14 ms·

Apple’s 2½ year old iPhone 12 is 6% faster than the new Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra

337 points by adrianvincent 4y ago

olliej 4y ago
I will never not think of Apple's Bionacles :D This does look to just be geek bench CPU, and we need to be honest, people play games on phones now so GPU performance matters, so if you're going to make an extreme claim like the headline, you need more than a single category of a single benchmark.
spogbiper 4y ago
If I could have Android/Linux/whatever I choose on Apple hardware, I absolutely would purchase
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  I bought an iPhone 14 pro. Switched back to my s21 within two weeks. On apple, the animations are slicker, the hardware much better, and arguably the software stack higher quality. The Bluetooth audio quality was noticeably better on every device I used, from old car to brand new stereo. But the always on display isnt as good, focus modes didn't work quite like I wanted, widgets are less powerful, the notifications UI is inferior, and accessing system settings is more cumbersome. Bonus: the lightning port is inferior. So yes. I would love the android software architecture with apple hardware and privacy.
  - zcmack 4y ago
    same experience here but am a pixel person, not samsung. why is the notification experience on iOS so bad? it feels like doing chores. i figure system settings are annoying because the default is good enough for most users.
    - radlad 4y ago
      The goofy thing is that I remember when iOS used to be _better_ at notifications. Android didn't used to give you so much control over app notifications and iOS required apps to use them much more sparingly. I still have issues with Android's notifications though. Some apps insist on using a single "General" category that includes both notifications I require as well as marketing and advertisements.
    - unethical_ban 4y ago
      My main gripe was that each notification was a separate bar item that I had to clear out - five messages from the same person in the same app, is five notification bars in the menu. And the "smart" grouping I don't think fixes that. I like MacOS okay, but re: notifications, they too have this abysmally small "X" to clear out notifications. They're just... annoying.
ubermonkey 4y ago
I'm an Apple user, but I'm not sure what this indicates. How are benchmarks on a phone useful? What matters is user's perceived speed.
proee 4y ago
Too bad iOS is so slow when it comes to scrolling. Wish there was an option to make it as fast as android.
SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
I guess my question is - why do I care about geekbench? When was the last time someone who doesn't play games on their phone thought "man, I wish this was faster"? Because it's been years for me. The good news I hear is that Samsung is finally improving their battery life. That is a score that I actually care about.
- kccqzy 4y ago
  Funny, I often think I wish this or that app was faster, but the reality is that for architectural reasons developers are putting heavy computations on the main thread and leave all other cores unused. So I welcome any and all single-thread performance improvements, if only because of lazy developers.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    I don’t really want multi-core phone apps for the most part. Smartphones aren’t like full computers, they are small devices with little batteries. I want my phone to run single core programs with smooth scrolling and no jitter. Multi core performance on a phone is like towing capacity on a sports car.
- nixass 4y ago
  Last time I cared about Geekbench and such was highschool. The metric is so generic it's irelevant in normal conversation. It's same kind of topic EV cars are trying to introduce with instant torque and crazy acceleration - nobody in real life scenario cares about it.
- peoplearepeople 4y ago
  All I care about is: * does javascript execute fast * which video codecs are hardware accelerated
  - jacooper 4y ago
    > * does javascript execute fast No, Android phones browser performance is still a joke compared to I phones, which are faster than desktop PCs!(in speedometer)
picture 4y ago
Does benchmark results really matter that much for phones? I don't see myself compiling code, playing graphics intensive video games, multitasking with many engineering software running simultaneously, on a phone. Although Apple most definitely still leads on these factors, I think battery life, general latency/responsiveness of doing daily tasks, reliability, etc, are more important than some random coremark.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Battery life (especially idle battery life) and feeling responsive are all I care about. iOS devices have usually done far better on those fronts while having smaller batteries and weaker hardware compared with Android devices, so, yeah, super don't care about it benchmarking as faster than an Android device. Can I still put it on my nightstand at 10pm with 15% battery and have my alarm go off at 8AM with 8-9% charge remaining? Cool, don't care how fast it benchmarks.
  - Zurrrrr 4y ago
    Pretty much any phone would only take 5% over 6-8 hours if being inactive and just waiting for an alarm to go off.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Has Android gotten a lot better on that front? Last I developed for Android was after they had some big push to improve battery life and they were still a ton worse.
      - Zurrrrr 4y ago
        They've never been that bad in my experience. My guess is you were using something preinstalled with a ton of battery leeching crap. Android itself doesn't do that, but much like buying a PC, it's hard to stop manufacturers loading it up with cruft.
        4y ago
gbil 4y ago
I like my slower android in which I can run my browser engine of choice, install any program I want in an easy way without time limitations and customize it in general as I want. Did I mention that it has a USB-C connector too? Disclaimer: I have an old iphone, used iphone 11 for weeks then went back to Android and I daily drive a M1 Pro Macbook
- konart 4y ago
  > in which I can run my browser engine of choice Soon on iOS too, to be fair. USB-C to follow most likely.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    Hopefully they’ll at least keep a couple models around with lightning, I don’t want to re-buy my dongles and parse things like USB-C 3.2 Gen 1x2 vs USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (and does it have thunderbolt).
  - Wingman4l7 4y ago
    > USB-C to follow most likely Only because Apple was forced to by an EU ruling. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they restrict sales of USB-C phones to EU-only, out of spite.
    - jaywalk 4y ago
      I would be absolutely shocked if they made such a basic hardware feature region-specific. There is practically zero chance that USB-C isn't rolled out worldwide with the iPhone 15.
    - eagerpace 4y ago
      I can't wait to see it as the leading feature for the 15. Revolutionary! Amazing!
    - wpm 4y ago
      Are you going to volunteer to be the one to explain to my 60 and 70 year old relatives why they need to get all new cables for their phones?
yumraj 4y ago
The one, and only benchmark, I care about is battery longevity. Not how long battery lasts before needing charge, but how many years it lasts before dropping to say 80% of original capacity that it needs to be replaced or the phone needs to be updated. Most, if not all, modern phones are performant enough that I won’t need to update for a long time, if not for the battery issues. At least for my use case.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- thewataccount 4y ago
  FWIW my iPhone 7+ went 5 years and holds a charge for ~12 hours. It was just at 78% when I replaced it a few weeks ago but TBH that number is very... random (I used to do phone repair). If you have a charger at your desk/car then honestly you could likely go even longer. I've seen people struggling after 2 years though so it's rather random. Just a random N=1 sample for you
  - wetpaws 4y ago
    12 hours is laughably small running time
    - thewataccount 4y ago
      Absolutely 12 hours is not enough for a lot of people That was with a few hours of screen time - I found that it didn't matter to me because I'd just plug it in at home/work. I'd call it "servicable" but certainly not great - but for 5 years I was personally surprised.
- ericpauley 4y ago
  All phone battery longevities are probably within a factor of 2x (for reputable brands). An iPhone official battery replacement is $100 installed. Is longevity really that material for a component that is 1/8 the price of the phone?
jacooper 4y ago
At this point I really don't care about what is the latest and greatest in phones They are all the same at this point, we are way past when Specs actually mattered(outside of JS performance on mobile, thank you Snapdragon!), they are just too small for anything useful, at least for me personally. I just buy a pixel and install GrapheneOS/CalyxOS on it, and call it a day. Its a phone that works, and I can relatively trust it, certainly more than other spyware, even if sandboxed google services are installed.
- metalliqaz 4y ago
  Why buy a Pixel only to replace the OS? Pixels are basically minimum viable hardware to deliver Google software. Without the Google software, its just a mid-range phone at high-end prices.
  - cokeandpepsi 4y ago
    the a series are well priced/supported and do more than enough for me, you can pick one up for $300 and be good for years.. all while there are people making monthly payments for 1,200 iphones
    - fullstop 4y ago
      > all while there are people making monthly payments for 1,200 iphones A lot of the carrier /manufacturer incentives (in the USA) have been fantastic lately, especially if you had an older device which could be traded in. Right now, through Google, you can trade a Pixel 5a in when buying a Pixel 6a and pay $50 for the upgrade.
    - acdha 4y ago
      I find it interesting that you’re comparing an old, low-end Pixel phone to the most expensive current generation iPhone. If your phone budget is $300 you’d be comparing it to the similarly priced iPhone 11 or SE; if you wanted a prestige flagship phone you’d be comparing it to a high-end Android device costing about the same.
  - 4y ago
nottorp 4y ago
Who cares? I'm pretty sure my iPhone XS is slower, but still less annoying than Android+Samsung UI.
helf 4y ago
And? If you are in the Apple ecosystem, get an iPhone. If you are pleased with Android and not in Apple's ecosystem, then get something like the Samsung. Who the hell cares about this crap?
- CBarkleyU 4y ago
  What about me? I want a high-end Android, non Chinese OEM, non Exynos-based, non shutter-speed-problem-riddled phone that guarantess >3 years of Android OS updates and has shown in the past to deliver on those promises and has a respectable battery life. Which phone should I get? Or am I too picky for something I want to pay >$1000 for?
  - hamilyon2 4y ago
    Sony flagmans checks most of your boxes. Updates stop after 2 and a half years, true, but since it is android you can update to linageos. Battery life is pretty good, screen is excellent. As a bonus, it is less bulky than IPhone and bloatware... is manageable.
yieldcrv 4y ago
Although an Iphone 15 or equivalent is going to be very incremental, Iphones with USB-C are going to fly off the shelves. Lighting connector is 10 years old now, and is USB 2.0 speed. Still funny to see hotels with the pre-lightning connector and got screwed, but its been a long time now.
barbazoo 4y ago
Why anyone would get a Samsung is beyond me. The amount of bloatware they install is insane and a lot of that you can't even uninstall. Plus it takes so long to get OS updates. And then there is Bixby or what that piece of shit is called.
- ignoramous 4y ago
  Beyond comical is Samsung's insistence on running a type-1 hypervisor (real time kernel protection, aka RKP) for security purposes: https://archive.is/6ClWm https://archive.is/6ClWm
- cma 4y ago
  Can you uninstall Siri and replace with google assistant?
- lasfallas 4y ago
  2017 called and wants your comment back. Samsung is best Android manufacturer in class regarding OS upgrades and security updates, Bixby can be switched off and actually performs well in tests. Visible bloatware has been reduced significantly and most of the visible apps you can uninstall or deactivate.
  - tempoponet 4y ago
    2023 calling - According to this Ars article from 3 days ago the Galaxy S23 install size is 4x that of stock Android. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/the-samsung-galaxy-s23s-bloated-android-build-somehow-uses-60gb-of-storage/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/the-samsung-galaxy-s... It's not that comforting just being able to uninstall/disable things after paying ~$1000 for hardware loaded with apps that benefit everyone but the customer.
    - jamiek88 4y ago
      SIXTY GIGABYTES? Holy moly that’s crazy. That’s three full 64bit win10 installs! It doesn’t even have the a/b partitions! Which is just as well at 60GB!
herpderperator 4y ago
> However, single-core performance is generally considered more important when it comes to overall speed for everyday usage, as most tasks are unable to scale efficiently across multiple cores. Thank you for acknowledging this. I think few people actually appreciate the need for better single-core performance. It's, in comparison, easy to just add more cores and use more power, but what is hard is making one core faster and faster and use less power.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  "Few people appreciate it" because it's no longer relevant with modern operating systems and programs for the vast majority of users and applications, which is why in almost every market imaginable, CPUs and SoCs have migrated toward higher core counts. It takes a special sort of arrogance to look at literally the entire industry and go "psssst, savages don't know what they're doing. Single core performance is where it's at."
  - flykespice 4y ago
    > because it's no longer relevant with modern operating systems and programs for the vast majority of users and applications The article just proves you wrong Apple's products are lightyears ahead from Android phones in perfomance. Apple CPU design always put single core perfomance upfront, because they know most application are still optimized to single core usage. how is not not relevant?
  - dontlaugh 4y ago
    Very little of the hot loop involving user interaction will ever use more than one core. Single core performance is still the most important.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    No longer relevant, wtf? It’s just that not much improvement can be done in single thread performance anymore and it is much more easier to design and market “n times as many cores” then “we bumped single threaded performance by 0.2%”. Mind you, almost every single application you have will ultimately depend on single threaded performance, relatively few problems can even theoretically make use of multiple cores, let alone are programmed to do so. Sure, multiple single-threaded process will like more available cores, but it is more limited on mobile devices, where few very fast cores and more slower ones are the norm.
gregwebs 4y ago
It's a single core benchmark, so not surprising. The single core performance has always been a lot better on the iPhones, and you can't fix this in software. You can produce a multi-core benchmark that makes an Android look just as good as an iPhone, and some apps will be just as snappy. But when using the web browser the difference in performance was noticeable for me so I upgraded to a used iPhone.
fundad 4y ago
If Samsung could make the fastest chips they'd still be Apple's supplier
- drozycki 4y ago
  If Samsung could make the fastest chips they’d still be Samsung’s supplier
Zurrrrr 4y ago
Compare it to a Pixel or stock firmware and see if that's true. Even if it is, it's such a huge compromise to use an Apple device given the nannying and lack of features, it isn't worth it.
pwthornton 4y ago
The core advantage for the average user of Apple's smartphone chips being so powerful is that they'll get updates for a super long time and remain high-quality phones for a long time.
cosmotic 4y ago
I traded a galaxy S3 + 3 year agreement in for a free S22; can you do that with an iPhone? Seems like we are comparing a free phone to a many hundreds of dollars phone.
- ericpauley 4y ago
  You paid with the agreement; it’s factored into the plan prices. Yes, you can get similar deals with carriers for an iPhone.
jeroenhd 4y ago
This doesn't really showcase how much Apple's chips are as much as how far Qualcom has fallen behind. On the other hand, the results also show how much work Apple will need to put into their GPUs, as the clearly inferior chip is still beating the iPhone 14 hands down in terms of GPU horsepower. The relevant review, though, is performance per watt. This video (https://youtu.be/s0ukXDnWlTY https://youtu.be/s0ukXDnWlTY) from a few months ago explores the power efficiency graphs and that's probably what most phone users really want. Nobody is gaming on their phone until it hits the limits of passive cooling and very few people will need the raw CPU performance for more than a second per page load. I don't even know what intensive single core benchmarks are even good for in real life, maybe Javascript if you're somehow running the JS VM at 100% for minutes straight? That doesn't sound like something I'd want my phone to do! Qualcom's advancements in speed and longevity have been incremental, sometimes even decremental, for years now. Mediatek, previously the chipset for every 100 dollar Chinese phone, keeps closing while Qualcom desperately tries to squeeze just a little more juice out of their cores. Apple's progress is also slowing down, but not nearly as much as their most important competitor's. It's a shame, really. Hopefully Google and Microsoft will develop their own chips for real in the future because you can't just wait for Qualcom anymore. Microsoft REALLY wants a good M1/2 competitor but the other chips in the ARM space just aren't up for the task. I'm sure Google would also love for their Chromebooks to become more powerful, though their own mobile devices seem to focus on midrange performance with benefits in software and dedicated silicon instead of fast general purpose compute. In the end, I have no horse in the game because I don't think I'll be upgrading any time soon. My current phone is more than fast enough for my needs. The battery is slowly fading but as long as I can still get through the day I'm satisfied. With the absolutely ridiculous prices of phones these days, I'm putting off an "upgrade" for as long as I can.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Performance per watt only matters until you hit 1+ day battery life in regular usage. Beyond that, who cares? It also wouldn't matter if the thing could recharge super fast. The M1/M2 laptops have done this, I noticed that people who used to bring chargers with them at conferences/meetings don't even bother anymore, or don't bring it out of the bag.
yegle 4y ago
Just yesterday I was trying to generate a vanity pub key for Nostr. I was using https://github.com/kdmukai/nostr_vanity_npub https://github.com/kdmukai/nostr_vanity_npub which uses the python-nostr library which in turn uses https://github.com/bitcoin-core/secp256k1 https://github.com/bitcoin-core/secp256k1. The test (single thread with -j1 flag) has some interesting result. Time taken to calculate 1 million keys: i7 8650U=2m5s, Oracle Cloud A1 VM=3m30s, Ryzen ThreadRipper Pro 3945WX=3m30s, GCE VM Xeon 2.2Ghz=6m. So in this particular use case, an 8th gen Intel mobile CPU is the winner. Would you want to use 8650U based on this test result? Probably not.
epolanski 4y ago
I can't understand who are the people that care about smartphone performance. I do every computation and gaming outside my phone. My Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 from 3 years ago feels as good as when I bought it when reading the net, watching youtube, chatting, emailing or editing pictures. And my Redmi scores 300 in the same Benchmark, where the S22 scores 900, the S23 1500 and the iPhone 14 Pro 1900. Maybe JS performance could be slightly better? But I rarely navigate to such poorly optimized websites.
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  Lots of people (especially in the third world) use their phone as their primary computer and gaming device.
  - epolanski 4y ago
    Yes, and they're better off spending 200€ for a phone and whatever remains for a gaming device and computer rather than caring what 1200$ phone do.
    - satvikpendem 4y ago
      Or they can just play on their phones. What you want is not what everyone wants.
    - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
      Today's $1200 phone is tomorrow's $200 phone, both in terms of the secondhand market and advancements / price reductions over time.
  - doetoe 4y ago
    Also the ones that can afford a $1000 phone? I thought that was the case for people that cannot afford a computer
    - satvikpendem 4y ago
      Lots of phones go down in price or they're specifically geared for that market by having a beefy CPU and GPU but bottom-tier everything else.
rado 4y ago
And consumes less power
scarface74 4y ago
I wonder how many people who are now saying “we don’t need faster phones” would have been beating Apple up back in the 68K and PowerPC days when Apple’s hardware was slower?
alkonaut 4y ago
An iPhone 7 from not sure how long ago is more than fast enough for everything I throw at it. It gets OS upgrades and just works. The best reason for having a faster chip is that if it gets the job done quicker then battery times will improve.
DanCarvajal 4y ago
If iOS 17 does in fact have side loading I'll finally be jumping ship to a 12 of 13 mini so fast.
t8sr 4y ago
Everyone in this thread is arguing about operating systems and their mobile OS preference... why? The interesting point here, which is corroborated by different sources than just TFA, is that Apple's silicon is 1-2 generations ahead of everyone else. Whether you like iPhone or Android, I think we should all agree that's a bad situation for the world to be in. Apple's advantage in mobile CPUs is coming at a time when new types of devices are appearing, like AR glasses. If Samsung and Qualcomm don't catch up soon, Apple will win that space and have an even more unassailable monopoly.
- pkulak 4y ago
  Does Apple really have some secret sauce, or are they just consistently first in line for TSMC's latest process? Not saying that's better or worse, but it's a very different problem.
  - bangonkeyboard 4y ago
    The S23 is on TSMC's 4nm node. The iPhone 12 was TSMC's first-gen 5nm.
    - pkulak 4y ago
      Thank you. No offense to everyone else replying to me, but this one-liner is worth more than all the hot-takes and random conjecture put together.
  - 6nf 4y ago
    Apple Silicon benefits from full vertical integration and not having to worry about third parties and their particular needs for the same silicon.
    - moolcool 4y ago
      What about Samsung Exynos?
      - 4y ago
uptownfunk 4y ago
After having multiple google pixel phones break and never having an iPhone break (after much abuse) I realized that the hardware quality far trumps any software AI voodoo that I care about. Mind you I don’t do fancy stuff on my phone- YouTube, insta, texting, email, slack. The main culprits
gamblor956 4y ago
My 22Ultra overnight: loses 6-8% battery life. My GF's iPhone 14 overnight: loses 20% battery life. My GF uses my phone more than I do because her iPhone is usually dead by the end of the day if she doesn't remember to charge it every few hours. I'm willing to accept a slightly slower phone if it means my phone can make it through the day without me being a hostage to charging.
- acdha 4y ago
  Do you have the same apps installed? Years back I found uninstalling Facebook was like a 20% battery life improvement - I didn’t even open it much but it was so busy in the background. Going through the battery usage report and pruning apps is like flossing: most people should do it more often than they do.
  - gamblor956 4y ago
    Yes, we both have FB and Insta installed... The problem is the poor battery management on the phone. Not fair to blame the apps for Apple's failure.
    - acdha 4y ago
      > The problem is the poor battery management on the phone. Not fair to blame the apps for Apple's failure. You can't separate the two: if the apps are requesting the phone do more work, that's going to affect the battery life. That's why I suggested looking at the battery usage history since it often has surprises if you don't, and comparing two devices with different workloads doesn’t tell you much.
superkuh 4y ago
Both of them are terrible at being phones and a Nokia from the mid-2000s outperforms them.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dileepkr 4y ago
To all the iphone diehards, I recently switched from Samsung to iphone 14PM and I whole heartedly hate following things: 1. The keyboard in ios: its unintuitive and ancient compared to the android counterparts. And No, Gboard, swiftkey keyboard in ios suck equally bad too. 2. Battery drain issues: Battery drains randomly, main culprit being "find my" process. This alone drains ~8% of battery overnight on my iphone and ~18% on my ipad overnight even with background app refresh turned off. 3. Lack of the back button is a huge pain in the ass. Some apps design their own navigation pattern and it sucks to operate the phone in 1 hand. For e.g, Youtube requires you to pull down on the video currently playing to go back to search results than allowing the native back swipe or back arrow on top left. Meanwhile, I have agree that the apps in iOS are much nicer than the android apps, the same apps I used in android which sucked big time work flawlessly in iOS. FaceID is much reliable than the shitty in screen fingerprint readers in Samsung/Android phones. So both Android and iOS have their pros and cons, and after using both, I can confidently say iphone is not the best phone in the world and user had to experience both to choose what suits them better.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  > . Battery drain issues: Battery drains randomly, main culprit being "find my" process. You probably have an AirTag around you, there's a bug causing that. Update the AirTag firmware. > 3. Lack of the back button is a huge pain in the ass Swipe from the left edge of the screen to right, that's the iOS back button.
  - sdflhasjd 4y ago
    > Update the AirTag firmware. What if it's not my AirTag?
    - slaw 4y ago
      If not your AirTag follows you, you'll get message informing you that someone is tracking you.
      - 4y ago
mynameisash 4y ago
I'm particularly frustrated with the market for phones. I'w not going to buy an iPhone, and I'd really like to avoid the Google ecosystem (eg, by using GrapheneOS). I just received new Pixel 6a phones for me and my family yesterday only to discover that there's no 3.5mm jack. I really feel like old man yelling at cloud, but the more advanced phones and the software get, the more I miss the days of my cheapy Motorola flip phone.
- stevemk14ebr 4y ago
  you've got to be very disconnected to not know that 3.5mm jacks have been removed from most modern phones by now (a terrible choice, I agree)
  - mynameisash 4y ago
    I don't follow advances in phones - new models coming out are never on my radar. So if a manufacturer drops functionality like that, I don't notice. And literally every phone I've owned for my nearly 25 years of cell usage has had a 3.5mm jack, so it's never had to be a conscious choice.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  For about $6 from Apple you can buy one of the best-quality audio DACs available and connect your headphones to your Pixels. (You bought several new phones without checking their specs? Come on.)
aeturnum 4y ago
I do think that phones are in a sorry place - but this isn't exactly why. The industry is still based on the concept of a new model every year, but it has been years since there were obvious & universal reasons to get a new model. The striking thing about this fact isn't that Apple is "ahead" - it's that even though Apple has basically lapped the competition on a technical level it doesn't matter much.
scotty79 4y ago
> Despite being over 6% faster for single-core performance, the iPhone 12 is 15.64% slower for multi-core performance compared to the Galaxy S23 Ultra, with scores of 3867 vs 4584. Sounds a bit like intel vs amd.
SergeAx 4y ago
But... Samsung just using Qualcomm chip? I mean, it's not Samsung/Apple, it's Qualcomm/Apple rivalry, isn't it?
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
I just downloaded and run the geekbench 5 on my s22 ultra and it showed 1215, instead of 926 listed in the article. Probably other numbers are of similar quality.
Avlin67 4y ago
whatever the cpu android is bloated. it forces me to prefer an iphone even I dont like apple. I need an ativ S with windows phone like in 2014. Galaxy S23 with W11 would be the best imho. Ativ S was a Galaxy S3 with windows 8 on it
pt_PT_guy 4y ago
Isn't Geekbench always been very biased towards Apple silicon?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- steve1977 4y ago
  Well, both are based on ARM designs anyway. I think some future Snapdragon will even get manufactured by TSMC.
  - sumtechguy 4y ago
    Thought chunks of them already were?
  - aeadio 4y ago
    The Snapdragon in the S23 Ultra is already manufactured on TSMC 4 nm.
    - steve1977 4y ago
      Ah ok, that could well be, thx!
- hs86 4y ago
  It is biased towards passively cooled CPUs. It's dev once stated in an interview that they tried to recreate the typical bursty usage patterns of mobile phones, and therefore the added little pauses between the tasks.
- mdasen 4y ago
  The evidence is that Geekbench isn't biased towards Apple Silicon given that other benchmarks agree. For example, AnandTech runs a bunch of SPEC CPU benchmarks and found that the Apple A15 was a lot faster than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 or Exynos 2100 (all 2021 processors): https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-performance-review-faster-more-efficient/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-perfo.... You can check the second page for graphics benchmarks. Apple has been making their own CPU cores for a while while Qualcomm and Samsung are both using the ARM-designed cores. In the case of the above benchmarks, both the Snapdragon and Exynos are using the Cortex-X1 cores from ARM. Google's Tensor processor also uses ARM's X1 cores. Newer Snapdragon processors like the 8 Gen 1 and 8 Gen 2 have used X2 and X3 cores. Apple's ability to produce their own CPU designs has been a big win for them, especially for single-core performance (really important for the majority of what people do with their phones including web/javascript) and for power efficiency (really important for the vast majority of time when users might be using their devices, but not in a taxing way). Apple's custom CPU cores give them a real advantage.
bfrog 4y ago
iphone 12 mini has been my favorite phone I've ever owned, and coincidentally the first iphone I've ever owned.
- FredPret 4y ago
  It starts with one gadget. Then you buy the second Apple device, and find that they work fantastically together. Soon, you're in an all-Apple household!
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    I legit wish they had any competitors doing the thing they do even almost as well. It's worrisome that there's nowhere to turn if Apple goes to shit (I'm very worried about their growing advertising income) that's not a significant downgrade in overall UX.
    - recursive 4y ago
      My experimentation with apple products started and ended with ipods. Their insistence to use itunes for putting music on the device eventually turned me away. I've used about a half dozen hardware music players. The ipod UX was easily the worst because of this, even compared to the Diamond Rio PMP300, which was powered with an AA battery. I don't doubt the apple has good UX for some things. But if you think they're much better at everything, you might have blinders on.
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        Eh, I came to them after about 15 years of thinking Apple users were kinda culty and must be wrong about how good Apple stuff is, and mostly running Linux (though I started on Windows/DOS). No, they're that good, overall. They do fuck up or do annoying things pretty often (requiring iTunes for iPods would be one of those things) but every other option (and there... aren't that many, really) is so much worse that they've yet to push me to switch. I'd love to see a real competitor.
  - 4y ago
asow92 4y ago
I still rock an iPhone 12 Pro Max and love it.
- AstixAndBelix 4y ago
  Saying that you "still rock" something barely 3 years old sounds.... strange. I still rock my 1983 Toyota, sure. I still rock my 20yo HiFi system. But I don't "still rock" my iPhone 11, it was only recently out of production for God's sake!
  - RulerOf 4y ago
    This made me chuckle. I'm "still rocking" an iPhone 12 because I'm still paying it off. If it were dated and obsolete I'd be angry I threw away my money buying Apple.
    - asow92 4y ago
      Paid off the moment I bought it.
      - RulerOf 4y ago
        AT&T in the US offers "trade in rebates" on phones. You trade in a phone and they rebate your phone bill by $800 or $1000 over a 24 month period when you buy a new phone on an installment loan. It's a 0% loan so I'm not going to throw money away just to avoid paying less money over time.
  - asow92 4y ago
    As an iOS developer, 3 years is a long time to upgrade.
    - AstixAndBelix 4y ago
      My mother's iPhone 6 is running iOS 15, which will be supported by all the apps she uses for at least 2-3 more years, bringing the total lifetime of her smartphone close to 10 years. Sure, Apple is pretty draconian when it comes to how much the developers have to keep their tooling up to date, but that's not the same on the consumer side anymore
heavyset_go 4y ago
On a single Geekbench 5 benchmark: > Geekbench 5 scores reveals Apple’s 2½ year old iPhone 12 outperforms Samsung’s latest flagship in single-core performance by 6.15%.

337 points by adrianvincent 4y ago

I will never not think of Apple's Bionacles :D This does look to just be geek bench CPU, and we need to be honest, people play games on phones now so GPU performance matters, so if you're going to make an extreme claim like the headline, you need more than a single category of a single benchmark.

spogbiper 4y ago

If I could have Android/Linux/whatever I choose on Apple hardware, I absolutely would purchase

unethical_ban 4y ago
I bought an iPhone 14 pro. Switched back to my s21 within two weeks. On apple, the animations are slicker, the hardware much better, and arguably the software stack higher quality. The Bluetooth audio quality was noticeably better on every device I used, from old car to brand new stereo. But the always on display isnt as good, focus modes didn't work quite like I wanted, widgets are less powerful, the notifications UI is inferior, and accessing system settings is more cumbersome. Bonus: the lightning port is inferior. So yes. I would love the android software architecture with apple hardware and privacy.
- zcmack 4y ago
  same experience here but am a pixel person, not samsung. why is the notification experience on iOS so bad? it feels like doing chores. i figure system settings are annoying because the default is good enough for most users.
  - radlad 4y ago
    The goofy thing is that I remember when iOS used to be _better_ at notifications. Android didn't used to give you so much control over app notifications and iOS required apps to use them much more sparingly. I still have issues with Android's notifications though. Some apps insist on using a single "General" category that includes both notifications I require as well as marketing and advertisements.
  - unethical_ban 4y ago
    My main gripe was that each notification was a separate bar item that I had to clear out - five messages from the same person in the same app, is five notification bars in the menu. And the "smart" grouping I don't think fixes that. I like MacOS okay, but re: notifications, they too have this abysmally small "X" to clear out notifications. They're just... annoying.

ubermonkey 4y ago

I'm an Apple user, but I'm not sure what this indicates. How are benchmarks on a phone useful? What matters is user's perceived speed.

proee 4y ago

Too bad iOS is so slow when it comes to scrolling. Wish there was an option to make it as fast as android.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago

I guess my question is - why do I care about geekbench? When was the last time someone who doesn't play games on their phone thought "man, I wish this was faster"? Because it's been years for me. The good news I hear is that Samsung is finally improving their battery life. That is a score that I actually care about.

kccqzy 4y ago
Funny, I often think I wish this or that app was faster, but the reality is that for architectural reasons developers are putting heavy computations on the main thread and leave all other cores unused. So I welcome any and all single-thread performance improvements, if only because of lazy developers.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I don’t really want multi-core phone apps for the most part. Smartphones aren’t like full computers, they are small devices with little batteries. I want my phone to run single core programs with smooth scrolling and no jitter. Multi core performance on a phone is like towing capacity on a sports car.
nixass 4y ago
Last time I cared about Geekbench and such was highschool. The metric is so generic it's irelevant in normal conversation. It's same kind of topic EV cars are trying to introduce with instant torque and crazy acceleration - nobody in real life scenario cares about it.
peoplearepeople 4y ago
All I care about is: * does javascript execute fast * which video codecs are hardware accelerated
- jacooper 4y ago
  > * does javascript execute fast No, Android phones browser performance is still a joke compared to I phones, which are faster than desktop PCs!(in speedometer)

picture 4y ago

Does benchmark results really matter that much for phones? I don't see myself compiling code, playing graphics intensive video games, multitasking with many engineering software running simultaneously, on a phone. Although Apple most definitely still leads on these factors, I think battery life, general latency/responsiveness of doing daily tasks, reliability, etc, are more important than some random coremark.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Battery life (especially idle battery life) and feeling responsive are all I care about. iOS devices have usually done far better on those fronts while having smaller batteries and weaker hardware compared with Android devices, so, yeah, super don't care about it benchmarking as faster than an Android device. Can I still put it on my nightstand at 10pm with 15% battery and have my alarm go off at 8AM with 8-9% charge remaining? Cool, don't care how fast it benchmarks.
- Zurrrrr 4y ago
  Pretty much any phone would only take 5% over 6-8 hours if being inactive and just waiting for an alarm to go off.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Has Android gotten a lot better on that front? Last I developed for Android was after they had some big push to improve battery life and they were still a ton worse.
    - Zurrrrr 4y ago
      They've never been that bad in my experience. My guess is you were using something preinstalled with a ton of battery leeching crap. Android itself doesn't do that, but much like buying a PC, it's hard to stop manufacturers loading it up with cruft.
      - 4y ago

gbil 4y ago

I like my slower android in which I can run my browser engine of choice, install any program I want in an easy way without time limitations and customize it in general as I want. Did I mention that it has a USB-C connector too? Disclaimer: I have an old iphone, used iphone 11 for weeks then went back to Android and I daily drive a M1 Pro Macbook

konart 4y ago
> in which I can run my browser engine of choice Soon on iOS too, to be fair. USB-C to follow most likely.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Hopefully they’ll at least keep a couple models around with lightning, I don’t want to re-buy my dongles and parse things like USB-C 3.2 Gen 1x2 vs USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (and does it have thunderbolt).
- Wingman4l7 4y ago
  > USB-C to follow most likely Only because Apple was forced to by an EU ruling. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they restrict sales of USB-C phones to EU-only, out of spite.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    I would be absolutely shocked if they made such a basic hardware feature region-specific. There is practically zero chance that USB-C isn't rolled out worldwide with the iPhone 15.
  - eagerpace 4y ago
    I can't wait to see it as the leading feature for the 15. Revolutionary! Amazing!
  - wpm 4y ago
    Are you going to volunteer to be the one to explain to my 60 and 70 year old relatives why they need to get all new cables for their phones?

yumraj 4y ago

The one, and only benchmark, I care about is battery longevity. Not how long battery lasts before needing charge, but how many years it lasts before dropping to say 80% of original capacity that it needs to be replaced or the phone needs to be updated. Most, if not all, modern phones are performant enough that I won’t need to update for a long time, if not for the battery issues. At least for my use case.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
thewataccount 4y ago
FWIW my iPhone 7+ went 5 years and holds a charge for ~12 hours. It was just at 78% when I replaced it a few weeks ago but TBH that number is very... random (I used to do phone repair). If you have a charger at your desk/car then honestly you could likely go even longer. I've seen people struggling after 2 years though so it's rather random. Just a random N=1 sample for you
- wetpaws 4y ago
  12 hours is laughably small running time
  - thewataccount 4y ago
    Absolutely 12 hours is not enough for a lot of people That was with a few hours of screen time - I found that it didn't matter to me because I'd just plug it in at home/work. I'd call it "servicable" but certainly not great - but for 5 years I was personally surprised.
ericpauley 4y ago
All phone battery longevities are probably within a factor of 2x (for reputable brands). An iPhone official battery replacement is $100 installed. Is longevity really that material for a component that is 1/8 the price of the phone?

jacooper 4y ago

At this point I really don't care about what is the latest and greatest in phones They are all the same at this point, we are way past when Specs actually mattered(outside of JS performance on mobile, thank you Snapdragon!), they are just too small for anything useful, at least for me personally. I just buy a pixel and install GrapheneOS/CalyxOS on it, and call it a day. Its a phone that works, and I can relatively trust it, certainly more than other spyware, even if sandboxed google services are installed.

metalliqaz 4y ago
Why buy a Pixel only to replace the OS? Pixels are basically minimum viable hardware to deliver Google software. Without the Google software, its just a mid-range phone at high-end prices.
- cokeandpepsi 4y ago
  the a series are well priced/supported and do more than enough for me, you can pick one up for $300 and be good for years.. all while there are people making monthly payments for 1,200 iphones
  - fullstop 4y ago
    > all while there are people making monthly payments for 1,200 iphones A lot of the carrier /manufacturer incentives (in the USA) have been fantastic lately, especially if you had an older device which could be traded in. Right now, through Google, you can trade a Pixel 5a in when buying a Pixel 6a and pay $50 for the upgrade.
  - acdha 4y ago
    I find it interesting that you’re comparing an old, low-end Pixel phone to the most expensive current generation iPhone. If your phone budget is $300 you’d be comparing it to the similarly priced iPhone 11 or SE; if you wanted a prestige flagship phone you’d be comparing it to a high-end Android device costing about the same.
- 4y ago

nottorp 4y ago

Who cares? I'm pretty sure my iPhone XS is slower, but still less annoying than Android+Samsung UI.

helf 4y ago

And? If you are in the Apple ecosystem, get an iPhone. If you are pleased with Android and not in Apple's ecosystem, then get something like the Samsung. Who the hell cares about this crap?

CBarkleyU 4y ago
What about me? I want a high-end Android, non Chinese OEM, non Exynos-based, non shutter-speed-problem-riddled phone that guarantess >3 years of Android OS updates and has shown in the past to deliver on those promises and has a respectable battery life. Which phone should I get? Or am I too picky for something I want to pay >$1000 for?
- hamilyon2 4y ago
  Sony flagmans checks most of your boxes. Updates stop after 2 and a half years, true, but since it is android you can update to linageos. Battery life is pretty good, screen is excellent. As a bonus, it is less bulky than IPhone and bloatware... is manageable.

yieldcrv 4y ago

Although an Iphone 15 or equivalent is going to be very incremental, Iphones with USB-C are going to fly off the shelves. Lighting connector is 10 years old now, and is USB 2.0 speed. Still funny to see hotels with the pre-lightning connector and got screwed, but its been a long time now.

barbazoo 4y ago

Why anyone would get a Samsung is beyond me. The amount of bloatware they install is insane and a lot of that you can't even uninstall. Plus it takes so long to get OS updates. And then there is Bixby or what that piece of shit is called.

ignoramous 4y ago
Beyond comical is Samsung's insistence on running a type-1 hypervisor (real time kernel protection, aka RKP) for security purposes: https://archive.is/6ClWm https://archive.is/6ClWm
cma 4y ago
Can you uninstall Siri and replace with google assistant?
lasfallas 4y ago
2017 called and wants your comment back. Samsung is best Android manufacturer in class regarding OS upgrades and security updates, Bixby can be switched off and actually performs well in tests. Visible bloatware has been reduced significantly and most of the visible apps you can uninstall or deactivate.
- tempoponet 4y ago
  2023 calling - According to this Ars article from 3 days ago the Galaxy S23 install size is 4x that of stock Android. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/the-samsung-galaxy-s23s-bloated-android-build-somehow-uses-60gb-of-storage/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/the-samsung-galaxy-s... It's not that comforting just being able to uninstall/disable things after paying ~$1000 for hardware loaded with apps that benefit everyone but the customer.
  - jamiek88 4y ago
    SIXTY GIGABYTES? Holy moly that’s crazy. That’s three full 64bit win10 installs! It doesn’t even have the a/b partitions! Which is just as well at 60GB!

herpderperator 4y ago

> However, single-core performance is generally considered more important when it comes to overall speed for everyday usage, as most tasks are unable to scale efficiently across multiple cores. Thank you for acknowledging this. I think few people actually appreciate the need for better single-core performance. It's, in comparison, easy to just add more cores and use more power, but what is hard is making one core faster and faster and use less power.

KennyBlanken 4y ago
"Few people appreciate it" because it's no longer relevant with modern operating systems and programs for the vast majority of users and applications, which is why in almost every market imaginable, CPUs and SoCs have migrated toward higher core counts. It takes a special sort of arrogance to look at literally the entire industry and go "psssst, savages don't know what they're doing. Single core performance is where it's at."
- flykespice 4y ago
  > because it's no longer relevant with modern operating systems and programs for the vast majority of users and applications The article just proves you wrong Apple's products are lightyears ahead from Android phones in perfomance. Apple CPU design always put single core perfomance upfront, because they know most application are still optimized to single core usage. how is not not relevant?
- dontlaugh 4y ago
  Very little of the hot loop involving user interaction will ever use more than one core. Single core performance is still the most important.
- kaba0 4y ago
  No longer relevant, wtf? It’s just that not much improvement can be done in single thread performance anymore and it is much more easier to design and market “n times as many cores” then “we bumped single threaded performance by 0.2%”. Mind you, almost every single application you have will ultimately depend on single threaded performance, relatively few problems can even theoretically make use of multiple cores, let alone are programmed to do so. Sure, multiple single-threaded process will like more available cores, but it is more limited on mobile devices, where few very fast cores and more slower ones are the norm.

gregwebs 4y ago

It's a single core benchmark, so not surprising. The single core performance has always been a lot better on the iPhones, and you can't fix this in software. You can produce a multi-core benchmark that makes an Android look just as good as an iPhone, and some apps will be just as snappy. But when using the web browser the difference in performance was noticeable for me so I upgraded to a used iPhone.

fundad 4y ago

If Samsung could make the fastest chips they'd still be Apple's supplier

drozycki 4y ago
If Samsung could make the fastest chips they’d still be Samsung’s supplier

Zurrrrr 4y ago

Compare it to a Pixel or stock firmware and see if that's true. Even if it is, it's such a huge compromise to use an Apple device given the nannying and lack of features, it isn't worth it.

pwthornton 4y ago

The core advantage for the average user of Apple's smartphone chips being so powerful is that they'll get updates for a super long time and remain high-quality phones for a long time.

cosmotic 4y ago

I traded a galaxy S3 + 3 year agreement in for a free S22; can you do that with an iPhone? Seems like we are comparing a free phone to a many hundreds of dollars phone.

ericpauley 4y ago
You paid with the agreement; it’s factored into the plan prices. Yes, you can get similar deals with carriers for an iPhone.

jeroenhd 4y ago

This doesn't really showcase how much Apple's chips are as much as how far Qualcom has fallen behind. On the other hand, the results also show how much work Apple will need to put into their GPUs, as the clearly inferior chip is still beating the iPhone 14 hands down in terms of GPU horsepower. The relevant review, though, is performance per watt. This video (https://youtu.be/s0ukXDnWlTY https://youtu.be/s0ukXDnWlTY) from a few months ago explores the power efficiency graphs and that's probably what most phone users really want. Nobody is gaming on their phone until it hits the limits of passive cooling and very few people will need the raw CPU performance for more than a second per page load. I don't even know what intensive single core benchmarks are even good for in real life, maybe Javascript if you're somehow running the JS VM at 100% for minutes straight? That doesn't sound like something I'd want my phone to do! Qualcom's advancements in speed and longevity have been incremental, sometimes even decremental, for years now. Mediatek, previously the chipset for every 100 dollar Chinese phone, keeps closing while Qualcom desperately tries to squeeze just a little more juice out of their cores. Apple's progress is also slowing down, but not nearly as much as their most important competitor's. It's a shame, really. Hopefully Google and Microsoft will develop their own chips for real in the future because you can't just wait for Qualcom anymore. Microsoft REALLY wants a good M1/2 competitor but the other chips in the ARM space just aren't up for the task. I'm sure Google would also love for their Chromebooks to become more powerful, though their own mobile devices seem to focus on midrange performance with benefits in software and dedicated silicon instead of fast general purpose compute. In the end, I have no horse in the game because I don't think I'll be upgrading any time soon. My current phone is more than fast enough for my needs. The battery is slowly fading but as long as I can still get through the day I'm satisfied. With the absolutely ridiculous prices of phones these days, I'm putting off an "upgrade" for as long as I can.

bombcar 4y ago
Performance per watt only matters until you hit 1+ day battery life in regular usage. Beyond that, who cares? It also wouldn't matter if the thing could recharge super fast. The M1/M2 laptops have done this, I noticed that people who used to bring chargers with them at conferences/meetings don't even bother anymore, or don't bring it out of the bag.

yegle 4y ago

Just yesterday I was trying to generate a vanity pub key for Nostr. I was using https://github.com/kdmukai/nostr_vanity_npub https://github.com/kdmukai/nostr_vanity_npub which uses the python-nostr library which in turn uses https://github.com/bitcoin-core/secp256k1 https://github.com/bitcoin-core/secp256k1. The test (single thread with -j1 flag) has some interesting result. Time taken to calculate 1 million keys: i7 8650U=2m5s, Oracle Cloud A1 VM=3m30s, Ryzen ThreadRipper Pro 3945WX=3m30s, GCE VM Xeon 2.2Ghz=6m. So in this particular use case, an 8th gen Intel mobile CPU is the winner. Would you want to use 8650U based on this test result? Probably not.

epolanski 4y ago

I can't understand who are the people that care about smartphone performance. I do every computation and gaming outside my phone. My Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 from 3 years ago feels as good as when I bought it when reading the net, watching youtube, chatting, emailing or editing pictures. And my Redmi scores 300 in the same Benchmark, where the S22 scores 900, the S23 1500 and the iPhone 14 Pro 1900. Maybe JS performance could be slightly better? But I rarely navigate to such poorly optimized websites.

satvikpendem 4y ago
Lots of people (especially in the third world) use their phone as their primary computer and gaming device.
- epolanski 4y ago
  Yes, and they're better off spending 200€ for a phone and whatever remains for a gaming device and computer rather than caring what 1200$ phone do.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    Or they can just play on their phones. What you want is not what everyone wants.
  - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    Today's $1200 phone is tomorrow's $200 phone, both in terms of the secondhand market and advancements / price reductions over time.
- doetoe 4y ago
  Also the ones that can afford a $1000 phone? I thought that was the case for people that cannot afford a computer
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    Lots of phones go down in price or they're specifically geared for that market by having a beefy CPU and GPU but bottom-tier everything else.

rado 4y ago

And consumes less power

scarface74 4y ago

I wonder how many people who are now saying “we don’t need faster phones” would have been beating Apple up back in the 68K and PowerPC days when Apple’s hardware was slower?

alkonaut 4y ago

An iPhone 7 from not sure how long ago is more than fast enough for everything I throw at it. It gets OS upgrades and just works. The best reason for having a faster chip is that if it gets the job done quicker then battery times will improve.

DanCarvajal 4y ago

If iOS 17 does in fact have side loading I'll finally be jumping ship to a 12 of 13 mini so fast.

t8sr 4y ago

Everyone in this thread is arguing about operating systems and their mobile OS preference... why? The interesting point here, which is corroborated by different sources than just TFA, is that Apple's silicon is 1-2 generations ahead of everyone else. Whether you like iPhone or Android, I think we should all agree that's a bad situation for the world to be in. Apple's advantage in mobile CPUs is coming at a time when new types of devices are appearing, like AR glasses. If Samsung and Qualcomm don't catch up soon, Apple will win that space and have an even more unassailable monopoly.

pkulak 4y ago
Does Apple really have some secret sauce, or are they just consistently first in line for TSMC's latest process? Not saying that's better or worse, but it's a very different problem.
- bangonkeyboard 4y ago
  The S23 is on TSMC's 4nm node. The iPhone 12 was TSMC's first-gen 5nm.
  - pkulak 4y ago
    Thank you. No offense to everyone else replying to me, but this one-liner is worth more than all the hot-takes and random conjecture put together.
- 6nf 4y ago
  Apple Silicon benefits from full vertical integration and not having to worry about third parties and their particular needs for the same silicon.
  - moolcool 4y ago
    What about Samsung Exynos?
    - 4y ago

uptownfunk 4y ago

After having multiple google pixel phones break and never having an iPhone break (after much abuse) I realized that the hardware quality far trumps any software AI voodoo that I care about. Mind you I don’t do fancy stuff on my phone- YouTube, insta, texting, email, slack. The main culprits

gamblor956 4y ago

My 22Ultra overnight: loses 6-8% battery life. My GF's iPhone 14 overnight: loses 20% battery life. My GF uses my phone more than I do because her iPhone is usually dead by the end of the day if she doesn't remember to charge it every few hours. I'm willing to accept a slightly slower phone if it means my phone can make it through the day without me being a hostage to charging.

acdha 4y ago
Do you have the same apps installed? Years back I found uninstalling Facebook was like a 20% battery life improvement - I didn’t even open it much but it was so busy in the background. Going through the battery usage report and pruning apps is like flossing: most people should do it more often than they do.
- gamblor956 4y ago
  Yes, we both have FB and Insta installed... The problem is the poor battery management on the phone. Not fair to blame the apps for Apple's failure.
  - acdha 4y ago
    > The problem is the poor battery management on the phone. Not fair to blame the apps for Apple's failure. You can't separate the two: if the apps are requesting the phone do more work, that's going to affect the battery life. That's why I suggested looking at the battery usage history since it often has surprises if you don't, and comparing two devices with different workloads doesn’t tell you much.

superkuh 4y ago

Both of them are terrible at being phones and a Nokia from the mid-2000s outperforms them.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dileepkr 4y ago

To all the iphone diehards, I recently switched from Samsung to iphone 14PM and I whole heartedly hate following things: 1. The keyboard in ios: its unintuitive and ancient compared to the android counterparts. And No, Gboard, swiftkey keyboard in ios suck equally bad too. 2. Battery drain issues: Battery drains randomly, main culprit being "find my" process. This alone drains ~8% of battery overnight on my iphone and ~18% on my ipad overnight even with background app refresh turned off. 3. Lack of the back button is a huge pain in the ass. Some apps design their own navigation pattern and it sucks to operate the phone in 1 hand. For e.g, Youtube requires you to pull down on the video currently playing to go back to search results than allowing the native back swipe or back arrow on top left. Meanwhile, I have agree that the apps in iOS are much nicer than the android apps, the same apps I used in android which sucked big time work flawlessly in iOS. FaceID is much reliable than the shitty in screen fingerprint readers in Samsung/Android phones. So both Android and iOS have their pros and cons, and after using both, I can confidently say iphone is not the best phone in the world and user had to experience both to choose what suits them better.

mrtksn 4y ago
> . Battery drain issues: Battery drains randomly, main culprit being "find my" process. You probably have an AirTag around you, there's a bug causing that. Update the AirTag firmware. > 3. Lack of the back button is a huge pain in the ass Swipe from the left edge of the screen to right, that's the iOS back button.
- sdflhasjd 4y ago
  > Update the AirTag firmware. What if it's not my AirTag?
  - slaw 4y ago
    If not your AirTag follows you, you'll get message informing you that someone is tracking you.
    - 4y ago

mynameisash 4y ago

I'm particularly frustrated with the market for phones. I'w not going to buy an iPhone, and I'd really like to avoid the Google ecosystem (eg, by using GrapheneOS). I just received new Pixel 6a phones for me and my family yesterday only to discover that there's no 3.5mm jack. I really feel like old man yelling at cloud, but the more advanced phones and the software get, the more I miss the days of my cheapy Motorola flip phone.

stevemk14ebr 4y ago
you've got to be very disconnected to not know that 3.5mm jacks have been removed from most modern phones by now (a terrible choice, I agree)
- mynameisash 4y ago
  I don't follow advances in phones - new models coming out are never on my radar. So if a manufacturer drops functionality like that, I don't notice. And literally every phone I've owned for my nearly 25 years of cell usage has had a 3.5mm jack, so it's never had to be a conscious choice.
KennyBlanken 4y ago
For about $6 from Apple you can buy one of the best-quality audio DACs available and connect your headphones to your Pixels. (You bought several new phones without checking their specs? Come on.)

aeturnum 4y ago

I do think that phones are in a sorry place - but this isn't exactly why. The industry is still based on the concept of a new model every year, but it has been years since there were obvious & universal reasons to get a new model. The striking thing about this fact isn't that Apple is "ahead" - it's that even though Apple has basically lapped the competition on a technical level it doesn't matter much.

scotty79 4y ago

> Despite being over 6% faster for single-core performance, the iPhone 12 is 15.64% slower for multi-core performance compared to the Galaxy S23 Ultra, with scores of 3867 vs 4584. Sounds a bit like intel vs amd.

SergeAx 4y ago

But... Samsung just using Qualcomm chip? I mean, it's not Samsung/Apple, it's Qualcomm/Apple rivalry, isn't it?

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago

I just downloaded and run the geekbench 5 on my s22 ultra and it showed 1215, instead of 926 listed in the article. Probably other numbers are of similar quality.

Avlin67 4y ago

whatever the cpu android is bloated. it forces me to prefer an iphone even I dont like apple. I need an ativ S with windows phone like in 2014. Galaxy S23 with W11 would be the best imho. Ativ S was a Galaxy S3 with windows 8 on it

pt_PT_guy 4y ago

Isn't Geekbench always been very biased towards Apple silicon?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
steve1977 4y ago
Well, both are based on ARM designs anyway. I think some future Snapdragon will even get manufactured by TSMC.
- sumtechguy 4y ago
  Thought chunks of them already were?
- aeadio 4y ago
  The Snapdragon in the S23 Ultra is already manufactured on TSMC 4 nm.
  - steve1977 4y ago
    Ah ok, that could well be, thx!
hs86 4y ago
It is biased towards passively cooled CPUs. It's dev once stated in an interview that they tried to recreate the typical bursty usage patterns of mobile phones, and therefore the added little pauses between the tasks.
mdasen 4y ago
The evidence is that Geekbench isn't biased towards Apple Silicon given that other benchmarks agree. For example, AnandTech runs a bunch of SPEC CPU benchmarks and found that the Apple A15 was a lot faster than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 or Exynos 2100 (all 2021 processors): https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-performance-review-faster-more-efficient/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-perfo.... You can check the second page for graphics benchmarks. Apple has been making their own CPU cores for a while while Qualcomm and Samsung are both using the ARM-designed cores. In the case of the above benchmarks, both the Snapdragon and Exynos are using the Cortex-X1 cores from ARM. Google's Tensor processor also uses ARM's X1 cores. Newer Snapdragon processors like the 8 Gen 1 and 8 Gen 2 have used X2 and X3 cores. Apple's ability to produce their own CPU designs has been a big win for them, especially for single-core performance (really important for the majority of what people do with their phones including web/javascript) and for power efficiency (really important for the vast majority of time when users might be using their devices, but not in a taxing way). Apple's custom CPU cores give them a real advantage.

bfrog 4y ago

iphone 12 mini has been my favorite phone I've ever owned, and coincidentally the first iphone I've ever owned.

FredPret 4y ago
It starts with one gadget. Then you buy the second Apple device, and find that they work fantastically together. Soon, you're in an all-Apple household!
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I legit wish they had any competitors doing the thing they do even almost as well. It's worrisome that there's nowhere to turn if Apple goes to shit (I'm very worried about their growing advertising income) that's not a significant downgrade in overall UX.
  - recursive 4y ago
    My experimentation with apple products started and ended with ipods. Their insistence to use itunes for putting music on the device eventually turned me away. I've used about a half dozen hardware music players. The ipod UX was easily the worst because of this, even compared to the Diamond Rio PMP300, which was powered with an AA battery. I don't doubt the apple has good UX for some things. But if you think they're much better at everything, you might have blinders on.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Eh, I came to them after about 15 years of thinking Apple users were kinda culty and must be wrong about how good Apple stuff is, and mostly running Linux (though I started on Windows/DOS). No, they're that good, overall. They do fuck up or do annoying things pretty often (requiring iTunes for iPods would be one of those things) but every other option (and there... aren't that many, really) is so much worse that they've yet to push me to switch. I'd love to see a real competitor.
- 4y ago

asow92 4y ago

I still rock an iPhone 12 Pro Max and love it.

AstixAndBelix 4y ago
Saying that you "still rock" something barely 3 years old sounds.... strange. I still rock my 1983 Toyota, sure. I still rock my 20yo HiFi system. But I don't "still rock" my iPhone 11, it was only recently out of production for God's sake!
- RulerOf 4y ago
  This made me chuckle. I'm "still rocking" an iPhone 12 because I'm still paying it off. If it were dated and obsolete I'd be angry I threw away my money buying Apple.
  - asow92 4y ago
    Paid off the moment I bought it.
    - RulerOf 4y ago
      AT&T in the US offers "trade in rebates" on phones. You trade in a phone and they rebate your phone bill by $800 or $1000 over a 24 month period when you buy a new phone on an installment loan. It's a 0% loan so I'm not going to throw money away just to avoid paying less money over time.
- asow92 4y ago
  As an iOS developer, 3 years is a long time to upgrade.
  - AstixAndBelix 4y ago
    My mother's iPhone 6 is running iOS 15, which will be supported by all the apps she uses for at least 2-3 more years, bringing the total lifetime of her smartphone close to 10 years. Sure, Apple is pretty draconian when it comes to how much the developers have to keep their tooling up to date, but that's not the same on the consumer side anymore

heavyset_go 4y ago

On a single Geekbench 5 benchmark: > Geekbench 5 scores reveals Apple’s 2½ year old iPhone 12 outperforms Samsung’s latest flagship in single-core performance by 6.15%.