Adventures in iPhone Land

PART 1 of a Multi-Part Effort

Adventures in iPhone Land

When the original iPhone launched on 29 June 2007 it joined its very well-established big brother  (and lots of cousins -- who are properly known as the iPod family and friends) to offer tech-savvy phone geeks the opportunity to merge their preferred entertainment platform with a very stylish  mobile (wireless) phone.

In theory that was supposed to be a good thing - after all  this advancement in consumer tech allowed the consumer to carry as much as three fewer devices thanks to the iPhone filling the role of wireless phone, PDA, Music and Audio Book Player, and mobile gaming device!

The only problem with the iPhone replacing all of those devices is that it only has so much power stored up in its battery.  Many users discovered that when they got around to making - and taking - the odd phone call they were usually very low on juice!

As the iPhone does not include a modular battery that could be replaced on-the-fly, what ended up happening was that power-users ended up using their iPhone as a phone and PDA, opting to carry an iPod as well as other entertainment devices, which blunted the primary selling point for the device.

I personally had already experienced that phenomenon with my Blackberry well before the iPhone came along - and as I was a confirmed Berry user I resisted making the switch to the iPhone for a good long time - in fact I did not convert to Apple until mid 2012, and I only did so then and under protest due to work necessity - I needed to be able to play iOS games to review and write about them.

My First iPhone

The iPhone 3GS was my first iPhone - and I continued to use that baby well into the following two generations, only upgrading to the iPhone 4S after the iPhone 5 released and AT&T offered me a free 4S when I re-upped my contract.

The iPhone 4S is actually a very capable computing device... As I am soon to upgrade to the iPhone 6 Plus I thought it was a good idea to do a little comparing - and see what I was getting for my money in the bargain - so I set out to benchmark my 4S in preparation for receiving the 6 Plus - which is due to arrive on Monday.

Whipping out my trusty copy of Geekbench 3 (Version 3.2.2 for iOS), I ran the standard tests and here are the results (note that if you are not a tech-head you may as well stop reading from here on as none of this is going to mean much to you):

Model: iPhone 4S / Model ID: iPhone 4,1
OS: iOS 8.1
Processor: Apple A5 @ 800 MHz (1 Processor / 2 Cores)
Processor ID: ARMv7
Memory: 505 MB
L1 Instruction Cache: 32.0 KB
L1 Data Cache: 32.0 KB
L2 Cache: 1.00 MB
L3 Cache: 0.00 B
L4 Cache: 1.79 GB

Processor Benchmarks Report

Single-Core Score: 215
Multi-Core Score: 407

INTEGER
Single-Core: 280
Multi-Core: 551
AES Single-Core: 16 (14.6 MB/sec)
AES Multi-Core: 33 (29.0 MB/sec)
Twofish Single-Core: 233 (13.1 MB/sec)
Twofish Multi-Core: 459 (25.8 MB/sec)
SHA1 Single-Core: 530 (22.9 MB/sec)
SHA1 Multi-Core: 1059 (45.8 MB/sec)
BZip2 Compress Single-Core: 342 (1.39 MB/sec)
BZip2 Compress Multi-Core: 650 (2.65 MB/sec)
BZip2 Decompress Single-Core: 389 (2.11 MB/sec)
BZip2 Decompress Multi-Core: 765 (4.15 MB/sec)
JPEG Compress Single-Core: 335 (4.68 Mpixels/sec)
JPEG Compress Multi-Core: 661 (9.22 Mpixels/sec)
JPEG Decompress Single-Core: 347 (8.59 Mpixels/sec)
JPEG Decompress Multi-Core: 685 (17.0 Mpixels/sec)
PNG Compress Single-Core: 383 (306.6 Kpixels/sec)
PNG Compress Multi-Core: 754 (602.4 Kpixels/sec)
PNG Decompress Single-Core: 449 (5.18 Mpixels/sec)
PNG Decompress Multi-Core: 886 (10.2 Mpixels/sec)
Sobel Single-Core: 262 (9.55 Mpixels/sec)
Sobel Multi-Core: 511 (18.6 Mpixels/sec)
Lua Single-Core: 314 (1.58 KB/sec)
Lua Multi-Core: 616 (567.4 KB/sec)
Dijkstra Single-Core: 550 (1.58 Mpairs/sec)
Dijkstra Multi-Core: 817 (2.94 Mpairs/sec)

FLOATING POINT
Single-Core Score: 182
Multi-Core Score: 363
BlackScholes Single-Core: 274 (1.22 Mnodes/sec)
BlackScholes Multi-Core: 545 (2.43 Mnodes/sec)
Mandelbrot Single-Core: 233 (239.3 Mflops)
Mandelbrot Multi-Core: 460 (2.43 Mflops)
Sharpen Filter Single-Core: 182 (135.2 Mflops)
Sharpen Filter Multi-Core: 360 (267.0 Mflops)
Blur Filter Single-Core: 176 (168.0 Mflops)
Blur Filter Multi-Core: 344 (327.9 Mflops)
SGEMM Single-Core: 157 (442.5 Mflops)
SGEMM Multi-Core: 301 (843.7 Mflops)
DGEMM Single-Core: 74 (109.2 Mflops)
DGEMM Multi-Core: 153 (225.1 Mflops)
SFFT Single-Core: 156 (165.5 Mflops)
SFFT Multi-Core: 315 (332.2 Mflops)
DFFT Single-Core: 182 (165.9 Mflops)
DFFT Multi-Core: 365 (332.8 Mflops)
N-Body Single-Core: 223 (86.8 Kpairs/sec)
N-Body Multi-Core: 461 (332.2 Kpairs/sec)
Ray Trace Single-Core: 268 (316.5 Kpixels/sec)
Ray Trace Multi-Core: 527 (622.4 Kpixels/sec)

MEMORY
Single-Core Score: 154
Multi-Core Score: 210
Stream Copy Single-Core: 240 (983.5 MB/sec)
Stream Copy Multi-Core: 308 (1.23 GB/sec)
Stream Scale Single-Core: 137 (560.3 MB/sec)
Stream Scale Multi-Core: 238 (977.0 MB/sec)
Stream Add Single-Core: 130 (604.7 MB/sec)
Stream Add Multi-Core: 161 (749.2 MB/sec) 
Stream Triad Single-Core: 134 (603.4 MB/sec)
Stream Scale Multi-Core: 166 (748.8 MB/sec)

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Single-Core Comparative Benchmarks

Comparative (Speculative) Benchmark Scores - Note that our iPhone 4S scored a solid 213...

Unless you know what these numbers mean, this entire section will be meaningless to you... So why do I bother?  Because some of you know what these numbers mean and they are as significant and meaningful to you as they are to me, that's why :)

Device Name	CPU	Benchmark*
iPod Touch (5th Gen)	Apple A5	213
iPhone 4S	Apple A5	213
iPad Mini	Apple A5	260
iPad 3rd Generation	Apple A5X	260
iPad 2	Apple A5	262
iPhone 5C	Apple A6	695
iPhone 5	Apple A6	710
iPad 4th Generation	Apple A6X	771
iPad Mini Retina Display	Apple A7	1384
iPhone 5S	Apple A7	1400
iPad Air	Apple A7	1473
iPhone 6 Plus	Apple A8	1590
iPhone 6	Apple A8	1607

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Multi-Core Comparative Benchmarks

Comparative (Speculative) Benchmark Scores - Note that our iPhone 4S scored a solid 407...

Device Name	CPU	Benchmark*
iPod Touch (5th Gen)	Apple A5	410
iPhone 4S	Apple A5	405
iPad Mini	Apple A5	490
iPad 3rd Generation	Apple A5X	492
iPad 2	Apple A5	494
iPhone 5C	Apple A6	1243
iPhone 5	Apple A6	1274
iPad 4th Generation	Apple A6X	1402
iPad Mini Retina Display	Apple A7	2495
iPhone 5S	Apple A7	2525
iPad Air	Apple A7	2665
iPhone 6 Plus	Apple A8	2839
iPhone 6	Apple A8	2873

* Bench Score translates to "Comparative Benchmark Score" - with the score listed being a representative sample taken from each respective physical device and type.

The numbers that are contained in the benchmark we ran on the iPhone 4S are pretty meaningless until we receive the 6 Plus and run the benchmark on that - then we can compare the two and at that point the numbers will have actual meaning...

Of the numbers above the one that is obviously of the most interest to me is the iPhone 6 Plus - and believe you me I am expecting great things from it...  I expect it will allow me to walk on water simply by holding it in my hand...  I expect it will pick the winning lottery numbers for me without me having to ask - and I expect it will translate what women are REALLY saying when they say things to me...  Yeah, it is going to be freaking boss!

More to follow in Part 2...