollars to produce. The problem is customers: they are prepared to pay more for IntelInside and its based on the wrong notion "its faster". The faster MSFT moves to ARM / RISCV. The better. And if the rumors are right, Samsung is moving to RISCV. That would shake up the mobile market.
Samsung just killed Texas team funding. And you don't want to pay for a socketed board and industry standard but rather have a surfacw which runs on an off the shelf processor and has small workload target in a PC ?
Also dude from where you are pulling this $6 of Intel CPUs and I presume you already know how the R&D works right in Lithography ? ROI pays off once the momentum has began. So you are frustrated of 4C8T Intel monopoly amd want some magical unicorn out of thin air which is as fast that and is cheap and is portable a.k.a Soldered. Intel stagnated because of no competition. Now AMD came with better pricing and more bang for buck.
Next from Bigroom Mainframes to pocket PC (unfortunate with iOS its not because of no Filesystem anf Google following same path of Scoped Storage) microsoft put computers in homes and now they recently started moving away into SaaS and DaaS bs. And now with thin client dream of yours Itll be detrimental to the Computer HW owners or who want to own.
We do not want a Propreitary own walled gardens with orwellian drama like iOS. We need more Linux and more powerful and robust OS like Windows which handles customization despite getting sandbagged by M$ on removing control panel slowly and migrating away from Win32. Nobody wants that.
The lighting big cores are not very impressive this time. From 4 Watt to 5 Watt a 25% increase in power for 17% more performance. Good for benchmarks (and the phone was actively cooled here), but not good for throttling. 7nm and no EUV, maybe next year with 5nm and EUV will improve seriously. I wonder if we will see a A13X.
It has been overblown. The Spec score is all the A series chips have. They can't replace x86 chips even Apple uses x86 cores with Linux RHEL or Free OS Linux distribution to run their services. Whole world runs on the same ISA. These people just whiteknight it like a breakthrough while the whole iOS lacks basic Filesystem access and the latest Catalina cannot run non notarized apps.
Also to note the Apple First party premium optimization, that Apple pays for companies like Adobe. If you run MacOS / Trashbook Pro BGA / iOS on any non optimized SW it will be held back both on power consumption and all. It's just a glorified Nix OS and with the first party support it keeps floating. They missed out on the mass scale deployment like Windows or Linux and that's going to be their Achilles heel along with the more transformation of MacOS into iOS rather than opposite.
It's really funny when you look how 60% of the performance is max that one can get from MacOS based HW/Intel machines due to severe thinning on chassis for that sweet BGA appeal and non user serviceable HW while claiming all recycled parts and all. I'm glad that Apple can't escape Physics. VRM throttling, low quality BGA engineering with cTDP garbage etc. Also people just blatantly forget how the DRAM of those x86 processors scales with more than 4000MHz of DDR4 and the PCIe lanes it pushes out with massive I/O while the anemic trash on Apple Macs is a USB C with Dongle world, ARM replicating the same esp the Wide A series with all the Uncore and PCIe I/O support ? Nope. It's not going to happen. Apple needs to invest Billions again and they are very conservative when it comes to this massive scale.
Finally to note, ARM cannot replace x86. Period. The HPC/ DC market of the Chipzilla Intel and AMD, they won't allow for this BS, Also the ISA of x86 is so mature plus how the LGA and other sockets happen along. While ARM is stuck with BGA BS and thus they can never replace these in the Consumer market.
Being that the little cores are more efficient, and the battery is significantly larger, maybe they allowed a one time regresion in peak performance per watt to gain that extra performance, without a node shrink this year.
Show us that A13 can beat even the first gen Ryzen or Intel Skylake , run PCMark, Cinebench or any modern games otherwise this nonsense desktop level claim should go to the bin. You are using a primitive Spec app to demonstrate the IPC?
I can't wait for Apple to ditch the Intel processor inside their MBP and replace with this SoC. Oh wait no, it won't happen in a decade because this cannot run a full pledge OS with real multi-tasking. =D
Dunno what this is supposed to mean. Given how well Qualcomm chips do with Windows and the superior performance of Apple vs Qualcomm, you're really just spouting nonsense.
If A13 is truly superior than some desktop processors, why are we not seeing/hearing anything it replacing processors inside MBP? I am sure Apple can port it easily to Windows or Linux if they wanted to.
Did you actually just link GUI/responsiveness hand-testing videos? Why do you think those add anything to the conversation? Arguing about the performance of a given GUI library tells us nothing about the SoCs involved.
A13 is truly superior to some binnings of laptop-class processors running at nearly 10x its power consumption. That's why it or a larger version of it (a future A13X) will run in a future iPad Pro that should perform in the same class as the Surface Pro 7 and Surface Pro X.
Yea, it won't win versus the top models. But it'll certainly beat the lower-end Pro 7, with an anemic i3. And that includes single-core performance.
So yea, it wouldn't be the top desktop processor, but it certainly can and will scale up to "desktop-class performance." It doesn't scale up to a premium experience at a desktop level yet, so there's no place for it yet in the Apple desktop product stack.
On a personal basis, I am much more interested by 1. fanless computers and 2. responsiveness (latency) over raw peak performance for a future laptop or even desktop computer as I am mostly using my computer to surf the web / watch videos.
That is the reason I really, really like the idea of Qualcomm 8cx processor as in the Samsung Galaxy book S : Quiet laptop (no fan), thin, light, excellent battery life... The unknow is responsiveness : will the performance be good enough that lag won’t be felt more than a standard Intel / AMD laptop ?
If the responsiveness of a Qualcomm 8cx / future Apple A14 is good enough, then a fanless laptop, but also a fanless desktop has much, much appeal to myself !!!
If I was Apple, I would try to introduce ARM mac computers with both an Apple A14 / Apple A15 in combination with Storage Class Memory (SCM) to get never seen before low latency (excellent responsiveness) fanless mac computers : sure it would maybe take more time to do some intensive tasks on those computers (ex: video editing), but basic day to day task (launching Safari,...) would feel soooo much faster (like using a SSD everything faster compare to a mechanical HDD).
These tests we are looking at are occurring at 2.6Ghz for the A13. And it is basically equal to the 4Ghz+ 9900k. Imagine the A13 running at 3.5Ghz, I think it already surpasses Intel easily enough.
The iPhone uses 2 fast cores. Yes, it is equal to a dual core Ryzen or a dual core Intel CPU. I want Intel to be faster, but that would have required them to do ANYTHING meaningful since the i7-2700k came out instead of just repackaging the same CPU over and over.
mwah ha ha ha... hahahaha. .. .. . hahahah hahaha.... sorry while I break down laughing incoherently. You criticize using SPEC to compare a mobile vs a desktop CPU, then you post links to garbage "look how fast the iPhone is at opening apps over and over again for minutes at a time" as if that is anything but the worst click bait "benching" you could possible find on the internet.
If you are into software engineering, you know running a website or games does those nonsense calculations that SPEC of GB does right? So I'd rather see realworld results than cherry-picked bloated score from SPEC or GB.
Since you think those youtube videos indicate anything at all, your judgement has been called into question. I don't think your opinion of SPEC is worth repeating.
An SoC is useless without the other components, so you are testing the whole phone because that is what you are going to use. Sadly, in this regard, the cherrypicked modules in benchmark both in SPEC and GB does not translate to realworld for Apple.
App opening on a phone doesn't test anything, except disk read/write speeds and animation speeds. You're an idiot if you think these tests show anything.
Idiot? Looks who is talking? How can an app display those UI, information, graphics l, sound etc if it is not using the cpu? The runtime/compiler does everything (read/write/mem copy/cut/compress/decompress/sort/math etc. ) for you so you see them otherwise they are just a bunch of worthless text or numbers like what these SPEC and GB are showing.
Actually, if you looked at the graph comparing the A9-A13, it’s pretty clear that this chip can hang with the Skylake. All in a packaged phone design with no fans or active cooling. They’re all compiled the same way when run on Spec. So stop being salty.
Yep, 2006? Seriously? Run iPhone in Windows or Linux then comeback with the results. These nonsense crossplatform comparison of GB and SPEC are nothing if they are not running on the same OS.
So you're setting your standard at results that are impossible to show you. You don't really think that comes off as a win on your end of the argument, do you?
Try 4.4Ghz Core2Duo E8600 and Ryzen 3600x in SuperPI 1M. You will see E8600 is faster by 2 secs, makes you wonder?
Released in 1995, 13-15 years difference between two processors. E8600 is faster? LOL This SPEC need serious overhauling, same as GB that is tuned to Apple SoC. Apple A13 faster than 5GHZ Intel or Ryzen in GB5? LOL, people are seriously retarded nowadays...
What has superPI got to do with spec2006? Spec2006 is a well respected desktop/workstation benchmark that tests many different algirthms and use case while superPI does 1 specific narrow test.
As a real world example, I've found my ipad pro 2018 exports RAW files from Adobe lightroom faster than my 2018 6 core mac mini (i7-8700) and a lot faster than my 2017 13" (2xi5) macbook pro (almost 2x faster).
So Adobe Lightroom is optimized for Apple and not their largest platform and money earner which has lots of competitors? That’s the silliest comment I’ve seen yet.
People aren’t ready to believe it because of their PC / X86 bias.
The writing is on the wall. Objective measurements show that Arm has caught up, and half the people in these comments are making excuses or saying “nuh uh because it doesn’t run Linux”
Hey joms, spec is an efficiency benchmark. A 5w CPU does not beat an actively cooled 65w one from AMD or Intel. At least in SPECint Apple matches desktop CPUs. That's how you interpret.
Problem is, graph is a huge mess, not normalized. For e.g A13 maybe doing 60+ in perf but consuming 5w whereas SD850 is doing 30 perf in a mere 2w. Which one is better?
From an overall performance standpoint obviously A13. From an efficiency standpoint the 855 equalled the A12. Both are slightly more efficient than A13 from a peak power perspective. In real life, with average workloads, A13 is overall more efficient than both.
Apple invests a lot in their chips and sets the pace. Come February next year it's up to Qualcomm to narrow the gap.
There you go, efficiency is the key and A13 is not as efficient as you said. Now in realworld comparison, the likes of Note 10 and OP7T are far better and or bang for the buck. Those long perf graphs are really misleading.. time to fix them.
I'm an android user and nothing here is misleading. The A13 is the best SoC.
One thing to understand is that the iphone here is deliberately actively cooled so that it removes all thermal restraints and show the chip's full capabilities. In real life it would throttle.
Just to add context to the active cooling of the phone rationale;
SPEC takes around an hour to complete: you can't expect a phone to sustain that, and we want to be able to see the full peak scores of all the subtests in order to have a proper µarch analysis.
This peak performance still exists in real workloads, however you'd be hard to find a hard use-case which stresses the CPUs for the same amount of time.
Your graph shows watts of power, not watt-hours of energy. If Y performs a test 50% faster than X while using 20% more watts, Y uses about 30% less battery for the same work.
That's certainly not the implication I get from looking at the tests but it seems the obvious conclusion.
Match with what, where? Primitive Spec2006 and bloated GB score? LOL
Apple SoC is skyrocketting in HTML and ML scores yet pathetic in realworld result.
Keep the comparison within the same OS period and then you can say it beat the fastest desktop chip out there otherwise you will look like retarded and brainwashed.
some users in china found out that Huawei phones have forced the Gpu to render the graphic in lower resolution/ off anti-aliasing, to improve the battery life and FPS, this happened even u have set max details in game setting, of turn off any save battery function. Huawei software kind of override everything and there is no way to turn it off.. Some maps-app and most game has been affected, and this behaviors tend to be trigger by whitelist of huawei . the degradation in details are subtle and most user dint notice it unless u compare it side by side to another phone
I hope AnandTech can investigate this issue in their review of kirin 990 , whether it is true or not, or this had been on going since the introduction of GT- turbo of Huawei.
"there’s really no competition as the A13 posts almost double the performance of the next best non-Apple SoC"
I've read nothing beyond Apple widening registers, increasing caches, and re-arranging real estate on the chip. and, may be, bringing more off-chip function on-chip. that's like brute force ya know.
"I was not very impressed with the XR display’s density, and the fact that Apple chooses to retain this resolution is unfortunate"
I disagree, it is very fortunate as low res enables higher energy efficiency, faster framerates and longer play time for games. Very real advantages vs the resolution difference only nearsighted people not wearing glasses can see with a naked eye.
I agree with the review, at this density I too often make out its limits around curves, i.e the time display on the lock screen, or notification dots. Even if sticking to an LCD, the Plus's 1080p resolution would have been nice.
" Integer division has also seen a large upgrade as the throughput has now been doubled and latency/minimum number of cycles has been reduced from 8 to 7 cycles."
I wonder which workloads can it possibly affect. Hash table access which require remainder ops for prime-sized table sizes?
Bravo Andrei and team! Technical acumen in the article top notch as usual. I'm quite happy with the improvements to writing/editing that have happened over the past year(s?). In this piece the writing was clear to understand almost entirely throughout. In the past, although I was always able to discern the meaning and intent of the content it was sometimes a struggle.
As for the iPhones themselves: Apple's technical silicon expertise does not cease to amaze me. Their absolute performance as well as efficiency are incredible. I'm not sure that this level of excellence is possible on the Android side of things. Since Apple is vertically integrated they're not nearly as constrained on die size as companies who are consumers of ARM's chip designs. Also, they've clearly made an enormous investment in their SoC team, not just financially, but in expertise as well as effective inter/intra team collaboration.
It is somewhat deflating to see that in many metrics the Snapdragon 855 is only on par with the A10 SoC from the iPhone 7. As someone likely looking for a 2020 Android device, I have more than a little silicon envy -- and the reasonable (in today's market at least) price of the base iPhone 11 makes it quite compelling compared to Android flagships.
Andrei, is the power/voltage curve for the A12 charting power on the CPU rail only, or for the whole system? Since the voltage is presumably just the CPU power rail.
Total system active power, only the top point is measured, the rest is inferred/approximated. It's not exact but it's not meant to be, the point was to show that the CPU gets a lot more efficient at slightly lower clocks.
Presumably a lot of that total system power is coming from DRAM/SoC though, so that part wouldn't scale the same way/at all with CPU voltage. Not trying to debate the point that the CPU will absolutely be more efficient below that, but the steepness of the system power curve would be probably be less steep.
Well At least one article got it right on Anandtech. Last time Anton refers Apple A13 as 7nm EUV, along with an TSMC update mentioning it as well. Now we can finally settle Apple is using N7P.
I think one of the reason for the higher power usage is the A13 was designed with 7nm EUV in mind, and was only later changed to N7P as 7nm EUV may not provide enough capacity for Apple.
I do wonder if we are going to see 5nm Apple SoC next year.
Anton didn't realise 'N7P' and 'N7+ with EUV' were different processes - and that people were using P instead of + for some unknown reason. Up until a while ago, any time someone said 'second generation N7', it was always thought of as N7+. Now we're making them clarify.
Apple! They just give you what THEY want to! Pretty disappointed in all their products. I finally gave in and got rid of my Goggle thinggie (worthless, really) and got a reconditioned iPhone 8+ a coouple of months ago. It is really (so here's my technical user review: "It's just...") OK. My wife, OTOH, has an SE - her second - and she really doesn't want anything bigger. EVER! (Listen to that, Apple!) Even the reported new 'tiny' 2020 5.4" iPhone is what she calls HUGE. Weekend project is replacing her iPhone 5 SE battery that's begun not to keep a charge.
I have no doubt Apple will replace Intel with an ARM SoC, but I do not expect it to be beefed up A-series chip found in an iPhone. Just like all their in-house designed chips, I would expect it to be its own letter designation with considerably more memory bandwidth, access to PCIe, and other features that work well in a lower-end portables and desktops.
I hope Apple intend to keep their future laptop ARM CPU low power enough to not require any active cooling : a fanless ARM mac laptop is well executed could have a lot of appeal to me !!!
That the reason why at the moment, I am keeping an eye on Samsung Galaxy Book S / Microsoft Surface Pro X that are the 2 first fanless computers with ARM Qualcomm 8cx : if responsiveness is good enough (especially for web browsing, watching video, Microsoft office,...) then it would prove it is possible.
From there, I would be very happy that Apple do an always connected fanless Macbook Air with an ARM CPU, as otherwise I am considering buying a Qualcomm 8cx fanless laptop (if the reviews confirms that the performance are reasonable enough)
I like to have this as well, approx. 1 day battery able to do media consumption/productivity. At least the comparison so far is that it is better if not than Intel Core i5-8250U
This mentality shift that Apple caused in consumers is the reason why Laptops got rolled over into thin anf light disposable garbage.
All Intel BGA / AMD (both PGA and BGA) all have castrated TDP limits which forces throttling. And Apple shoved an 6C/8T into which they cant cool because they tried to cheat physics. And still after VRM fiasco they still put the 8C/16T into that anemic chassis people who are buying them deserve to be robbed off th e 60% drop in performance.
Dell shoved XPS with same i9 and it got rekted down. Surface ARM cannot run 64bit x86 code and iy can run the UWP garbage only.
Next the BGA hellhole that Apple dragged everyone into. First x86 macs had BGA processors. Seeing that Intel stopped PGA and started Ultrabook BS and killed off all MX and XM PGA from Haswell making BGA with cTDP mandatory and bins locked down. My Haswell CPU in Notebook maintains consistent 700 in CB R15. Not even 7700HQ does it when put in a TDP locked JUNK.
And next Soldered SSD in Macs paired with T2 chip. Anything goes bad Go to Apple. Battery soldered to Chassis. KB inherent design flaw. This stupid corporate only knows how to fleece and put junk and forced all companies passively into this thin and light garbage.
Forget PCIE NVME SSDs in RAID rhat chassis will melt and GPUs don't exist in Apple lala land because Muh AR ML Kit and all.
ARM cannot do Transcoding work. Period. And Image Processing like Autodesk won't run on garbage ARM GPUs need Nvidia chips with High BW GDDR6 or G5X. Apple cannot cool them in that chassis. They can't escape Physics. End of Story of this A series competing with x86 ISA and Intel/AMD.
@joms_us : Yes, for applications compiled to work natively on ARM64, the performance of the app running a Windows computer with Qualcomm 8cx should be similar as the same x86-32bits app running on a Windows computer with Intel Core i5-8250U, but with the advantage of having much better battery life which is appealing to me as well :).
Really looking forward to read reviews on Samsung Galaxy Book S and Microsoft Surface Pro X to see if they hold to the hype...
Nice as always Andrei. Are you expecting something similar for the A77 on the 865, as in a modest performant improvement at a higher consumption cost? Or do you think that the rumored 7nm EUV from Samsung is going to surpass current N7pro of TSMC?
When first I saw 'camera elevated', I hope they have very good video stabilization like GoPro. Looks like we have to wait few more generations (or never) to have that kind of smooth when shooting a video.
I believe with A13, it shouldn't lack any processing power that GoPro has. It just need to get it right on software side.
The best out of all of them is the iPhone 11 that is if you want an iPhone. Still surprised they lowered the price. I wish I could justify the nicer screen but I can't and playing with all 3 of them at my local best buy couldn't convince me either. My X is still going strong but I may get the 11 as im due for an upgrade. Thanks for the review.
> I don’t know it was me holding the phone any different between those two paths. EIS kicked in when autofocus caught an object (tree or building) and fixed on it.
All other sites listed audio as a clear improvement. It seems they lied. It's a regression in fact.
Also the camera is not that best in class as written by mainstream pundits. The wideangle is disappointing and the low light feature is something you cannot control and can overexpose.
Great review! Andrei, can you comment on the scratch resistance of the screen? There is 50+ pages (for two weeks only) on the official apple forum that the screen scratches absurdly easy with a lot deep scratches, wide scratches, etc. If you didn't use a screen protector, can you tell us how the one in you hold?
I use my phones naked because I'm perverted in that way. Generally you're asking the wrong person here as I haven't scratched my daily drivers ever in many years - the only scratches I have ever gotten was on the backside when laying the phones on some rougher surface.
I wish that an outlet (like this one) would analyze the tradeoffs of glass backs. Namely the thermal limitations of glass vs. metal. I always use a case and screen protector, because when I don’t I sink my 5 year device. But sustained loads on hot days see serious throttling which gets worse with a case.
Same for me, I used my phones naked and never broke or scratch any (always face up, always alone in the pockets, I even clean my left phone pocket after washing). The problem is, a lot of people like us who take care of their phones and use them naked - got a scratched screen in day one/first days. Not one, two or 30 people - a lot more just in that thread and this is now while the phone is still not available in a lot of places. I am worried that mine would scratch too and hold on the purchase for now thus I ask you how yours hold. Not sure if it's a bad batch or all are like that. Thanks for the answer! :)
It is a great piece of kit. But as long as I cannot connect to PC and throw my music on it a-la-Android-phone, I am not interested. I currently have Pixel XL and I love it for the ability to connect to PC and just throw files on the phone like on a external storage.
Use a third party app and access the sandbox through iFunbox to drop it in or drop it into Google Drive. It is a little more complicated but it works without needing to sync with iTunes.
this looks more like an advertisement than a review...nothing exciting yet headline is all these functionalities elevated... when it should be... Boring...
iPhone is pretty middle of the road, its jpeg processing is still very harsh with a very smeared look to photos, and foliage looks like a water painting, the others are not dissimilar but are not as harsh, the Mate 30 Pro blows everything out the water in the low light scenes though, wow!
Could anybody point out a -professional- use case for a $1k smartphone? Because I call, text, surf, recognize, edit, share and snap perfectly useless pictures with iOS 13...on iPhone 6s.
I believe few years back the peak of refinement for common functions has been reached for 99% of users. And all smartphone vendors are burning insane amounts of resources to solve non-existing problems. While some very obvious ones - as system-wide annotations of info and objects to personalize and learn as we commonly do in the real world - are still missing. To their credit Apple employees achieve that with the most tasteful and responsible of products.
While I may loathe Apple as a company for its rubbish products, overhyped designs, predatory repair practices, eocsystem lock-in, and ridiculous price-gouging...
I cannot help but give kudos to Apple's CPU design team. Sure, Arm is not x86 in terms of complexity, but the fact that Apple has a chip that is both far faster and far more power-efficient than their Android competition, that is using the same underlying architecture, is incredibly impressive. Equally impressive is that they have managed to maintain this dominance over multiple generations, and that the competition still seems as far away from catching up as ever.
Needless to say, outstanding analysis as usual! Kudos for the ton of painstaking work done to gather and compare all the numbers, images, etc. It's not very precise for a reviewer nor interesting for a savvy reader to just say that one device "feels fast enough”. Instead, taking the analysis to such a highly scientific level is really why I look forward to reading Anandtech’s insightful reviews ;-).
Does the A13 have more security features, such as the pointer encryption that was added with the A12 (essentially binding pointers to their origin (e.g. processes)) ? It was kinda interesting that the recent mass exploitation of iPhones uncovered, didn't touch any of the A12 iDevices (and neither does jailbreaks).
I'm sorry Anandtech, but your GPU review is absolutely horrendous. You are using 3Dmark on iOS, which hasn't recieved an update since IOS 10 and then compare it to the Android version which was updated June 2019. There is a reason you are getting conflicted results when you switch over to GFXbench, which was updated on iOS in 2018. How this didn't make you wonder, is amazing.
Are you kidding me? The load won't change, but the score sure will. It makes it look like the iPhone throttles much more than it does in reality. That the score is 50% less due to unoptimized garbage does not mean that the chipset actually throttled with 50%.
I can't believe that I have to explain this to you, 3Dmark supports an operative system that is 3 years old, for all we know it is running in compatibility mode and is emulated.
Explain to me how the score will change if the workload doesn't change? That makes absolutely zero sense.
You're just spouting gibberish with stuff as compatibility mode or emulation as those things don't even exist - the workload is running on Metal and the iOS version is irrelevant in that regard.
In computing you have what is called a low-level 3D API. This is what Metal and DirectX is. This is what controls how efficiently you use the hardware you have available. If you have a new version of this API in say, IOS 13, and you run an iOS 10 application, you will run into compatibility issues. These issues can degrade performance without it being proportional to the actual throttling taking place. On android however, it is compatible with the latest low-level API's as well as various performance modes.
The hillarious thing is that Anandtech even contradict themselves, using an "only" 1 year outdated benchmark, where the iPhone suddenly throttles less at full load. This entire article is just a box full of fail, if you want to educate yourself, I suggest you watch Speedtest G on Youtube. Or Gary Explains. He has a video on both 'REAL' iOS and Android throttling, done using the latest version of their respective API
> If you have a new version of this API in say, IOS 13, and you run an iOS 10 application, you will run into compatibility issues. These issues can degrade performance without it being proportional to the actual throttling taking place. On android however, it is compatible with the latest low-level API's as well as various performance modes.
Complete and utter nonsense. You literally have no idea what you're talking about.
How about you provide a proper response instead of saying it's nonsense. How can the throttling be different at full load on 2 different benchmarks otherwhise? There is clearly no connection between actual throttling and the score itself. You are literally contradicting yourself in your own review.
A proper response to what exactly? Until now all you managed to do is complain is that the test is somehow broken and wrong and I need to educate myself.
The whole thing has absolutely nothing to do with software versions or OS version or whatever other thing. The peak and sustained scores are performed with the same workloads and nothing other than the phone's temperature has changed - the % throttling is a physical attribute of the phone, the benchmark doesn't decide to suddenly throttle more on one benchmark more than the other simply because it's somehow been released a few years ago.
The throttling is different on the different tests *because they are different workloads*. 3DMark and Aztec High will put very high stress the ALUs on the GPU, more than the other tests and create more heat on and hotspot temperatures the GPU, resulting into more throttling in and reduced frequencies those tests. T-Rex for example will be less taxing on the GPU in terms of its computation blocks have more load spread out to the CPU and DRAM, also spreading out temperature, and that's why it throttles the least amount.
Thank you for your informative reply. Then, is it crazy to assume that 3-year-old 3Dmark benchmark is not providing the same workload as the 2019 version on Android? Maybe you could run an outdated buggy benchmark on a rog 2 as well and it would stress the ALU even more? Possibly, the rog 2 is getting a much more sensible workload while the iPhone is getting unrealistic loads that don't utilize the archiecture at all. In which case, it is pretty unfair and misleading. It's like taking a car and only testing 1 wheel and the other cars get to use all 4.
The ROG2 is in the charts. It's getting good scores because it's the only S855+ phone in the charts, because the Adreno 640 has extremely high ALU performance, and because the phone itself is allowed to reach much higher temperatures than the iPhones.
The benchmark *tests* are the exact same other than being run on different APIs. What's being rendered is identical between iOS and Android is the exact same.
Very nice, I think you should write that in your review. Although taking an iPhone review and then starting off with exploiting its apparent weakness on the first graph, which is the only thing most people will read, isn't very objective in my opinion. I also generally think it's better craftmanship to run benchmarks that have received updates on both devices, regardless.
I mean, opening 3Dmark on the new iPhone literally starts it up in an iPhone 8 compatibiltiy mode. You can tell by how the UI doesn't even border the entire display. I just don't see a single compelling argument as to why you would ever pick this tool.
" I’ve actually gone back and quickly retested the iPhone XS on iOS13 and did see a 20% increase in performance compared to what we see in the graphs here; " - Andrei Frumusanu
And here is the knockout:
" the workload is running on Metal and the iOS version is irrelevant in that regard." - Andrei Frumusanu
Jesus christ, pull yourself together and fix your god damn review.
People reading, you can make your own conclusion here.
There is nothing to fix and there is nothing wrong with the benchmark, you went from the test being old and broken, to talking about it throttling differently because it's older, to the UI being an issue when it's completely irrelevant. The scores are what they are because that's the performance of the chip.
Are you literally quoting an article from 2013 to prove something? I didn't go from anywhere, it IS old and broken. The score does NOT represent the throttling you would expect on updated software and certainly can NOT be graphed and compared with the Android version. It is BS that the app renders the same thing, you have literally 0 way of knowing since you didn't write the code.
And I didn't go "herp derp, the UI is small" - I said that the app is so ancient that it literally boots in compatibility mode for the iPhone 8. And it is a real thing, go ahead and check the developer forums.
"The scores are what they are because that's the performance of the chip." ...
" I’ve actually gone back and quickly retested the iPhone XS on iOS13 and did see a 20% increase in performance compared to what we see in the graphs here; "
The THROTTLING has nothing to do with the software version or and GPU driver updates that Apple makes to improve performance. The improved drivers on the A12 in iOS13 do NOT change the throttling % between peak performance and sustained, which is a PHYSICAL characteristic of the phone.
The workloads renders the SAME SCENE both on Android and iOS. We work closely with Futuremark, the developer of the benchmark, along with the developers of GFXBench. If you cannot accept this you have no place reading AT as I can not do anything more to convince you of basic facts regarding the testing.
The compatibility mode you blarb about is related to the UI resolution. It DOES NOT matter in any way for the test as it's been rendered off-screen in our suite. The performance results DO NOT CHANGE.
Ofc you are, people can freely read the comments and not get mislead by your unprofessional ‘review’. Enjoy being the only site on the planet claiming that it will throttle by 50%.
His videos are solid and his tests goes across the entire spectrum, without any bias or shoddy, outdated methodology. Especially because he wrote the test-bench himself and knows what he is doing, unlike Andrei.
This without shadows of doubt was the most lying and false stories of all time! Why then in side-by-side testing on world-wide technology conventions do these iPhones ever win? Because when people buy and put them side by side with others that doesn't happen? Why doesn't this also happen in the actual tests on YouTube? Simple! Tests purchased from Internet to satisfy investors!
This test is fundamentally wrong as the test-bed used on iOS is completely outdated. This article should be taken down and revised since it is misleading.
In most official tests side by side, you never see an iPhone win! Only win in paid programs or paid places for that to happen! In official tests at official events It never happened and the Apple is always after many. So as many people I say this is a false news! False information!
My apologies if this has been disclosed already, but would it be possible to ask if Apple supplied these phones for testing?
The reason I ask is that there is quite a long thread over at a popular Mac rumors forum where a number of us are concerned at the variable screen quality on the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max.
Many of us, myself included, have received a suboptimal screen, in that it was a dim, murky yellow display (the less polite of us have called them p-stained), while others have received screens which are not uniformly lit.
We have generally exchanged them to receive marginally better units, a few of which have been perfect, but a disappointing majority of the exchanges are often still below the apparently impressive characteristics of the displays discussed in the review.
As this is not mentioned in the various iPhone 11 Pro reviews, a number of us have formed suspicions that Apple has cherry picked the best screens to supply to reviewers.
A clarification whether Apple did indeed supply the units, or if they were bought off the shelf, would be much appreciated.
Apple calibrates each device, this is what XDR essentially is. However this will create better uniformity across displays than make them as different as you say.
Dim, murky yellow is probably caused by you not disabling true-tone and auto-brightness. Otherwhise you have a very faulty unit, as this display should be bright enough to nearly burn out your retina. (Exaggeration)
Not uniformly lit could be an error, just return it in this case. Clearly Apple wouldn't supply faulty hardware to anyone on purpose, not testers or consumers.
Thank you for the clarification. It would of course be negligent for Apple PR not to ensure reviewers receive fully tested units.
I can assure you, however, that when it comes to the screen, the number of less than optimal units being sold at retail is probably higher than you might think. While these are most likely all within manufacturing tolerances for QC purposes, some of them I highly doubt Apple would send to reviewers.
Oh well, at least the 14 day return period provides the opportunity to exchange. The "screen lottery" we call it.
Apple would have to be very misleading in providing fully sealed units. It's possible that some retail units perform worse but over the years we've never really encountered such a unit.
It is pity though the so-called fastest SoC is not even close to these Android phones which are typically half the speed of fastest desktops. How do you expect people to believe A13 is faster than i-9900K or Ryzen 3950X? Where GeekBiased and jurassic SP2006? LOL
The fanboys man they are so blinded by reality, Apple was able to set a perfect world utopian dream for them. Can't fix stupid.
I used to run Sultanxda kernel on my OP3 with SD820 processor the SD821 had higher clock speed over 820 but guess what OP screwed it up or Qualcomm didn't provide fix there was Clockspeed crashing at high freq so he disabled it entirely on both big and small. Guess what ? Benches took a massive hit. But UX ? Nope. Infact it improved a lot how is that possible ? I guess Spec and GB only matters right.
Pixel 3 lagged badly due to the RAM issue no one mentions all say its beautiful wonderful amazing. Guess what ? 1080P 60FPS doesn't exist as an option and its auto as Google deems. 4XL no 4K60FPS because less storage. No press mentions.
Coming to this garbage phone. iOS 13 whatever. Same icons, same springboard since 1.1.4 (I used it and JBed it) no desktop no customization to OS. All iPhones on the planet look same just like the brainwash here of ridiculous comparision of a GB (bullshit bench) and Spec score. Masterpiece of corporate koolaid.
Why don't they mention how the Audio format which records is not in Lossless but in AAC crap unlike my V30 does with the 192KHz 24Bit option in FLAC with Limiter and Gain switch or the Video mode which had full manual Pro controls or even the camera having any Manual options. All ASUS, Samsung, LG, Sony, OnePlus, Huawei offer Pro camera forget Pro Video which only LG and Sony do. But No one cares, simpletons only care about A series marketing BS.
The worst of all no Filesystem. $1000 device which doesn't even have a Filsystem usable by end user or has an option to install the apps off the AppStore. Nor any SD expansion slot to be prepared for emergency. But people are riling up and getting worked over the ARM masterrace LMAO with BGA MacBook Pro with 1 USB C port. Bonus is, to develop iOS app you must pay $99 yearly fee AND own that BGA Soldered KB/Touchpad/Battery/SSD macbook because XCode !!
The abomination design. Display mutilation for 3 years while heralding best colors best display LOL. Very funny.
And no 3.5mm jack. Because Apple wanted to make $5bn off revenue from AirPods (Higher than AMDs entire profit) guess what ? Less than 320kbps data rate LMAO. My LG V30 absolutely destroys this phone to oblivion with its ESS9218P DAC processor only found in Top motherboards from ASUS/GB/MSI. Even Vivo Nex decimates this garbage audio iPhone.
Very very funny how even Qualcomm who spent billions of dollars in R&D for their Centriq ARM server processor by even relegating the teams which worked on post 810, full custom Kryo 820 series and dumping all it out because of the Broadcom M&A (Major beneficiary was Apple due to the Hock Tan connection with Apple, he would sell out all LTE patents) impact and no profit in the ARM server market, forget logistics, capex, ROI, x86 emulation AND 64Bit x86 Emulation legacy code with a massive scale of Linux community around.
But we want ARM A series BGA processor which has world class Spec and GB score and beats Mainstream and HEDT LGA processors.
Fed up of the unending talk of x86 vs ARM is one hell even AT forums cpu and oc subforum. Whole thread dedicated to worship this talk.
Two Apple ruined smartphones by this policy of removing jack and features while raising the price to moon, Other companies also want greed by forcing people to buy BT earphones which sound garbage, horrid longevity (Need to charge everyday) pushing people to buy trash (Beats) thus making whole market saturated with Apple agenda. Look at Google Pixel 4 they also removed offering Dongle, Samsung, OnePlus. Same thing like Apple very greedy.
Three destroyed the laptops with thin and light obsession. And soldered junk with less and less I/O.
Finally 4th - this corporation is built on American values but is a stooge to cash from China thus enabling more totalitarianship while claiming Liberty on US land. Spineless positiin.
Ever stop to think it's you who is the outsider, and the thinks you think are important, not literally everyone else? Does that ever stop to cross your mind as you vent your spleen in these disconnected, slipshot rants across a growing number of Anadtech articles? Does it ever feel like to you that technology is slipping away from you, and the things that you and an ever shrinking minority think are important?
Your ignorance and arrogance is hard to look at. I set animation speed in my 2 year old Android phone to 0.5 and most operations are now much faster. My 1st gen iPP is also much faster across the board with the upgrade to iPadOS, that obviously didn't upgrade the hardware.
The difference in SPECfp2006 scores between the A13 and the 9900k is actually a lot closer since the former includes the subscore for the 447.dealII test and the latter does not. Removing the test from the A13's score yields a value of 70.28, which is 6.5% slower.
Why do we still not have the reviews on the Samsung Note 10/10+ phones? These iPhones are still fairly hot off the press and Anand already has their very thorough review complete. I always prefer Anand's reviews of top tier phones to most other sites. This is a major letdown (that seems to indicate possible Apple bias?) to top tier phone enthusiasts. The Note 10+ isn't even on the battery comparison graph, despite representing a major battery size upgrade to Samsung's lineup.
We do not have the Note10's to review ; Samsung doesn't sample us.
Given that the phones just aren't that much different to the S10's, we're unlikely to spend several thousand on purchasing the units for a review that won't have all that much new interesting information on the devices. As a note, we had to buy the S10s for that review earlier in the year.
« the competition in 2019 was able to push out a ton of different designs that certainly look a lot more modern than the iPhone 11 family »
I don’t really agree, unless a pop up camera is a counted as good design innovation... and those phones don’t have any face recognition sensors... i still find the iPhone design to be among the best out there and more than competitive
Can anyone give me some feedback about the sound recording quality for iPhone11? I'm looking for something to do audition video recordings of classical singers - so acoustic quality is vitally important. I'd be very grateful for any suggestions/feedback.
When looking into the floorplan, there is likely a coprocessor in the top design of GPU (except for the bus interface with LLC), which is shared with the 4 cores. Am I right? and who have idea about it. Anyway, it is so big one.
Hi Anandtech, How to bind software thread to the thunder (small core，such as Core 1) of Apple-A13？ Because I want to test the thunder (small core，such as Core 1) performance. So far, I'm out of jail and can run software threads from the apple A13 command line. Thanks！
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Jon Tseng - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Nice! Any additional thoughts on the U1 UWB chip. I guess not much you can do with it yet but to me the possibilities are intriguing...Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
I think Apple has more plans with it in the future, but yes right now it doesn't do very much.tipoo - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Definitely think it's getting the hardware ready for the AR glasses. Hyper precise location tracking just by putting your phone down on a desk and having the U1 chips communicate.Diogene7 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
I am dreaming of that the Apple U1 UWB chip could be used in a not too distant future (2020 / 2021) for precise spatial locasization for at (short) distance wireless charging : by knowing where exactly in space an Apple device is, Apple might be able to dynamically and efficiently focus wireless energy transfer maybe through wireless resonant charging (Airfuel) for an iPhone or through RF charging like Energous / Ossia for recharging Apple Airpods from an iPhone...I think I am dreaming, but just hope that Apple is working hard to make wireless power at a short distance a reality : I would dream to be able to drop my iPhone anywhere on my bedside table, and that it automatically recharge during the night from a base station up to a distance of 1,5 foot / 50cm : it would bring sooooo much more convenience than Qi wireless charging...
patel21 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Man, you are lazy.Diogene7 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
@patel21 : How many times do you still plug an Ethernet cable to your laptop to surf on internet instead of using WIFI ? WIFI is simply more convenient...Similarly, wireless charging at a distance (up to ~ 1,5 foot (50cm)) would be so much more convenient than to have to plug a cable to recharge a device
It also true for Internet of Things (IoT) devices : tjere seems to be some studies showing that consumers stop using many IoT devices that work on batteries because they have to change the batteries
I strongly believe that wireless charging at a short distance is a requirement for the sale of IoT sensors to really take off because managing 10s or 100s or more of IoT devices with batteries is not really manageable by consumers in the long run...
Molbork - Tuesday, June 16, 2020 - link
And you just halved the power efficiency of your laptop and devices. EM transmission power is 1/r^2, checking your laptop could cost you 2-3x more than a direct connection at longer distances.Henk Poley - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
I wonder if they'll do things like heart- and breathing-rate measurement, and counting of people around you (how many hearts). Such as was demonstrated for radar based baby monitoring. Fairly low power, a 'cigarette pack' size device attached to a baby cot could work for half a year by only periodically measuring.Could be interesting for meetings, that your phone knows everyone has arrived, people were agitated, etc.
Adonisds - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Why is it required less than double the power to produce twice the display brightness?michael2k - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Displays aren't actually perfectly transparent, and the light generating devices might absorb some of the energy instead of transmitting it.Increasing transparency is one way to produce more brightness with less energy.
Reducing the amount of energy absorbed by the LEDs (and thus transformed into heat) is another way to produce more brightness with less energy.
Changing the LEDs basic chemistry to more efficiently transform electricity into light is a third way.
Fundamentally less waste heat, more light.
HammerStrike - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
FYI, while al other new models are rated IP68, the pro’s are listed as having a maximum submerged depth of 4 meters for 30 minutes, vs 2 for the non-pro model. Your spec comparison on the first page lists them all at 2 meters.colonelclaw - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
I think my perfect phone right now would be all of the 11 Pro's hardware shoved into the body the size of the iPhone 5, but obviously with the full-front screen. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be much will amongst any of the premium phone manufacturers in wanting stuff to be smaller these days :(iPhone 11 Pro Nano anyone?
p1esk - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Yes, I’d love a smaller iPhone.nirolf - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Smaller and lighter! I'm holding on to my 7 until they release something similar in size.Eliadbu - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
no iphone 11 pro but *rumors* say there is new Iphone SE2 for 399$ with a13 and 3GB of rambut I doubt it will be full front screen or AMOLED screen. but imo it will sell like hot buns from the oven. there is huge market for budget phone and a new iphone SE with same SOC as flagship, plenty of ram and IOS for 399$ is really compelling I know many people just lurk for used\old gen Iphones just so they can get Iphone for low price, this phone will draw the masses.
MamiyaOtaru - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
unfortunately the rumors seem to paint Apple as being more interested in the price aspect than the size aspect. Like it will be more modern innards in an iphone 8 body. Which misses a great deal about what I liked in the original SE.Eliadbu - Saturday, October 19, 2019 - link
I see your point, but you need to understand the current market. Iphone sales and other premium flagship are declining while budget phones are on the rise especially in certain markets where most people can't afford expensive phone so they look for the best phone they can get at the budget lineup. Now there are cheaper options than 399$ but arguably no better options. Apple knows it loses huge market share by not creating option for that price point. Also if they put a13 in that phone it will be overkill. They should either use older chips that cost less now like the a12 or a11 which both are more than enough for budget phones, or they can use smaller more power efficient a13 that would cost less and put the money on newer display design or more cameras which will be better selling point than using a13, imo.Srkifs2021 - Tuesday, November 3, 2020 - link
Guess you got it now with the 12 and mini!Oyster - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
I believe it's time for AT to really upgrade its website to be able to make use of the full width of modern displays. It's excruciating to go through these reviews and click through each camera sample without being able to compare things side-by-side. Even the performance graphs are so cramped. I hope an upgrade is on the way...Raqia - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
"Nevertheless, I do question why Apple decided to be so aggressive in terms of power this generation."I imagine it has something to do with the much bigger battery they put into the phone; current draw wearing down the battery isn't as much of a concern when it is larger. The little cores are far more impressive this year with roughly A73-75 levels of performance at much better efficiency. They seemed to have listened to users by making the phone a bit chunkier in exchange for a bigger battery.
The inefficient modem is still a sore spot this year which should hopefully be addressed next year with the inclusion of Qualcomm parts and IP. More importantly, the impact of a closed ecosystem with management who care more about profit than users is being felt by real customers in places like Hong Kong or vendors like EPIC who have avenues other than the official OS vendor sponsored app store on Android. Regulators should force Apple to offer an open store API for third parties to set up store fronts so that customers could have more choice based on pricing, quality, and reputation.
UglyFrank - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
I really did not need to see those T Rex scores, it hurt me spirit as a lifetime Android Phone user.My S4 would get 17fps in T-Rex and the iPhone is getting ~16-19x that after only 6 years later.
Death666Angel - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
"only 6 years later" Heh.Pro-competition - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Why was there no storage performance test? This affects app loading times (esp since Apple doesn't have much RAM), and app installation times, which affect real-world performance.Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
We're lacking a better test that works properly. I prefer to skip it rather than have misleading figures.Pro-competition - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Understood. Instead of synthetic benchmarks, perhaps just have a table of app loading times of some games? What I have in mind is the following:1. Compare current iPhones with the previous generations of iPhones (maybe just go two generations back). And use iPhones with different storage capacities.
2. Ensure all iPhones have the same iOS version.
3. Select ~5 games for your test suite, ensuring that the same version is installed on all iPhones.
4. Before loading the game, close all apps and then restart the phone, so that when the game is launched, we can be assured that are no apps already running.
5. Do step 4 around five times.
6. Use a video recorder to measure the time.
What do you think of my proposal?
masimilianzo - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Great review, thanks!Any idea on LD/ST bandwidth? Have they increase the number of AGUs?
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Bandwidth is included in one of the charts. It looks unchanged, and I didn't see anything different on the instruction side either.masimilianzo - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Are you measuring number of ports in the L1 RAM or number of address generation units?I guess it depends on having or not conflict to read ports in the RAM.
The large uplift in h264 test in SpecInt2k6 could come from an additional LD pipe..
willis936 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
"To be sure, this isn’t the very time we’ve seen this, as OnePlus, LG and Google have already introduced it in their phones over last year."very *first
eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Andrei, thanks for your review! One question/request, both for this iPhone review, but also future phone reviews:. Please test the call quality and reception (especially in challenging situations with a single bar/ low signal strength)! I found a couple of otherwise very attractive smartphones fall flat on their phone function. Since my mobile is my main phone, which I also need for work, call quality is a non-negotiable. Unfortunately, even your otherwise excellent reviews skip that aspect. So, any words on call quality of the new iPhones? Thanks!FunBunny2 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
" also future phone reviews:. Please test the call quality and reception "such a Luddite!!!! you actually expect a mobile phone to actually make land-line quality calls????? where have you been for the last decade???? :):) don't worry, though. real 5G will require a receiver on your house's roof and a super-duper wifi thingee to get it to work. real 5G won't work anywhere else, of course. wait... doesn't that sound like a land-line????
FreckledTrout - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Shh, adults are talking.eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
What can I say? I'm old-fashioned that way: for me, a smartPHONE has to work as a phone to justify its name. As I wrote, I tried out some otherwise capable mobiles, great screen and all, but they really tanked on call quality and reception.eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Forgot to add: And, I'm not even expecting landline quality, just a bit better than Armstrong's voice from the moon 50 years ago. Plus, his call to Earth wasn't dropped. Not too much to ask, is it?Drumsticks - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
My guess is this is too hard to measure repeatably and precisely. I wouldn't mind some anecdotal opinions, but at that point you might as well get those from a different website anyways.eastcoast_pete - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
An anecdotal or purely qualitative statement would suffice. No fancy analysis. "Loud and clear" vs. "hard to understand", spotty, dropped words etc is plenty to go on, and takes only a few minutes of testing.Pro-competition - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
Internet calls such as Whatsapp / FB calls for me have mostly been inferior to "normal calls" which use the Public Switched Telephone Network. For this reason, I still pay telcos an additional fee to make such "normal calls".PS: This is from someone who lives in a country where 1Gbps home fibre and 4G+ has been prevalent for many years now, and is about to roll-out 5G next year.
shompa - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Signal strength? The only situation that is plausible is in the woods. Otherwise: just enable WiFi calling. Signal strength is no issue then.eastcoast_pete - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
For performance with low signal strength, my building's basement is another, reproducible example (1-2 bars of 5 max), so no walk in the forest required. I believe that Andrei could find a convenient location where his carrier of choice has low signal, and just test it there. I am not looking for dB levels, just a qualitative statement.Someguyperson - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Your iPhone 11 Pro GPU efficiency numbers are off. The "warm" values aren't even on the chart. You need to take the sustained values from the chart and redo the calculations in the tables.trparky - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
"So while the A13 delivers class leading performance, it's probably not going to be very compelling for users coming from last year's A12 devices; the bigger impact will be felt coming from older devices."Like no shit! I upgraded from an older iPhone 7 Plus to the iPhone 11 Pro and comparatively speaking, the iPhone 11 Pro is stupid quick (that's a good thing!!!) Everything about it is so much faster. App launch times are at least twice as fast on the iPhone 11 Pro (vs. iPhone 7 Plus) and the battery life is just... wow. I don't have words to describe how good it is on the iPhone 11 Pro when compared to the iPhone 7 Plus.
Total Meltdowner - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Twice as fast a 4 seconds is 2 seconds. Battery life of a 3600mah battery is still going to require a charge every time you make it to work or home. Bleh.name99 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqpak5lFxvsAlistair - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Did you miss the part of the review where he showed the battery life is the best ever? Beating some 5000mah Android phones? So NO, you don't need to charge it every time you get home or back from work.melgross - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Say what you want, but on a daily basis, it’s very noticeable. When it’s different as in 1/4 sec to 1/2 sec, come back and talk.whiteiphoneproblems - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Unless you have a 12 hour commute, this seems pretty unlikely.damianrobertjones - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
The mate 20 is included in the battery test, so why wouldn't the Mate 20 X also be there? Probably as it has the best battery life? Not sure.dudedud - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
He only includes devices that he has tested.Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Yes, we never got our hands on the 20X.Dragonstongue - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
if Apple will slow down phone etc as battery ages, IMO they should do like SSD / HDD makers etc do by having X set aside "longevity reserve" to prevent folks from spend more $$$ to bring back new phone that using (doing normal things, let alone higher power req. stuff) chews through a not so "market leading" capacity (seeing as most phone makers and phone in general do NOT slow down / reduce performance as battery ages).............
maybe just maybe they can put more "premium" into the thought/design...maybe at some point they can also do a "whitelist" for 3rd party apps etc instead of FORCED purchase / constant update crud just so can use the darn fool thing.
^.^
Zerrohero - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Just get the battery replaced at authorized repair after three years or whenever it starts to go bad.And as you very well know, the throttling (if it kicks in) can be toggled on/off in the settings.
I have a two year old iPhone X and the battery capacity is at 91%.
michael2k - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
You're asking that the phone under report it's battery reserve and shut the phone down at 40% battery to preserve battery longevity?Because that would be the effect. So instead of a battery that lasts 14 hours for the first year and then 10 hours the second, it would 'shut down' after 11 hours the first year, and 'shut down' after 11 hours the second year, and 'shut down' after 11 hours the third year, before the degradation actually causes the battery life to actually be 10 hours in year four.
melgross - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Wow! That makes no sense. All phones slow down over time, and all batteries hold less charge. Apple’s are t worse, if anything, they’re better. My Max, from last year still reads 100% on battery health after more than 11 months of fairly heavy daily use. I’d like to see other phones that do better.shompa - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Look at intel /AMD / Qualcomm. They list a "turbo speed" that is not guaranteed. But customers believe it is. That's why they don't need to downclock stuff because they never need to hit their speeds. Apple is the last vendor having a real CPU speed and holds it. I have had a multitude of Intel CPUs that under-deliver in speed and as a customer you can't do anything. The service centers simply don't understand the problem since they only do a CPID check and says "it works". Take any intel laptop and fire up an H265 encode and watch the CPU speed go down. A CPU labeled 2.9ghz /3.9ghz turbo suddenly is a 2ghz part and you can't do anything about it. At least with Apple: get a good battery and it works.Total Meltdowner - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
All for the low low price of $1300. Pass.Zerrohero - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
$999 actually.This is a device that you can use for five years, or more, always with the latest software. Just get the battery replaced once.
Amazing value, as iPhones always are.
Total Meltdowner - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Nice troll brother. But a full loaded iPhone 11 Pro is $1299.iPhones are trash.
Total Meltdowner - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Sorry, it's $1450! LOL!Almost $1800 with applecare! https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-11-pr...
ahahahahahahha
Irish910 - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
You can get an iPhone 11 with 128 gigs for $749, which pretty much mops the competition with battery life, CPU, GPU, longevity and value.I know your troll self will say something like “BR0 it’s only GoT a 720P scr33n, my 2015 GaLaXy HaS h1gher Res0lution!
Fact is, most people don’t care about that. That’s why the XR was the most popular phone last year and that trend will continue.
The pro starts at $999. Stop trolling. This site is for adults only. If you only post your lame hate comments, please go to YouTube. There’s plenty of room for your kind there.
Shoo shoo now.
Quantumz0d - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
This analysis is great but the Whiteknighting is insane.The design the primary aspect of a device, the display itself is notched no matter what calibration it has it's destroying the proper nature of how we perceive through our eyes and mind. Dead pixel zone for $999
No expandable storage, No Filesystem access - Must use iTunes. This means for every basic work you must rely on your computer and the iCloud, mega ecosystem lockdown.
No 3.5mm jack. Its really a shame how this company made billions by buying up Beats (Sub par garbage audio) and AirPods ($179 of Sub 320kbps audio with limited life due to Li Ion) and making a dongle business out of an Analog standard and whole industry reeks of this greed by dongles snd their own BT products which are massively inferior in sound snd usage and also wear down the only port it has.
Sealed battery, Strong adhesive with new 4m depth rating. $600 for back glass repair if no Apple care and they are forcing you to buy because its $300 only and 70USD per repair. More profit for Apple for $100 battery services. Unfortunate that Apple has brick and mortar rest do not but they want to siphon off. Also did author note how iPhone XS got the new battery throttling with latest iOS update ? Yeah bonus package to wreck all that performance, inherent overdrawing of Voltage and planned obsolescence.
Too much of this price hike and offering measly 64GB base. Next year another $50-100 due to new design or whatever they want to call.
Desktop performance. I want to see, can this A series chip run an Adobe CS6 or Blender or do a H264 Conversion faster or on par with a desktop chip ? Or play high refresh rate gaming or can it execute x86 instructions with ease and replace my PC with this BGA pile of junk ? (It cannot, I think it's too much of blowing into this hot balloon of Apple for mega limelight) same for 9900K or 3950X they can't be fit in a pocket.
Finally the corporation of American back, has no backbone when it comes to China. The $$$$ speaks. Censorship and aiding the Orwellian draconian principles for cash is more than the American culture that spawned the company and its people. A big shame.
Total Meltdowner - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Bingo. I think the writer was just happy that he did notice performance improvements in this model. Still, the iPhone lacks innovation and that price tag is absurd. I'd buy it for $600 but $1000 or more? hah!Zerrohero - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
“No innovation”Plenty of innovation. Read the review.
There is nothing absurd about the price tag. Not a bad price at all for your most important computer that you will use several hours per day for five years, if you want to.
Total Meltdowner - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
That isn't what I would call innovation. Their CPU is nice but that's about it. There is nothing you can do on the 11Pro that you couldn't do on an iPhone 7 -10.WinterCharm - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Just because the visual style doesn't change does not mean there is "no innovation"There's a bunch of innovation on the chip side from Apple. You can either acknowledge that, or look like an idiot who screams no innovation while the iPhone has a 5x perf/watt lead over other ARM chips. To put that in context, it's 3-4 times the lead that Nvidia has over AMD.
Total Meltdowner - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
You can't do anything new with it that is worthy of praise.Jon Tseng - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Um, if you're expecting an iPhone with a removable battery, sd card slot and a non-bga socketed processor you're probably making a fairly material category error!!Zerrohero - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
“ Also did author note how iPhone XS got the new battery throttling with latest iOS update ?”...which only kicks in when the battery is in bad shape and if it does, you can choose whether to throttle or not. Everybody’s XS models are running at full speed. But of course you know all this.
(Just get the battery replaced when it goes bad and you get five years of these iPhones)
A high end Android is way worse value for money because you simply can’t use it as long as an iPhone. No software updates after couple of years, apart from some rare exceptions.
When it comes to repairability, iFixit gave the new iPhones 6/10 which is better than most of the competition. For example, Samsung’s high end models are way worse when it comes to repairability.
Again, of course you know all this very well.
It’s always amusing how riled up some people get about the new iPhones. You do know that you don’t need to buy them, there are plenty of alternatives.
steven75 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
As someone living in the present year of 2019, I wish you welcome, my time-traveling friend! I hope your time spent here is illuminating before you go back to your "current" year of 2010.Total Meltdowner - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
There's a reason why the argument of "muh current year" is a meme. Time is irrelevant, functionality is everything.melgross - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
That’s nonsense. You don’t even notice it after a while, and it’s just 2.5% of the screen. It’s a lot worse from companies that still have big bezels on top, and even one on the bottom, like the new Pixel 4 has. Totally wasted space.Quantumz0d - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Lol. Very funny. Just 2.5% of the screen, why not take a pencil and poke in your laptop/monitor display and say just a 0.3% like Samsung HOLED or this dead pixel zone. And put an RGB strip around/inside it to make it similar to S10 Hole notification led.A phone's primary component is Display which allows for man-machine interface, and if that itself is ruined no matter how much value the device has, it is a complete waste. Even Google realized this after their horrible Watertub 3XL disaster notch.
Notch, Hole are worse than an Asymmetric bezel on Pixel 4 and Symmetric bezels are much better to look at - V30, ROG II, Note 8, S8 while S9 and Note9, OP7 Pro, Zenfone 6, Nex have asymmetric design but they are fine over the dreaded Notch abomination or holes anyday anytime.
Apple did this crazy thing in 21 century. If engineers from CRT era were there they'd be laughing like no tomorrow. Kudos to Apple for creating something utter miserable and complete bullshit.
Why didn't the CMOS sensors / Panavision or any Film cameras or any Display shape have a notch/hole or any. Or our eyes or any animal eyes, even the insects like spiders with many eyes have full uninterrupted vision without no hole or notch in their eyes, hell even mirrors ? Until this POS hit the market the perception of a display was perfectly uniform with no interruption, it all changed thanks to Apple. They should be ashamed of creating the worst abomination while claiming the best industrial design.
"Sir" Jony Ive should be ashamed of his Knighthood lmao. Wonder he left because of Apple that he couldn't stand this Notchabomination as a black mark on his life forever (Also not note, since Chief Design Officer role doesn't exist anymore and the design teams report to Operations COO, It's interesting as if Andrei says this is the last Notch BS from Apple or whether we will see a smaller notch in 2020 lol)
uhuznaa - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
You have a literal blind spot in your eye where the optical nerve passes through the retina. Really. You just don't see it because it's always there. Same as with the notch by the way...Quantumz0d - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
No man stop convincing yourself, Retina blind spot is not notch lol. 210 Degree FoV and a blind spot how can you relate these ? Insane.uhuznaa - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
OK, so then just put a piece of black tape on the parts of the screen left and right of the notch and you have a bezel instead if you like this better.Seriously, what's so bad about having a bezel on top that still displays a clock and a few status symbols in the left and right corners? Exactly this is what the notch is. It just means using parts of the bezel in a limited but still useful way. I really don't understand what you notch-haters want instead of a notch. A full-width notch (aka "bezel")? Why would this be better? It would just push the status bar down, leaving less room for actual content for apps.
WinterCharm - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
The notch is the only weak excuse some Android fanboys have to convince themselves about why they can't move to iPhone.willis936 - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
The space is virtually useless and makes for a more difficult user experience. Nothing is gained by forcing information into a tiny nook or to have the user need to stretch to hit a small target. Just keep the display a rectangle. It just works.Quantumz0d - Sunday, October 20, 2019 - link
Exactly, but look at the Apple apologists they will buy excuse for whatever they seem fit to make the company look great. Any wrong pointing bam personal attacks, eh. New low for AT commenters to be honest. "Insecure Android phone" these noobs do not know how an Israeli company deals with breaking smartphones. Idiots. Only god can help them.Anand2019 - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
"Only god can help them". What does a fantasy figure have to do with this? Maybe santa can help them too?Xyler94 - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Every time I look at my mother's iPhone X, the first thing that pops into my mind is "why do people fuss so much about the notch?"It's barely noticeable when you use it. It's just like your nose. your brain will ignore your nose when you're looking, but the moment you realize your nose is in your view, you'll see it again. Same as the notch, don't even think about it, and it becomes a non-factor.
Total Meltdowner - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
ahahahahahahahahaahAHAhahaha!Irish910 - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
Why so salty? If you hate Apple so much why are you here reading this article? Sounds like you’re insecure with your android phone which basically gets mopped up with by the new iPhones in every area where it counts. Shoo shoo now.shompa - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Desktop performance. Do you understand the difference between CPU performance and App performance? X86 has never had the fastest CPUs. They had windows and was good enough / cheaper than RISC stuff. The reason why for example Adobe is "faster" in X86 is that Intel adds more and more specific instructions AVX/AVX512 to halt competition. Adobe/MSFT are lazy companies and don't recompile stuff for other architectures.For example when DVD encoding was invented in 2001 by Pioneer/Apple DVD-R. I bought a 10K PC with the fastest CPU there was. Graphics, SCSI disks and so on. Doing a MPEG 2 encoding took 15 hours. My first mac was a 667mhz PowerBook. The same encoding took 90 minutes. No. G4 was not 10 times faster, it was ALTIVEC that intel introduced as AVX when Apple switched to Intel. X86 dont even have real 64bit and therefore the 32bit parts in the CPU cant be removed. X86 is the only computer system where 64bit code runs slower than 32bit (about 3%). All other real 64bit systems gained 30-50% in speed. And its not about memory like PC clickers belive. Intel/ARM and others had 38bit memory addressing. That is 64gig / with a 4gig limit per app. Still, today: how many apps use more than 4gig memory? RISC went 64bit in 1990. Sun went 64bit / with 64bit OS in 1997. Apple went 64bit in 2002. Windows went 64bit after Playstation4/XboxOne started to release 64bit games.
By controlling the OS and hardware companies can optimize OS and software. That is why Apple/Google and MSFT are starting to use own SoCs. And its better for customers. There are no reason a better X86 chip cost 400 dollars + motherboard tax 100 dollars. Intel 4 core CPUs 14nm cost less than 6 dollars to produce. The problem is customers: they are prepared to pay more for IntelInside and its based on the wrong notion "its faster". The faster MSFT moves to ARM / RISCV. The better. And if the rumors are right, Samsung is moving to RISCV. That would shake up the mobile market.
Quantumz0d - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Samsung just killed Texas team funding. And you don't want to pay for a socketed board and industry standard but rather have a surfacw which runs on an off the shelf processor and has small workload target in a PC ?Also dude from where you are pulling this $6 of Intel CPUs and I presume you already know how the R&D works right in Lithography ? ROI pays off once the momentum has began. So you are frustrated of 4C8T Intel monopoly amd want some magical unicorn out of thin air which is as fast that and is cheap and is portable a.k.a Soldered. Intel stagnated because of no competition. Now AMD came with better pricing and more bang for buck.
Next from Bigroom Mainframes to pocket PC (unfortunate with iOS its not because of no Filesystem anf Google following same path of Scoped Storage) microsoft put computers in homes and now they recently started moving away into SaaS and DaaS bs. And now with thin client dream of yours Itll be detrimental to the Computer HW owners or who want to own.
We do not want a Propreitary own walled gardens with orwellian drama like iOS. We need more Linux and more powerful and robust OS like Windows which handles customization despite getting sandbagged by M$ on removing control panel slowly and migrating away from Win32. Nobody wants that.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3444606/with...
jv007 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
The lighting big cores are not very impressive this time.From 4 Watt to 5 Watt a 25% increase in power for 17% more performance.
Good for benchmarks (and the phone was actively cooled here), but not good for throttling.
7nm and no EUV, maybe next year with 5nm and EUV will improve seriously.
I wonder if we will see a A13X.
name99 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
"The lighting big cores are not very impressive this time"A PHONE core that matches the best Intel has to offer is "not impressive"?
OK then...
Total Meltdowner - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Comparing this CPU to intel is silly. They run completely different instructions.Quantumz0d - Sunday, October 20, 2019 - link
It has been overblown. The Spec score is all the A series chips have. They can't replace x86 chips even Apple uses x86 cores with Linux RHEL or Free OS Linux distribution to run their services. Whole world runs on the same ISA. These people just whiteknight it like a breakthrough while the whole iOS lacks basic Filesystem access and the latest Catalina cannot run non notarized apps.Also to note the Apple First party premium optimization, that Apple pays for companies like Adobe. If you run MacOS / Trashbook Pro BGA / iOS on any non optimized SW it will be held back both on power consumption and all. It's just a glorified Nix OS and with the first party support it keeps floating. They missed out on the mass scale deployment like Windows or Linux and that's going to be their Achilles heel along with the more transformation of MacOS into iOS rather than opposite.
It's really funny when you look how 60% of the performance is max that one can get from MacOS based HW/Intel machines due to severe thinning on chassis for that sweet BGA appeal and non user serviceable HW while claiming all recycled parts and all. I'm glad that Apple can't escape Physics. VRM throttling, low quality BGA engineering with cTDP garbage etc. Also people just blatantly forget how the DRAM of those x86 processors scales with more than 4000MHz of DDR4 and the PCIe lanes it pushes out with massive I/O while the anemic trash on Apple Macs is a USB C with Dongle world, ARM replicating the same esp the Wide A series with all the Uncore and PCIe I/O support ? Nope. It's not going to happen. Apple needs to invest Billions again and they are very conservative when it comes to this massive scale.
Finally to note, ARM cannot replace x86. Period. The HPC/ DC market of the Chipzilla Intel and AMD, they won't allow for this BS, Also the ISA of x86 is so mature plus how the LGA and other sockets happen along. While ARM is stuck with BGA BS and thus they can never replace these in the Consumer market.
Let the fanboys live in their dream utopia.
tipoo - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Being that the little cores are more efficient, and the battery is significantly larger, maybe they allowed a one time regresion in peak performance per watt to gain that extra performance, without a node shrink this year.zeeBomb - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
the time has come.joms_us - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Show us that A13 can beat even the first gen Ryzen or Intel Skylake , run PCMark, Cinebench or any modern games otherwise this nonsense desktop level claim should go to the bin. You are using a primitive Spec app to demonstrate the IPC?I can't wait for Apple to ditch the Intel processor inside their MBP and replace with this SoC. Oh wait no, it won't happen in a decade because this cannot run a full pledge OS with real multi-tasking. =D
lmcd - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Dunno what this is supposed to mean. Given how well Qualcomm chips do with Windows and the superior performance of Apple vs Qualcomm, you're really just spouting nonsense.joms_us - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Where is superiority you say? These apps does what Spec or GB does and yet iPhone A11 is not showing desktop-level performance here versus OP7https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic8q1kPseVE
It is even laughable that this iPhone 11 is not faster than the older iPhone XS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-P0KRlbH1M
If A13 is truly superior than some desktop processors, why are we not seeing/hearing anything it replacing processors inside MBP? I am sure Apple can port it easily to Windows or Linux if they wanted to.
lmcd - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Did you actually just link GUI/responsiveness hand-testing videos? Why do you think those add anything to the conversation? Arguing about the performance of a given GUI library tells us nothing about the SoCs involved.A13 is truly superior to some binnings of laptop-class processors running at nearly 10x its power consumption. That's why it or a larger version of it (a future A13X) will run in a future iPad Pro that should perform in the same class as the Surface Pro 7 and Surface Pro X.
Yea, it won't win versus the top models. But it'll certainly beat the lower-end Pro 7, with an anemic i3. And that includes single-core performance.
So yea, it wouldn't be the top desktop processor, but it certainly can and will scale up to "desktop-class performance." It doesn't scale up to a premium experience at a desktop level yet, so there's no place for it yet in the Apple desktop product stack.
Diogene7 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
On a personal basis, I am much more interested by 1. fanless computers and 2. responsiveness (latency) over raw peak performance for a future laptop or even desktop computer as I am mostly using my computer to surf the web / watch videos.That is the reason I really, really like the idea of Qualcomm 8cx processor as in the Samsung Galaxy book S : Quiet laptop (no fan), thin, light, excellent battery life... The unknow is responsiveness : will the performance be good enough that lag won’t be felt more than a standard Intel / AMD laptop ?
If the responsiveness of a Qualcomm 8cx / future Apple A14 is good enough, then a fanless laptop, but also a fanless desktop has much, much appeal to myself !!!
If I was Apple, I would try to introduce ARM mac computers with both an Apple A14 / Apple A15 in combination with Storage Class Memory (SCM) to get never seen before low latency (excellent responsiveness) fanless mac computers : sure it would maybe take more time to do some intensive tasks on those computers (ex: video editing), but basic day to day task (launching Safari,...) would feel soooo much faster (like using a SSD everything faster compare to a mechanical HDD).
WinterCharm - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
ARM macs are coming in 2020.You will see these chips in a mac. With active cooling they are going to DESTROY anything Intel and AMD have to offer.
Alistair - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
These tests we are looking at are occurring at 2.6Ghz for the A13. And it is basically equal to the 4Ghz+ 9900k. Imagine the A13 running at 3.5Ghz, I think it already surpasses Intel easily enough.joms_us - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Nonsense, show us proof or it did not happen. Even a mere 2Ghz Ryzen is faster than any smartphone today.Alistair - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
The iPhone uses 2 fast cores. Yes, it is equal to a dual core Ryzen or a dual core Intel CPU. I want Intel to be faster, but that would have required them to do ANYTHING meaningful since the i7-2700k came out instead of just repackaging the same CPU over and over.WinterCharm - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
The proof is right on page 4 of this article, or did you not read it?joms_us - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Crossing my fingers, I will be happy even if I can just drag and file my files here and there or perhaps compile my x86 apps. =DAlistair - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
mwah ha ha ha... hahahaha. .. .. . hahahah hahaha.... sorry while I break down laughing incoherently. You criticize using SPEC to compare a mobile vs a desktop CPU, then you post links to garbage "look how fast the iPhone is at opening apps over and over again for minutes at a time" as if that is anything but the worst click bait "benching" you could possible find on the internet.joms_us - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
If you are into software engineering, you know running a website or games does those nonsense calculations that SPEC of GB does right? So I'd rather see realworld results than cherry-picked bloated score from SPEC or GB.Alistair - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Since you think those youtube videos indicate anything at all, your judgement has been called into question. I don't think your opinion of SPEC is worth repeating.joms_us - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
An SoC is useless without the other components, so you are testing the whole phone because that is what you are going to use. Sadly, in this regard, the cherrypicked modules in benchmark both in SPEC and GB does not translate to realworld for Apple.WinterCharm - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
App opening on a phone doesn't test anything, except disk read/write speeds and animation speeds. You're an idiot if you think these tests show anything.joms_us - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Idiot? Looks who is talking? How can an app display those UI, information, graphics l, sound etc if it is not using the cpu? The runtime/compiler does everything (read/write/mem copy/cut/compress/decompress/sort/math etc. ) for you so you see them otherwise they are just a bunch of worthless text or numbers like what these SPEC and GB are showing.Irish910 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Actually, if you looked at the graph comparing the A9-A13, it’s pretty clear that this chip can hang with the Skylake. All in a packaged phone design with no fans or active cooling. They’re all compiled the same way when run on Spec. So stop being salty.WinterCharm - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
You speak as though Spec2006 is a bad benchmark, lol.joms_us - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Yep, 2006? Seriously?Run iPhone in Windows or Linux then comeback with the results.
These nonsense crossplatform comparison of GB and SPEC are nothing if they are not running on the same OS.
tipoo - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
>Run iPhone in Windows or Linux tSo you're setting your standard at results that are impossible to show you. You don't really think that comes off as a win on your end of the argument, do you?
joms_us - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Try 4.4Ghz Core2Duo E8600 and Ryzen 3600x in SuperPI 1M.You will see E8600 is faster by 2 secs, makes you wonder?
Released in 1995, 13-15 years difference between two processors. E8600 is faster? LOL
This SPEC need serious overhauling, same as GB that is tuned to Apple SoC. Apple A13 faster than 5GHZ Intel or Ryzen in GB5? LOL, people are seriously retarded nowadays...
thunng8 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
What has superPI got to do with spec2006? Spec2006 is a well respected desktop/workstation benchmark that tests many different algirthms and use case while superPI does 1 specific narrow test.As a real world example, I've found my ipad pro 2018 exports RAW files from Adobe lightroom faster than my 2018 6 core mac mini (i7-8700) and a lot faster than my 2017 13" (2xi5) macbook pro (almost 2x faster).
Laptopmag also had similar findings. https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/new-ipad...
Quantumz0d - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Do you know that Apple pays Adobe for First Party Optimization ? GB also is not an indicative performance.thunng8 - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
So Adobe Lightroom is optimized for Apple and not their largest platform and money earner which has lots of competitors? That’s the silliest comment I’ve seen yet.WinterCharm - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
People aren’t ready to believe it because of their PC / X86 bias.The writing is on the wall. Objective measurements show that Arm has caught up, and half the people in these comments are making excuses or saying “nuh uh because it doesn’t run Linux”
id4andrei - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Hey joms, spec is an efficiency benchmark. A 5w CPU does not beat an actively cooled 65w one from AMD or Intel. At least in SPECint Apple matches desktop CPUs. That's how you interpret.Give credit to Apple and move on.
joms_us - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Problem is, graph is a huge mess, not normalized. For e.g A13 maybe doing 60+ in perf but consuming 5w whereas SD850 is doing 30 perf in a mere 2w. Which one is better?id4andrei - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
From an overall performance standpoint obviously A13. From an efficiency standpoint the 855 equalled the A12. Both are slightly more efficient than A13 from a peak power perspective. In real life, with average workloads, A13 is overall more efficient than both.Apple invests a lot in their chips and sets the pace. Come February next year it's up to Qualcomm to narrow the gap.
joms_us - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
There you go, efficiency is the key and A13 is not as efficient as you said. Now in realworld comparison, the likes of Note 10 and OP7T are far better and or bang for the buck. Those long perf graphs are really misleading.. time to fix them.id4andrei - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
I'm an android user and nothing here is misleading. The A13 is the best SoC.One thing to understand is that the iphone here is deliberately actively cooled so that it removes all thermal restraints and show the chip's full capabilities. In real life it would throttle.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Just to add context to the active cooling of the phone rationale;SPEC takes around an hour to complete: you can't expect a phone to sustain that, and we want to be able to see the full peak scores of all the subtests in order to have a proper µarch analysis.
This peak performance still exists in real workloads, however you'd be hard to find a hard use-case which stresses the CPUs for the same amount of time.
WaltFrench - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
I'd appreciate your expanding on this.Your graph shows watts of power, not watt-hours of energy. If Y performs a test 50% faster than X while using 20% more watts, Y uses about 30% less battery for the same work.
That's certainly not the implication I get from looking at the tests but it seems the obvious conclusion.
WinterCharm - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
It's happening at WWDC 2020. Just wait and see.You're wrong and you're stupid to think these chips are not incredibly good.
joms_us - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
LOL, if they can make these chips run at 4GHz, then I will believe you they are incredibly good. At best they will probably reach desktop i3 level.Wilco1 - Saturday, October 19, 2019 - link
They already match the fastest 5GHz i9 while running at half the frequency...joms_us - Sunday, October 20, 2019 - link
Match with what, where? Primitive Spec2006 and bloated GB score? LOLApple SoC is skyrocketting in HTML and ML scores yet pathetic in realworld result.
Keep the comparison within the same OS period and then you can say it beat the fastest desktop chip out there otherwise you will look like retarded and brainwashed.
Galdutro@$ - Thursday, June 25, 2020 - link
This didn’t aged very well...[email protected] - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
some users in china found out that Huawei phones have forced the Gpu to render the graphic in lower resolution/ off anti-aliasing, to improve the battery life and FPS, this happened even u have set max details in game setting, of turn off any save battery function. Huawei software kind of override everything and there is no way to turn it off.. Some maps-app and most game has been affected, and this behaviors tend to be trigger by whitelist of huawei . the degradation in details are subtle and most user dint notice it unless u compare it side by side to another phoneI hope AnandTech can investigate this issue in their review of kirin 990 , whether it is true or not, or this had been on going since the introduction of GT- turbo of Huawei.
Anand2019 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
They have to cheat. Seems like all of the phone manufacturers from asia are cheating. Apples lead is too big!airdrifting - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Your comment is like all white people are mass murderers and rapers. iPhone is also manufacturered in Asia btw.Anand2019 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
"manufacturers from asia" not manufactured in asia.Ian Cutress - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
We've tested GPU Turbo, and found it to be a very legitimate technology for the specific apps that Huawei has trained its AI on.https://www.anandtech.com/show/13285/huawei-gpu-tu...
That's different to some benchmark cheating that also went on at the same time.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13318/huawei-benchm...
This was all examined last year in detail.
Anand2019 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Where is the competition? Android is so far behind."there’s really no competition as the A13 posts almost double the performance of the next best non-Apple SoC"
"We’ll need to see some major paradigm shifts from the competition in order for them to be able to catch up in the next generation of devices."
FunBunny2 - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
"there’s really no competition as the A13 posts almost double the performance of the next best non-Apple SoC"I've read nothing beyond Apple widening registers, increasing caches, and re-arranging real estate on the chip. and, may be, bringing more off-chip function on-chip. that's like brute force ya know.
willis936 - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
That’s how CPUs get faster. OoO execution and keep on ramping up wherever the throughput bottlenecks are for targeted workloads.weevilone - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
It's too bad that Apple is still using PWM for their OLED displays. It's the reason I stuck with the 11.tipoo - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Be nice if they added a DC dimming toggle like Oneplus.peevee - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
"I was not very impressed with the XR display’s density, and the fact that Apple chooses to retain this resolution is unfortunate"I disagree, it is very fortunate as low res enables higher energy efficiency, faster framerates and longer play time for games. Very real advantages vs the resolution difference only nearsighted people not wearing glasses can see with a naked eye.
tipoo - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
I agree with the review, at this density I too often make out its limits around curves, i.e the time display on the lock screen, or notification dots. Even if sticking to an LCD, the Plus's 1080p resolution would have been nice.peevee - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
" Integer division has also seen a large upgrade as the throughput has now been doubled and latency/minimum number of cycles has been reduced from 8 to 7 cycles."I wonder which workloads can it possibly affect. Hash table access which require remainder ops for prime-sized table sizes?
FunBunny2 - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
"I wonder which workloads can it possibly affect."lots and lots of software fake floating point arithmetic by scaling integer arithmetic. way faster, even counting the need to shift the decimal point.
MrCommunistGen - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Bravo Andrei and team! Technical acumen in the article top notch as usual.I'm quite happy with the improvements to writing/editing that have happened over the past year(s?). In this piece the writing was clear to understand almost entirely throughout. In the past, although I was always able to discern the meaning and intent of the content it was sometimes a struggle.
As for the iPhones themselves: Apple's technical silicon expertise does not cease to amaze me. Their absolute performance as well as efficiency are incredible. I'm not sure that this level of excellence is possible on the Android side of things. Since Apple is vertically integrated they're not nearly as constrained on die size as companies who are consumers of ARM's chip designs. Also, they've clearly made an enormous investment in their SoC team, not just financially, but in expertise as well as effective inter/intra team collaboration.
It is somewhat deflating to see that in many metrics the Snapdragon 855 is only on par with the A10 SoC from the iPhone 7. As someone likely looking for a 2020 Android device, I have more than a little silicon envy -- and the reasonable (in today's market at least) price of the base iPhone 11 makes it quite compelling compared to Android flagships.
jrs77 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Now make it as small as an iPhone SE and you might have another customer. I'm not buying a phone that I can't even carry in my trousers pockets.yetanotherhuman - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
The 3 camera layout is more than ugly, though, it's actually revolting. As in, it invokes disgust.Xyler94 - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
It's a good thing you view the phone from the front about 95% of the time, huh? :)anonomouse - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Andrei, is the power/voltage curve for the A12 charting power on the CPU rail only, or for the whole system? Since the voltage is presumably just the CPU power rail.Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Total system active power, only the top point is measured, the rest is inferred/approximated. It's not exact but it's not meant to be, the point was to show that the CPU gets a lot more efficient at slightly lower clocks.anonomouse - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Presumably a lot of that total system power is coming from DRAM/SoC though, so that part wouldn't scale the same way/at all with CPU voltage. Not trying to debate the point that the CPU will absolutely be more efficient below that, but the steepness of the system power curve would be probably be less steep.anonomouse - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Also, did you ever get a chance to measure how large the power efficiency improvements the Exynos 9825 on 7LPP had (CPU/GPU) as compared to the 9820?Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
I still don't have an 9825. Generally the consensus seems to be 15%.ksec - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Well At least one article got it right on Anandtech. Last time Anton refers Apple A13 as 7nm EUV, along with an TSMC update mentioning it as well. Now we can finally settle Apple is using N7P.I think one of the reason for the higher power usage is the A13 was designed with 7nm EUV in mind, and was only later changed to N7P as 7nm EUV may not provide enough capacity for Apple.
I do wonder if we are going to see 5nm Apple SoC next year.
Ian Cutress - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Anton didn't realise 'N7P' and 'N7+ with EUV' were different processes - and that people were using P instead of + for some unknown reason. Up until a while ago, any time someone said 'second generation N7', it was always thought of as N7+. Now we're making them clarify.FreckledTrout - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
It's TSMC's alphabet soup so who can blame him. They could make the node names a bit easier for people whom are not CPU process nerds.dennphill - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Apple! They just give you what THEY want to! Pretty disappointed in all their products. I finally gave in and got rid of my Goggle thinggie (worthless, really) and got a reconditioned iPhone 8+ a coouple of months ago. It is really (so here's my technical user review: "It's just...") OK. My wife, OTOH, has an SE - her second - and she really doesn't want anything bigger. EVER! (Listen to that, Apple!) Even the reported new 'tiny' 2020 5.4" iPhone is what she calls HUGE. Weekend project is replacing her iPhone 5 SE battery that's begun not to keep a charge.peevee - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Make your bets: will Apple switch to A13X in their MacBooks... Seems would be very prudent with an 8-core implementation.solipsism - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
I have no doubt Apple will replace Intel with an ARM SoC, but I do not expect it to be beefed up A-series chip found in an iPhone. Just like all their in-house designed chips, I would expect it to be its own letter designation with considerably more memory bandwidth, access to PCIe, and other features that work well in a lower-end portables and desktops.Diogene7 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
I hope Apple intend to keep their future laptop ARM CPU low power enough to not require any active cooling : a fanless ARM mac laptop is well executed could have a lot of appeal to me !!!That the reason why at the moment, I am keeping an eye on Samsung Galaxy Book S / Microsoft Surface Pro X that are the 2 first fanless computers with ARM Qualcomm 8cx : if responsiveness is good enough (especially for web browsing, watching video, Microsoft office,...) then it would prove it is possible.
From there, I would be very happy that Apple do an always connected fanless Macbook Air with an ARM CPU, as otherwise I am considering buying a Qualcomm 8cx fanless laptop (if the reviews confirms that the performance are reasonable enough)
joms_us - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
I like to have this as well, approx. 1 day battery able to do media consumption/productivity. At least the comparison so far is that it is better if not than Intel Core i5-8250UQuantumz0d - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
This mentality shift that Apple caused in consumers is the reason why Laptops got rolled over into thin anf light disposable garbage.All Intel BGA / AMD (both PGA and BGA) all have castrated TDP limits which forces throttling. And Apple shoved an 6C/8T into which they cant cool because they tried to cheat physics. And still after VRM fiasco they still put the 8C/16T into that anemic chassis people who are buying them deserve to be robbed off th e 60% drop in performance.
Dell shoved XPS with same i9 and it got rekted down. Surface ARM cannot run 64bit x86 code and iy can run the UWP garbage only.
Next the BGA hellhole that Apple dragged everyone into. First x86 macs had BGA processors. Seeing that Intel stopped PGA and started Ultrabook BS and killed off all MX and XM PGA from Haswell making BGA with cTDP mandatory and bins locked down. My Haswell CPU in Notebook maintains consistent 700 in CB R15. Not even 7700HQ does it when put in a TDP locked JUNK.
And next Soldered SSD in Macs paired with T2 chip. Anything goes bad Go to Apple. Battery soldered to Chassis. KB inherent design flaw. This stupid corporate only knows how to fleece and put junk and forced all companies passively into this thin and light garbage.
Forget PCIE NVME SSDs in RAID rhat chassis will melt and GPUs don't exist in Apple lala land because Muh AR ML Kit and all.
ARM cannot do Transcoding work. Period. And Image Processing like Autodesk won't run on garbage ARM GPUs need Nvidia chips with High BW GDDR6 or G5X. Apple cannot cool them in that chassis. They can't escape Physics. End of Story of this A series competing with x86 ISA and Intel/AMD.
Diogene7 - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
@joms_us : Yes, for applications compiled to work natively on ARM64, the performance of the app running a Windows computer with Qualcomm 8cx should be similar as the same x86-32bits app running on a Windows computer with Intel Core i5-8250U, but with the advantage of having much better battery life which is appealing to me as well :).Really looking forward to read reviews on Samsung Galaxy Book S and Microsoft Surface Pro X to see if they hold to the hype...
dudedud - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
Nice as always Andrei.Are you expecting something similar for the A77 on the 865, as in a modest performant improvement at a higher consumption cost? Or do you think that the rumored 7nm EUV from Samsung is going to surpass current N7pro of TSMC?
Andrei Frumusanu - Saturday, October 19, 2019 - link
From what I heard, I don't expect 7LPP to be better performing than N7.0iron - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 - link
When first I saw 'camera elevated', I hope they have very good video stabilization like GoPro. Looks like we have to wait few more generations (or never) to have that kind of smooth when shooting a video.I believe with A13, it shouldn't lack any processing power that GoPro has. It just need to get it right on software side.
Hxx - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
The best out of all of them is the iPhone 11 that is if you want an iPhone. Still surprised they lowered the price. I wish I could justify the nicer screen but I can't and playing with all 3 of them at my local best buy couldn't convince me either. My X is still going strong but I may get the 11 as im due for an upgrade. Thanks for the review.Zou Tianyou - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
I wish you can make a kirin 990 and mate30 pro review!Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
I will.VG - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
> I don’t know it was me holding the phone any different between those two paths.EIS kicked in when autofocus caught an object (tree or building) and fixed on it.
What about storage speed test?
id4andrei - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Great review Andrei, best in fact.All other sites listed audio as a clear improvement. It seems they lied. It's a regression in fact.
Also the camera is not that best in class as written by mainstream pundits. The wideangle is disappointing and the low light feature is something you cannot control and can overexpose.
cha0z_ - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Great review! Andrei, can you comment on the scratch resistance of the screen? There is 50+ pages (for two weeks only) on the official apple forum that the screen scratches absurdly easy with a lot deep scratches, wide scratches, etc. If you didn't use a screen protector, can you tell us how the one in you hold?Andrei Frumusanu - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
I use my phones naked because I'm perverted in that way. Generally you're asking the wrong person here as I haven't scratched my daily drivers ever in many years - the only scratches I have ever gotten was on the backside when laying the phones on some rougher surface.willis936 - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
I wish that an outlet (like this one) would analyze the tradeoffs of glass backs. Namely the thermal limitations of glass vs. metal. I always use a case and screen protector, because when I don’t I sink my 5 year device. But sustained loads on hot days see serious throttling which gets worse with a case.cha0z_ - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
Ofc it will and depending on the case it will be more or less. It will always be significant tho.cha0z_ - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
Same for me, I used my phones naked and never broke or scratch any (always face up, always alone in the pockets, I even clean my left phone pocket after washing). The problem is, a lot of people like us who take care of their phones and use them naked - got a scratched screen in day one/first days. Not one, two or 30 people - a lot more just in that thread and this is now while the phone is still not available in a lot of places. I am worried that mine would scratch too and hold on the purchase for now thus I ask you how yours hold. Not sure if it's a bad batch or all are like that. Thanks for the answer! :)Peskarik - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
It is a great piece of kit.But as long as I cannot connect to PC and throw my music on it a-la-Android-phone, I am not interested.
I currently have Pixel XL and I love it for the ability to connect to PC and just throw files on the phone like on a external storage.
geegee83 - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
Use a third party app and access the sandbox through iFunbox to drop it in or drop it into Google Drive. It is a little more complicated but it works without needing to sync with iTunes.geegee83 - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
Third party app: i meant third party media player.TheHomieTL - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
A phone isn't officially reviewed until Anandtech does it! Again, brilliant detailed review, hats off guys![email protected] - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
this looks more like an advertisement than a review...nothing exciting yet headline is all these functionalities elevated... when it should be... Boring...Jostian - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
iPhone is pretty middle of the road, its jpeg processing is still very harsh with a very smeared look to photos, and foliage looks like a water painting, the others are not dissimilar but are not as harsh, the Mate 30 Pro blows everything out the water in the low light scenes though, wow!Kishoreshack - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Soc explainationGHz or MHz ?
Narg - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Very poor review. Seems this reviewer has a complex, and one that doesn't bode well for an average consumer.WuMing2 - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Could anybody point out a -professional- use case for a $1k smartphone? Because I call, text, surf, recognize, edit, share and snap perfectly useless pictures with iOS 13...on iPhone 6s.I believe few years back the peak of refinement for common functions has been reached for 99% of users. And all smartphone vendors are burning insane amounts of resources to solve non-existing problems. While some very obvious ones - as system-wide annotations of info and objects to personalize and learn as we commonly do in the real world - are still missing. To their credit Apple employees achieve that with the most tasteful and responsible of products.
hlovatt - Thursday, October 17, 2019 - link
Great review. Really enjoyed the in-depth analysis of the CPU.It is interesting that the wide angle camera is treated so differently than the other two in low light.
On the subject of the Camera, does any one know the:
1. Bust frame rate?
2. The live photo frame rate?
primet - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
not sure why anandtech insist of calling the ultra wide as wide angle.The_Assimilator - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
While I may loathe Apple as a company for its rubbish products, overhyped designs, predatory repair practices, eocsystem lock-in, and ridiculous price-gouging...I cannot help but give kudos to Apple's CPU design team. Sure, Arm is not x86 in terms of complexity, but the fact that Apple has a chip that is both far faster and far more power-efficient than their Android competition, that is using the same underlying architecture, is incredibly impressive. Equally impressive is that they have managed to maintain this dominance over multiple generations, and that the competition still seems as far away from catching up as ever.
joms_us - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
If you haven't seen speed tests for the last 2-3 years, iPhone is lagging vs competition. Even the iPhone 11 is slower than iPhone XS.Oyeve - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
Yet in the real world some other phones open and/or maintain speed faster than IP11.varase - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
Chart: The iPhone 11's IP68 is only good for 2 meters for 30 minutes.darwiniandude - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
Thanks for the awesomely detailed review and comparison. Well done, I appreciate the effort!mef - Friday, October 18, 2019 - link
Needless to say, outstanding analysis as usual!Kudos for the ton of painstaking work done to gather and compare all the numbers, images, etc. It's not very precise for a reviewer nor interesting for a savvy reader to just say that one device "feels fast enough”. Instead, taking the analysis to such a highly scientific level is really why I look forward to reading Anandtech’s insightful reviews ;-).
Henk Poley - Saturday, October 19, 2019 - link
Does the A13 have more security features, such as the pointer encryption that was added with the A12 (essentially binding pointers to their origin (e.g. processes)) ? It was kinda interesting that the recent mass exploitation of iPhones uncovered, didn't touch any of the A12 iDevices (and neither does jailbreaks).techsorz - Sunday, October 20, 2019 - link
I'm sorry Anandtech, but your GPU review is absolutely horrendous. You are using 3Dmark on iOS, which hasn't recieved an update since IOS 10 and then compare it to the Android version which was updated June 2019. There is a reason you are getting conflicted results when you switch over to GFXbench, which was updated on iOS in 2018. How this didn't make you wonder, is amazing.Andrei Frumusanu - Sunday, October 20, 2019 - link
The 3D workloads do not get updated between the update versions, so your whole logic is moot.techsorz - Sunday, October 20, 2019 - link
Are you kidding me? The load won't change, but the score sure will. It makes it look like the iPhone throttles much more than it does in reality. That the score is 50% less due to unoptimized garbage does not mean that the chipset actually throttled with 50%.I can't believe that I have to explain this to you, 3Dmark supports an operative system that is 3 years old, for all we know it is running in compatibility mode and is emulated.
Andrei Frumusanu - Sunday, October 20, 2019 - link
Explain to me how the score will change if the workload doesn't change? That makes absolutely zero sense.You're just spouting gibberish with stuff as compatibility mode or emulation as those things don't even exist - the workload is running on Metal and the iOS version is irrelevant in that regard.
techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
In computing you have what is called a low-level 3D API. This is what Metal and DirectX is. This is what controls how efficiently you use the hardware you have available. If you have a new version of this API in say, IOS 13, and you run an iOS 10 application, you will run into compatibility issues. These issues can degrade performance without it being proportional to the actual throttling taking place. On android however, it is compatible with the latest low-level API's as well as various performance modes.The hillarious thing is that Anandtech even contradict themselves, using an "only" 1 year outdated benchmark, where the iPhone suddenly throttles less at full load. This entire article is just a box full of fail, if you want to educate yourself, I suggest you watch Speedtest G on Youtube. Or Gary Explains. He has a video on both 'REAL' iOS and Android throttling, done using the latest version of their respective API
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
> If you have a new version of this API in say, IOS 13, and you run an iOS 10 application, you will run into compatibility issues. These issues can degrade performance without it being proportional to the actual throttling taking place. On android however, it is compatible with the latest low-level API's as well as various performance modes.Complete and utter nonsense. You literally have no idea what you're talking about.
techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
How about you provide a proper response instead of saying it's nonsense. How can the throttling be different at full load on 2 different benchmarks otherwhise? There is clearly no connection between actual throttling and the score itself. You are literally contradicting yourself in your own review.Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
A proper response to what exactly? Until now all you managed to do is complain is that the test is somehow broken and wrong and I need to educate myself.The whole thing has absolutely nothing to do with software versions or OS version or whatever other thing. The peak and sustained scores are performed with the same workloads and nothing other than the phone's temperature has changed - the % throttling is a physical attribute of the phone, the benchmark doesn't decide to suddenly throttle more on one benchmark more than the other simply because it's somehow been released a few years ago.
The throttling is different on the different tests *because they are different workloads*. 3DMark and Aztec High will put very high stress the ALUs on the GPU, more than the other tests and create more heat on and hotspot temperatures the GPU, resulting into more throttling in and reduced frequencies those tests. T-Rex for example will be less taxing on the GPU in terms of its computation blocks have more load spread out to the CPU and DRAM, also spreading out temperature, and that's why it throttles the least amount.
techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Thank you for your informative reply. Then, is it crazy to assume that 3-year-old 3Dmark benchmark is not providing the same workload as the 2019 version on Android? Maybe you could run an outdated buggy benchmark on a rog 2 as well and it would stress the ALU even more? Possibly, the rog 2 is getting a much more sensible workload while the iPhone is getting unrealistic loads that don't utilize the archiecture at all. In which case, it is pretty unfair and misleading. It's like taking a car and only testing 1 wheel and the other cars get to use all 4.Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
The ROG2 is in the charts. It's getting good scores because it's the only S855+ phone in the charts, because the Adreno 640 has extremely high ALU performance, and because the phone itself is allowed to reach much higher temperatures than the iPhones.The benchmark *tests* are the exact same other than being run on different APIs. What's being rendered is identical between iOS and Android is the exact same.
techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Very nice, I think you should write that in your review. Although taking an iPhone review and then starting off with exploiting its apparent weakness on the first graph, which is the only thing most people will read, isn't very objective in my opinion. I also generally think it's better craftmanship to run benchmarks that have received updates on both devices, regardless.I mean, opening 3Dmark on the new iPhone literally starts it up in an iPhone 8 compatibiltiy mode. You can tell by how the UI doesn't even border the entire display. I just don't see a single compelling argument as to why you would ever pick this tool.
techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Hi Andrei, I see that you updated the review. I apologise for my harsh tone, thank you for this discussion, I learned a lot of new info.Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
I updated absolutely nothing ...............techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Oh so you are here, why are you not addressing my point ?Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
What point? The UI is irrelevant, the test is offscreen.techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Okay, i'll just have to quote yourself then:" I’ve actually gone back and quickly retested the iPhone XS on iOS13 and did see a 20% increase in performance compared to what we see in the graphs here; " - Andrei Frumusanu
And here is the knockout:
" the workload is running on Metal and the iOS version is irrelevant in that regard." - Andrei Frumusanu
Jesus christ, pull yourself together and fix your god damn review.
People reading, you can make your own conclusion here.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
There is nothing to fix and there is nothing wrong with the benchmark, you went from the test being old and broken, to talking about it throttling differently because it's older, to the UI being an issue when it's completely irrelevant. The scores are what they are because that's the performance of the chip.The physics test sucks on Apple because it's one weakness in their microarchitecture: https://benchmarks.ul.com/news/understanding-3dmar...
techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Are you literally quoting an article from 2013 to prove something? I didn't go from anywhere, it IS old and broken. The score does NOT represent the throttling you would expect on updated software and certainly can NOT be graphed and compared with the Android version. It is BS that the app renders the same thing, you have literally 0 way of knowing since you didn't write the code.And I didn't go "herp derp, the UI is small" - I said that the app is so ancient that it literally boots in compatibility mode for the iPhone 8. And it is a real thing, go ahead and check the developer forums.
"The scores are what they are because that's the performance of the chip." ...
" I’ve actually gone back and quickly retested the iPhone XS on iOS13 and did see a 20% increase in performance compared to what we see in the graphs here; "
Comeone dude, stop it.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
The THROTTLING has nothing to do with the software version or and GPU driver updates that Apple makes to improve performance. The improved drivers on the A12 in iOS13 do NOT change the throttling % between peak performance and sustained, which is a PHYSICAL characteristic of the phone.The workloads renders the SAME SCENE both on Android and iOS. We work closely with Futuremark, the developer of the benchmark, along with the developers of GFXBench. If you cannot accept this you have no place reading AT as I can not do anything more to convince you of basic facts regarding the testing.
The compatibility mode you blarb about is related to the UI resolution. It DOES NOT matter in any way for the test as it's been rendered off-screen in our suite. The performance results DO NOT CHANGE.
I am completely done with this topic.
techsorz - Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - link
Ofc you are, people can freely read the comments and not get mislead by your unprofessional ‘review’. Enjoy being the only site on the planet claiming that it will throttle by 50%.techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
And even if you do manage to convince me, you can't put the Android phones on the same graph when the benchmark versions are not even the same.Anand2019 - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
techsorz. What do you Think of Gary's Speed Test G?techsorz - Monday, October 28, 2019 - link
His videos are solid and his tests goes across the entire spectrum, without any bias or shoddy, outdated methodology. Especially because he wrote the test-bench himself and knows what he is doing, unlike Andrei.royrkval - Sunday, October 20, 2019 - link
Great review, Andrei! I love the architectural stuff. How did you discover the multiply and divide pipeline improvements?DJWELL - Sunday, October 20, 2019 - link
This without shadows of doubt was the most lying and false stories of all time!Why then in side-by-side testing on world-wide technology conventions do these iPhones ever win?
Because when people buy and put them side by side with others that doesn't happen?
Why doesn't this also happen in the actual tests on YouTube?
Simple! Tests purchased from Internet to satisfy investors!
royrkval - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Many tests on YouTube involve opening and reopening apps. That's kind of like testing a car by seeing how fast you can open the door and buckle up.techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
This test is fundamentally wrong as the test-bed used on iOS is completely outdated. This article should be taken down and revised since it is misleading.DJWELL - Sunday, October 20, 2019 - link
In most official tests side by side, you never see an iPhone win! Only win in paid programs or paid places for that to happen!In official tests at official events It never happened and the Apple is always after many. So as many people I say this is a false news! False information!
techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Yes.. fake news... all the others are wrong.. Anandtech is right. Did you vote for Trump aswell=?BradleyTwo - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
My apologies if this has been disclosed already, but would it be possible to ask if Apple supplied these phones for testing?The reason I ask is that there is quite a long thread over at a popular Mac rumors forum where a number of us are concerned at the variable screen quality on the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max.
Many of us, myself included, have received a suboptimal screen, in that it was a dim, murky yellow display (the less polite of us have called them p-stained), while others have received screens which are not uniformly lit.
We have generally exchanged them to receive marginally better units, a few of which have been perfect, but a disappointing majority of the exchanges are often still below the apparently impressive characteristics of the displays discussed in the review.
As this is not mentioned in the various iPhone 11 Pro reviews, a number of us have formed suspicions that Apple has cherry picked the best screens to supply to reviewers.
A clarification whether Apple did indeed supply the units, or if they were bought off the shelf, would be much appreciated.
techsorz - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Apple calibrates each device, this is what XDR essentially is. However this will create better uniformity across displays than make them as different as you say.Dim, murky yellow is probably caused by you not disabling true-tone and auto-brightness. Otherwhise you have a very faulty unit, as this display should be bright enough to nearly burn out your retina. (Exaggeration)
Not uniformly lit could be an error, just return it in this case. Clearly Apple wouldn't supply faulty hardware to anyone on purpose, not testers or consumers.
Andrei Frumusanu - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
These are Apple review samples, but in our experience and testing they don't differ from commercial models.BradleyTwo - Monday, October 21, 2019 - link
Thank you for the clarification. It would of course be negligent for Apple PR not to ensure reviewers receive fully tested units.I can assure you, however, that when it comes to the screen, the number of less than optimal units being sold at retail is probably higher than you might think. While these are most likely all within manufacturing tolerances for QC purposes, some of them I highly doubt Apple would send to reviewers.
Oh well, at least the 14 day return period provides the opportunity to exchange. The "screen lottery" we call it.
Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - link
Apple would have to be very misleading in providing fully sealed units. It's possible that some retail units perform worse but over the years we've never really encountered such a unit.s.yu - Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - link
"It would of course be negligent for Apple PR not to ensure reviewers receive fully tested units."lol! Samsung Fold.
joms_us - Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - link
It is pity though the so-called fastest SoC is not even close to these Android phones which are typically half the speed of fastest desktops. How do you expect people to believe A13 is faster than i-9900K or Ryzen 3950X? Where GeekBiased and jurassic SP2006? LOLhttps://youtu.be/ay9V5Ec8eiY?t=514
https://youtu.be/DtSgdrKztGk?t=423
https://youtu.be/PkVW5eSXKfw?t=115
I'd say cut the crap and show us real-world results not cherry-picked worthless numbers from benchmarking tools.
Quantumz0d - Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - link
The fanboys man they are so blinded by reality, Apple was able to set a perfect world utopian dream for them. Can't fix stupid.I used to run Sultanxda kernel on my OP3 with SD820 processor the SD821 had higher clock speed over 820 but guess what OP screwed it up or Qualcomm didn't provide fix there was Clockspeed crashing at high freq so he disabled it entirely on both big and small. Guess what ? Benches took a massive hit. But UX ? Nope. Infact it improved a lot how is that possible ? I guess Spec and GB only matters right.
Pixel 3 lagged badly due to the RAM issue no one mentions all say its beautiful wonderful amazing. Guess what ? 1080P 60FPS doesn't exist as an option and its auto as Google deems. 4XL no 4K60FPS because less storage. No press mentions.
Coming to this garbage phone. iOS 13 whatever. Same icons, same springboard since 1.1.4 (I used it and JBed it) no desktop no customization to OS. All iPhones on the planet look same just like the brainwash here of ridiculous comparision of a GB (bullshit bench) and Spec score. Masterpiece of corporate koolaid.
Why don't they mention how the Audio format which records is not in Lossless but in AAC crap unlike my V30 does with the 192KHz 24Bit option in FLAC with Limiter and Gain switch or the Video mode which had full manual Pro controls or even the camera having any Manual options. All ASUS, Samsung, LG, Sony, OnePlus, Huawei offer Pro camera forget Pro Video which only LG and Sony do. But No one cares, simpletons only care about A series marketing BS.
The worst of all no Filesystem. $1000 device which doesn't even have a Filsystem usable by end user or has an option to install the apps off the AppStore. Nor any SD expansion slot to be prepared for emergency. But people are riling up and getting worked over the ARM masterrace LMAO with BGA MacBook Pro with 1 USB C port. Bonus is, to develop iOS app you must pay $99 yearly fee AND own that BGA Soldered KB/Touchpad/Battery/SSD macbook because XCode !!
The abomination design. Display mutilation for 3 years while heralding best colors best display LOL. Very funny.
And no 3.5mm jack. Because Apple wanted to make $5bn off revenue from AirPods (Higher than AMDs entire profit) guess what ? Less than 320kbps data rate LMAO. My LG V30 absolutely destroys this phone to oblivion with its ESS9218P DAC processor only found in Top motherboards from ASUS/GB/MSI. Even Vivo Nex decimates this garbage audio iPhone.
Very very funny how even Qualcomm who spent billions of dollars in R&D for their Centriq ARM server processor by even relegating the teams which worked on post 810, full custom Kryo 820 series and dumping all it out because of the Broadcom M&A (Major beneficiary was Apple due to the Hock Tan connection with Apple, he would sell out all LTE patents) impact and no profit in the ARM server market, forget logistics, capex, ROI, x86 emulation AND 64Bit x86 Emulation legacy code with a massive scale of Linux community around.
But we want ARM A series BGA processor which has world class Spec and GB score and beats Mainstream and HEDT LGA processors.
Claps !
Anand2019 - Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - link
Why are you so angry?Quantumz0d - Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - link
Fed up of the unending talk of x86 vs ARM is one hell even AT forums cpu and oc subforum. Whole thread dedicated to worship this talk.Two Apple ruined smartphones by this policy of removing jack and features while raising the price to moon, Other companies also want greed by forcing people to buy BT earphones which sound garbage, horrid longevity (Need to charge everyday) pushing people to buy trash (Beats) thus making whole market saturated with Apple agenda. Look at Google Pixel 4 they also removed offering Dongle, Samsung, OnePlus. Same thing like Apple very greedy.
Three destroyed the laptops with thin and light obsession. And soldered junk with less and less I/O.
Finally 4th - this corporation is built on American values but is a stooge to cash from China thus enabling more totalitarianship while claiming Liberty on US land. Spineless positiin.
The Garden Variety - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
Ever stop to think it's you who is the outsider, and the thinks you think are important, not literally everyone else? Does that ever stop to cross your mind as you vent your spleen in these disconnected, slipshot rants across a growing number of Anadtech articles? Does it ever feel like to you that technology is slipping away from you, and the things that you and an ever shrinking minority think are important?Yeah, I didn't think so.
s.yu - Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - link
Your ignorance and arrogance is hard to look at.I set animation speed in my 2 year old Android phone to 0.5 and most operations are now much faster.
My 1st gen iPP is also much faster across the board with the upgrade to iPadOS, that obviously didn't upgrade the hardware.
Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, October 29, 2019 - link
The video transcode tests in your linked videos don't even use the CPU, it's merely a hardware decoder/encoder block thing.d8e8fca - Saturday, November 2, 2019 - link
The difference in SPECfp2006 scores between the A13 and the 9900k is actually a lot closer since the former includes the subscore for the 447.dealII test and the latter does not. Removing the test from the A13's score yields a value of 70.28, which is 6.5% slower.SirKronan - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Why do we still not have the reviews on the Samsung Note 10/10+ phones? These iPhones are still fairly hot off the press and Anand already has their very thorough review complete. I always prefer Anand's reviews of top tier phones to most other sites. This is a major letdown (that seems to indicate possible Apple bias?) to top tier phone enthusiasts. The Note 10+ isn't even on the battery comparison graph, despite representing a major battery size upgrade to Samsung's lineup.Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, November 12, 2019 - link
We do not have the Note10's to review ; Samsung doesn't sample us.Given that the phones just aren't that much different to the S10's, we're unlikely to spend several thousand on purchasing the units for a review that won't have all that much new interesting information on the devices. As a note, we had to buy the S10s for that review earlier in the year.
willis936 - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
Why is there not a single word on the storage subsystem?Lestat1886 - Friday, December 27, 2019 - link
« the competition in 2019 was able to push out a ton of different designs that certainly look a lot more modern than the iPhone 11 family »I don’t really agree, unless a pop up camera is a counted as good design innovation... and those phones don’t have any face recognition sensors... i still find the iPhone design to be among the best out there and more than competitive
LaDiva - Friday, January 24, 2020 - link
Can anyone give me some feedback about the sound recording quality for iPhone11? I'm looking for something to do audition video recordings of classical singers - so acoustic quality is vitally important. I'd be very grateful for any suggestions/feedback.Lucas2999 - Wednesday, February 19, 2020 - link
I want to know how to get the MLP data of A13/A12 and other Android Platform? Simple test code writen by yourself or standard benchmark test?zhuzhengchao - Wednesday, November 4, 2020 - link
When looking into the floorplan, there is likely a coprocessor in the top design of GPU (except for the bus interface with LLC), which is shared with the 4 cores.Am I right? and who have idea about it.
Anyway, it is so big one.
MaxShen - Wednesday, November 18, 2020 - link
Hi Anandtech,How to bind software thread to the thunder (small core，such as Core 1) of Apple-A13？
Because I want to test the thunder (small core，such as Core 1) performance.
So far, I'm out of jail and can run software threads from the apple A13 command line.
Thanks！
Best Wishes
MaxShen