iPhone 5 benchmarked: The fastest smartphone in the land!

The iPhone 5 looks to be the fastest smartphone we’ve ever tested With its mysterious, Apple-designed A6 processor, the iPhone 5 is unique in the world of smartphones. Most high-end phones nowadays run on one of two architectures: ARM’s Cortex-A9, which is used by Nvidia, Texas Instruments and others, and Qualcomm’s Krait. But the A6, as AnandTech discovered, is something completely different—an ARM-compatible system-on-a-chip designed, top to bottom, by Apple.

We’ll focus on five tests here. First the browser benchmarks: Sunspider, Browsermark, and Guimark 3 Bitmap all test Web browser performance. Sunspider is about JavaScript, Guimark is about interactive HTML5, and Browsermark is an overall browser benchmark. Different browsers will score differently on the same phone. We test with the default browser, because that’s what most people use.

(Since you’re wondering about Chrome, which is an optional download on Android phones, it gives similar Browsermark results to the default browser on the Samsung Galaxy S III.)

The iPhone 4S running the Safari browser in iOS 6.0 on a dual-core 800MHz A5 processor is about on par with leading Android 4.0 phones like the Samsung Galaxy S III and the Motorola Droid RAZR M, both of which are using 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processors, or their equivalent. Obviously, the difference is that Safari is a faster browser than the Android browser.

The iPhone 5 takes things to the next level with a processor that can compete with the S4 along with the fast browser. Its Browsermark score is 80 percent higher, and it shows much quicker Sunspider times. GUIMark, like most mobile on-screen graphics tests, maxes out at 60 frames per second because that’s as fast as your screen updates.

Geekbench is a processor benchmark, which tests the basic components of a phone’s system. Here you see less of a difference, but it’s still there. Look at the subscores. The A6 and the other processors do math about as fast as each other, but the “memory” and “stream” scores, both of which test loading data in and out of RAM, come out much better on the Apple device.

Mix together the two sets and you see how much of a difference the Safari browser makes, but also that the iPhone 5 still wins with the browser taken out of the picture.

GLBenchmark 2.5 is a graphics benchmark, creating and walking through simulated game scenes. Performance in the “onscreen” tests is dependent on a phone’s graphics power but also on screen resolution (you can do more frames per second if you’re pushing fewer pixels.) The “offscreen” tests are purely graphics-crunching power. The Galaxy S III has 26 percent more pixels than the iPhone 5 (921,600 to the iPhone’s 727,400) but as you can see, in the “offscreen” measure of raw graphics performance, the iPhone 5 doubles the Galaxy S III’s result. It’s simply a more powerful phone.

A phone’s hardware performance can’t be taken in isolation, but it’s definitely a piece of the puzzle. Based on these benchmarks, the iPhone 5 lives up to the promise of being twice as fast as the iPhone 4S. It’s also, for now, the fastest handheld computer sold in the US.

iPhone 5 to feature a Nano SIM tray?

Apple is expected to launch the next generation iPhone, the iPhone 5 around September 12th and the rumour mills are hard at work, churning out new information about to Apple’s upcoming smartphone.

The latest rumour suggests that the device will feature a “Nano SIM” tray. Images have surfaced on the Internet suggesting what the tray may look like. The report comes from nowhereelse.fr, which shows off the images of the new Nano SIM tray.

This isn’t the first time that Apple will incorporate a new type of SIM card in its smartphones. The iPhone 4 was one of the first devices to incorporate the Micro SIM card and this has been adopted by other smartphone such as the Samsung Galaxy S III and more.

The Nano SIM will be 40% smaller than its predecessor and this will allow the next iPhone to be very slim, or fit more capabilities into the same space.

If the advantage of the Nano SIM is that the next iPhone will be slimmer, the disadvantage is that it will lead to compatibility issues with other devices and in a country like India where users change there smartphones on a regular basis, this may be a bit of a problem.

In the recent past we have heard many rumours about Apple’s next flagship device. Some rumours suggest that the device will have a new smaller dock connector. We have even seen an iPhone 5 assembled from leaked parts.

Other rumours making their rounds on the Internet suggest that the device will have a larger display than its predecessor and also have a smaller home button.

Apple reportedly cuts down Samsung’s involvement in iPhone 5 supply chain

Internet is abuzz with reports that Apple’s next flagship smartphone, dubbed as the iPhone 5, may not be featuring Samsung’s memory chips, displays and other components. Apple has reportedly shifted some memory-chip orders for its next iPhone from Samsung to other Asian chip makers in an attempt to ‘diversify’ its lines of supply for memory chips and reduce its dependence on Samsung.

Samsung, however, hasn’t been completely ousted from the iPhone 5 supply chain. Reuters quotes a person privy to the development as saying that Samsung is still on the list of initial suppliers for the forthcoming iPhone 5, which is expected to be unveiled on September 12.

The source, who declined to reveal his/her identity, rejected the notion that the move was an aftermath of the patent-war between the two companies, which recently got murkier with Samsung being asked by a US court to shell out more than $1 billion in damages to Apple for infringing upon the latter’s patents.

According to reports, Apple is now going ahead with Japan’s Toshiba Corp, Elpida Memory and Korea’s SK Hynix to supply DRAM and NAND chips. “Samsung is still in the list of initial memory chip suppliers (for new iPhones). But Apple orders have been trending down and Samsung is making up for the reduced order from others, notably Samsung’s handset business,” the Reuters source said.

Despite being a major competitor in the smartphone market, Samsung is one of Apple’s largest component suppliers. Apart from memory chips and processors, Samsung provides displays for Apple’s iPad. Wall Street Journal in its report citing other people familiar to the situation points out that the new Asian partners use different technology than Samsung. The report further says Apple anticipates huge demand for its product, thus aims to ‘diversify’ its supply chain for chips.