The iPhone 4S will be a reminder to all manufacturers (hello Samsung) that CPU clock speed isn’t everything.
Even though the iPhone 4S has an A5 dual-core processor like the iPad 2’s, Apple has apparently reduced its chip’s speed to 1 gigahertz at around 800MHz, according to Anandtech reports. But that doesn’t stop the iPhone 4S from leaving other smartphones in the dust — many of which have processors well over 1GHz — in benchmark tests. Apple probably reduced the processor speed to conserve battery life, and by the way, it was an excellent strategy, as smartphones nowadays use little of the processor’s power.
In the benchmark test using JavaScript of SunSpider, the iPhone 4S is almost two times faster than the iPhone 4, reaching a score of 2222ms to 3921ms (the less the better). It’s second only to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 – but you can’t forget to take into account that it’s a tablet.
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In the BrowserMark test, which benchmarked mobile browsers, the iPhone 4S got the better of it reaching a score of 89,567, while the Samsung Galaxy S II only reached 55,144. To test the raw processing of the most powerful smartphones on the market, the application used Geekbench and they found that the iPhone 4S is about twice as fast. See the image below.
When it comes to gaming, the iPhone 4S also surpasses any expectations, achieving FPS speeds that are twice that of the Samsung Galaxy S II, check out the image below.
This all goes to prove that the processor clock does not mean a higher yield. Since Apple is fiercely competing with Android and it can’t be harmed by smartphones and tablets with more powerful hardware, it exploits its strengths in software to avoid tangible performance penalties. Apple traditionally has done this very well and has done it again with the iPhone 4S.
Overall the iPhone 4S may appear to be just a slight upgrade to the iPhone 4, but its new processor makes it a completely different machine.
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