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iPhone 6 tops competition in benchmarks, battery life
Apple's annual iPhone update always brings with it a nice bump in specs, and this year is no different. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are currently being put through their paces by the benchmarking gurus at AnandTech, and the preliminary results show that Apple's newest pair of smartphones are among the best of the best on several popular graphical tests as well as web browsing battery life. In nearly all the tests -- check out the full rundown to get the whole picture -- the iPhone 6 twins hold the top two smartphone scores, with the exception of a physics benchmark where they only narrowly beat out the iPhone 5s and lag behind the rest of the competition. It's unclear why that particular test came out the way it did, while the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus dominate so handily in the rest, but the testing parameters have been questioned by commenters. It's interesting to note where the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus trade places from test to test. With slightly less screen real estate to worry about, the iPhone 6 has a small advantage and manages to eke out its bigger brother a few times along the way. The two remain very close in nearly every test though, so the slight differences in performance shouldn't factor into your choice either way. [Graph via Anandtech]
The new iPad mini's Retina display isn't quite as colorful as it could be
Apple's new baby iPad comes with a pixel-pushing Retina display, but the stat sleuths at AnandTech have now declared that while the screen is indeed a fantastic addition to the smaller iPad, it's a bit color-blind. According to the test results, the iPad mini w/ Retina is only marginally better than its non-Retina predecessor in terms of things like saturation and contrast, and in some categories (like white-level brightness) it's actually a small step down from the original mini. When Apple revealed that the Retina mini would come with the same A7 chip as is found in the iPad Air, the line between what the two higher-resolution iPads were capable of became extremely blurred. Now, it seems we can add overall color performance as one of the few things the iPad Air has to hold over the head of its little brother.
iPad Air manages 24 hours of battery life as LTE hotspot
One of the unsung uses of the iPad is as a personal LTE hotspot. It's rather easy to set up the device as a hotspot for a MacBook if you need to work away from WiFi, although you'll need to keep an eye on your data usage. Last year, Anand Lal Shimpi at Anandtech discovered that an LTE iPad 3 could work as a wireless hotspot for 25.28 hours, downloading data at 50 KB/s. Shimpi repeated his test with the new iPad Air and discovered that even despite having a much smaller battery, the iPad Air can run for 24.08 hours as a hotspot at twice the throughput rate (100 KB/s). The iPad Air battery is quite a bit smaller due to the slim profile of the device -- it's a 32.4 Wh battery compared with the 42.5 Wh battery built into the third-generation iPad. As Shimpi points out, both the A7 system-on-a-chip and the Qualcomm MDM9615M modem in the iPad Air use a 28nm LP process that sips power. Shimpi's test was to set the iPad Air up as a personal hotspot, using WiFi tethering to connect it to a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. He started the 100 KB/s transfer -- twice the data rate of the earlier test -- and turned the iPad Air's display off. After a day and 8 GB of data transfers, the iPad Air ran out of juice. As Shimpi notes, "you'll likely burn through your monthly data allotment before you run out of power."
iPhone 5s slaps down competitors in early benchmarks
Zach Epstein at BGR gives us a good, yet short summary of a rather lengthy (13 pages) review of the iPhone 5s posted on Anandtech by Anand Lal Shimpi. In his article, iPhone 5s slaughters its quad-core rivals in performance tests despite having "just" a dual-core CPU and 1 GB of RAM. Zach notes that this is the "most thorough [technical] review" to date. Shimpi's article quickly grew to 40 pages with the addition of user comments. Falling into the speeds and feeds trap when discussing mobile devices can be tricky, especially when the specs that smartphone vendors share most frequently only paint a small piece of the picture. It's easy to look at things like CPU cores and clockspeeds and make assumptions, but dozens of factors contribute to a smartphone's performance. --Zach Epstein Shimpi compared the new iPhone with devices from Samsung, LG, HTC and Motorola. Even though the iPhone 5s is powered by a 1.3 GHz dual-core 64-bit A7 processor, Apple bested the other devices in every performance test. Shimpi used JavaScript and HTML5 browser tests for CPU performance. His A7 GPU tests resulted in his comment, "The A7's GPU performance is also insanely good." His 13-part review is extremely technical in places, so good luck with the technical details -- I admit it lost me in places. To Shimpi's credit, almost every fact is accompanied by a graphical chart showing his results. The iPhone 5s is the first Apple device (and consumer device in the world) to ship with a PowerVR Series 6 GPU. The G6430 inside the A7 is a 4-cluster configuration, with each cluster featuring a 16-wide array of SIMD pipelines. -- Anand Lal Shimpi The only negative bit I read that I think is worth noting for a general user is how much wear his Apple case showed after only one week of use. That photo appears on page one of Anand Lal Shimpi's review. Many companies make cases, so you might be best off not purchasing the Apple leather iPhone 5s case. [via BGR] Related Articles The iPhone 5c Review (AnandTech) iPhone 5s review (Engadget) iPhone 5s Review: Apple's Latest Smartphone Goes For (And Gets) The Gold (TechCrunch)
First reviews of iPhone 5s are in, and they're great
The first reviews of the new iPhone 5s are in, and for those of us who are drooling over the specs of this newest member of the iPhone family, those reviews are good news indeed. The foremost, and probably the review that will be quoted the most by the rest of the blogosphere, is from AllThingsD king 'o the hill Walt Mossberg. We'll jump straight to the closing line: "Overall, however, the new iPhone 5s is a delight. Its hardware and software make it the best smartphone on the market." Mossberg waxes poetic about the Touch ID sensor on the iPhone 5s, saying that "In my scores of tests, with three fingers, the reader never failed me and none of the 20 or so people I asked to test it was able to unlock the phone." That statement alone should relieve those potential iPhone 5s buyers who were worried that Touch ID was just a gimmick. Mossberg goes on to say "It sounds like a gimmick, but it's a real advance, the biggest step ever in biometric authentication for everyday devices. After using Touch ID, I found it annoying to go back to typing in passcodes on my older iPhone." Mossberg's not the only reviewer who is ecstatic about the iPhone 5s. Jim Dalrymple from The Loop reported that "Speed increases are something we expect with new Apple products, but the iPhone 5s goes above and beyond expectations. In addition to the faster processor, the iPhone 5s is also the world's first 64-bit phone. These changes make the 5s up to twice as fast as the iPhone 5-that's a significant increase." Darrell Etherington at our sister site TechCrunch was also thrilled with the 5s, noting that the "camera is epic" and providing this input about Touch ID: "At first glance, it's easy to dismiss the fingerprint sensor as a whiz-bang feature designed to attract eyeballs and do little else. But this isn't that. The fingerprint sensor, unlike some other questionable recent smartphone tech like gesture control or eye-tracking, doesn't feel like a gimmick or tech demo; it feels like a mature feature that actually enhances the overall experience of using an iPhone in a noticeable way that you encounter very frequently." Tech Crunch has also posted a video review. New York Times tech writer David Pogue was equally thrilled with Touch ID: "The best part is that it actually works - every single time, in my tests. It's nothing like the balky, infuriating fingerprint-reader efforts of earlier cellphones. It's genuinely awesome; the haters can go jump off a pier." CNET's Scott Stein also weighed in on Touch ID, saying "The Touch ID-enabled home button feels invisible; it works with a tap, can recognize your finger from many angles, and feels like it has less of a fail rate than fingerprint sensors I've used on laptops. It's impressive tech. It worked on all my fingers, and even my toe (I was curious)." Myriam Joire of our other sister site Engadget, a true fan of the Nokia Lumia 1020, spent a lot of time talking about the iPhone 5s camera: "First, let's tackle the camera's low-light performance. The shots we took with the 5s were consistently better than what we took with the 5: they were sharper, with finer details, more natural colors and far less noise. As you might expect, our daylight shots were roughly on par, though there were a few times when the 5s won out by a slight margin, offering just a little more detail. All told, the 5s plays in the same league as all those other flagships with a bigger emphasis on imaging. Even so, our sample shots still showed more noise and less detail than the same images taken with the Nokia Lumia 1020. The 5s also does a good job of reproducing color, but it's not the best performer in this category, either. Make no mistake, though: the iPhone has been – and continues to be – great as a simple grab-and-go camera. It may not be a best-in-class performer, but the vast majority of iPhone users will still be happy." If you're looking for the definitive monster review of the iPhone 5s, I'd suggest going to Anandtech.com's review by none other than Anand Lal Shimpi, the editor-in-chief of the site. It's an epic review of the proportions usually written by John SIracusa or Federico Viticci, and it answers questions you didn't even think of. Enjoy the reviews, and be sure to come back to TUAW for our coverage of the release of iOS 7 and the two new iPhones.
Apple ups battery capacity on iPhone 5c and 5s compared to iPhone 5
Over the past few years, Apple has demonstrated an uncanny ability to enhance performance with each successive iteration of the iPhone while simultaneously maintaining, and sometimes increasing, battery life. The recently unveiled iPhone 5s and 5c are no different. Anandtech recently dug through some FCC documentation and found that the advertised battery capacity on the iPhone 5s is nearly 10 percent larger than on the iPhone 5. Meanwhile, battery capacity on the iPhone 5c is approximately 5 percent larger than on the iPhone 5. It turns out that there are in fact some battery size increases for both the 5S and 5C if the FCC disclosure is to be believed. While I'm somewhat skeptical sometimes of the accuracy of battery capacities as reported in FCC disclosures (which I noted about the battery size for the Nexus 5), these numbers seem credible given what I've heard, the statement Apple made during the keynote about the 5C battery size going up, and what I'd expect with some board re-layout for the 5S. The iPhone 5S ends up getting an almost 10 percent increase in size versus the iPhone 5, the iPhone 5C goes up around 5 percent versus the iPhone 5. As for how this affects real-world usage, Apple noted during its keynote earlier this week that 3G talk time and LTE browsing time on both phones check in at an impressive 10 hours, marking a 25 percent increase from the iPhone 5. Also of note, standby time on both devices have been upped from 225 hours to 250 hours when measured against the iPhone 5. As we've noted before, battery life may not be the sexiest of specs to advertise, but it's something that enhances the user experience greatly and yet is quizzically overlooked by critics.
Android 4.3 supports TRIM, improves performance on Nexus devices
It's no secret that many Android phones and tablets show a decrease in performance over time. Nexus devices are not immune -- it's particularly noticeable with the original Nexus 7. Our friend Brian Klug over at AnandTech discovered an interesting tidbit while testing the new and improved Nexus 7: Android 4.3 supports TRIM. What this means is that Google's mobile OS can now instruct the flash storage controller when to collect / recycle unused data pages / blocks. The net result is that devices running Android 4.3 will no longer become sluggish with time -- in fact, existing Nexus handsets and tablets will see performance improve after the update. It also looks like Jelly Bean invokes TRIM maintenance once within a 24-hour window (after one hour of inactivity), and only if the battery is 80% full (30% when charging). Follow the source link below for all the details.
2013 MacBook Air benchmarks from AnandTech
The new MacBook Air went on sale this week, and customers want to know how this year's Haswell models compare to last year's Ivy Bridge units. Yesterday, Engadget benchmarked the new MacBook Air looking primarily at the SSD drive performance and now AnandTech has published its own report that includes CPU performance. The 2013 MacBook Air has a Core i5 CPU with a lower base clock speed than the comparable 2012 MacBook Air, but it has the same max turbo speed of 2.6GHz. Though the Haswell architecture improves the battery life in the 2013 MacBook Air, the CPU performance is generally the same between the two models. SSD drive performance in the new MacBook Air is boosted significantly by the adoption of PCIe-based SSDs. Hardware specs show that the PCIe 2.0 x2 interface is capable of 1 GB/s in each direction, and AnandTech recorded a respectable peak sequential read/write performance of almost 800 MB/s. There are a lot of other goodies in the AnandTech article for hardware fans to geek out on, so head on over and check it out.
Nintendo's Wii U gets gutted in the name of specs
Curious about what silicon is powering Nintendo's Wii U? So was Anand Lal Shimpi, who tore his brand new console to pieces in the name of science. At its heart is a multi-chip module with a PowerPC-based CPU, built on IBM's 45-nanometer process, paired with a GPU similar to AMD's RV7xx design. These two components share 2GB of DDR3 RAM (plus an unspecified amount of eDRAM), while Anand calculates memory bandwidth to be 12.8GB/s. That's around the same as as the Nexus 10 and new iPad, but should throw more frames at your eyeballs because those other devices are operating at much higher resolutions. In terms of power consumption, the Wii U's innards draw a pretty constant wattage regardless of load, drawing 32.8W when rendering the disc menu and 33.0W when playing Super Mario U -- for comparison, that's around a third of the appetite of the greedy little PlayStation 3 Slim.
NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 review roundup: a $99 card that fails to keep Kepler's promise
NVIDIA blew reviewers away with its flagship GTX 680, but building cards for the low-end is a whole different challenge. The GT 640 hits the $99 price point, where it sits right between the AMD Radeon HD 7750 at $109 and the last-gen Radeon 6670 at around $80. As it turns out, these rivals pull off something of a pincer movement, leaving NVIDIA's card little room to retaliate. The GT 640 contains a 28nm Kepler chip, but it's a cutdown version of the silicon with just 384 CUDA cores, a poor memory bandwidth of 28.5GB/s and no GPU Boost feature -- which means the card can't boost its 900MHz to make use of thermal headroom. These limitations have a significant impact on the benchmarks, as you'll see in our little review roundup after the break.
Taking a close look at the MacBook Pro's Retina display
Anandtech spent some quality time with the new retina MacBook Pro and, as expected, took a deep dive into the hardware that makes up the device. In a series of posts, the hardware-focused website examined the SSD improvements and explained how Apple handles the DPI scaling in Lion. In a third post, Anandtech examines the Retina display and compares it to both the older high-resolution 15.4-inch matte panel and the standard glossy MacBook Pro display. The post has detailed information on the construction of the LCD and how it both reduces the glare and improves the viewing angle of the Retina display. There's also a lengthy discussion about resolution that addresses high-resolution gaming, high-DPI app support and the smooth resolution switching in OS X that allows you to easily adjust the display to meet your needs.
AnandTech takes a long hard look at the MacBook Pro Retina Display
Not quite fully sated with the latest Apple updates from this year's WWDC? Without doubt, one of the most anticipated goodies to come from the keynote yesterday was the introduction of the MacBook Pro into the Retina Display-fold. We'll, of course, be giving all the new hardware our own thorough shakedown, but in the meantime, AnandTech has given that new display a detailed dissection. In summary: excellent brightness and solid black-levels fend off the glare, apps look amazing, upscaling will cover you in the meantime. For the full nitty-gritty though, number by number, be sure to hit up the source.
New iPad can be used as Verizon LTE hotspot for over 24 hours
Anandtech took a closer look at the new iPad's 42.5 Wh battery and discovered the battery is fantastic for those using the device as a mobile hotspot. In a series of tests, they ran the Verizon WiFi+4G iPad from a full charge down to zero with the screen off. Total time was an impressive 25.3 hours on a single charge. Overall, the battery performs as expected. The retina-equipped iPad has a run time that's slightly less than the iPad 2, and you'll get an hour less juice on LTE than WiFi. [Via The Verge]
Subtle changes to parts inside the new iPad
Anandtech has excellent, in-depth articles about electornics hardware. The site doesn't disappoint with its latest analysis of the iPad breakdown from iFixit. They point out subtle differences between the iPad 2 and the iPad 3 including Apple's possible move to a flip-chip design with the A5X, which allows for better removal of heat. If you're into DRAM, NAND and SOC, then you should head over to Anandtech for the rest of the details.
Ivy Bridge benchmarks: CPU boosted 5-15 percent, onboard GPU handles Skyrim
We've heard whispers of Ivy Bridge's benchmarking prowess, but now we have more comprehensive and independent test results of a Core i7 3770K CPU, courtesy of AnandTech. The conclusion? The upgrade is "quite good," which is Anand Lal Shimpi's way of describing a 5-15 percent boost in CPU performance for the same money as Sandy Bridge, not to mention lower power consumption and the ability to run the latest games on the HD 4000 integrated graphics. Of course, this latter discovery requires clarification: some games, such as Metro 2033 could only achieve 30fps at a max resolution of 1366 x 768, but others fared better. Crysis Warhead ran at 50fps even at 1680 x 1050. With that type of onboard oomph, you'd have to spend over $100 on a discrete graphics card for it to be worthwhile, which even Lal Shimpi acknowledges is "sort of insane". Check out the source link for more.
Qualcomm Krait S4 SoC fully benchmarked, diagnosed as 'insane'
We've seen it, touched it and we fully expect it'll be turning heads in Barcelona next week, but until now Qualcomm's Krait chip has largely escaped the rigors of independent benchmarking. Fortunately, AnandTech has to come to our rescue once again with a characteristically thorough analysis at the source link. Those blue and green charts can speak for themselves, but if you're in a rush then here's the rub of it: the Krait truly is a next-gen SoC, with the dual-core 1.5GHz MSM8960-powered reference handset delivering an "insane performance advantage" of between 20 percent and 240 percent on CPU benchmarks. As we glimpsed recently, graphics performance is somewhat less ground-breaking but still very healthy, with the 28nm process allowing the Adreno 225 GPU to run at up to 400MHz, versus 266MHz on its Adreno 220 predecessor. Oh yes, this is going to be one mother of an MWC.
iPhone 4S has 512 MB RAM, iFixit and Anandtech verify
It's official. We kept hearing that the iPhone 4S has "only" 512 MB of RAM, not the 1 GB that everyone was hoping for. But we wouldn't believe it until iFixit finished their teardown today. Their results are official -- the iPhone 4S contains 512 MB of RAM. How could they tell? The code on the A5 processor highlighted in red by iFixit in the photo at the top of this post has a string denoting "E4E4". According to Anandtech, each E4 indicates a separate 2 Gb LPDDR2 die. That's 4 Gb altogether, or 512 MB of LPDDR2 RAM. Before you get too upset, note that Anandtech posits that faster and/or more RAM would have affected the iPhone 4S battery life, and that it may take a year for processor technology to progress to the point that iPhone users can have speed, RAM, and the battery life they desire.
Daily Update for October 11, 2011
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen.
Benchmarks clock iPhone 4S' A5 CPU at 800MHz, show major GPU upgrade over iPhone 4
Pre-orders for the iPhone 4S only began shipping this week, but a handful of early owners have already taken Apple's first A5-based smartphone for a test run, and they've got the benchmarks to prove it. The results, obtained by AnandTech, are hardly what we'd call shocking. In terms of Javascript performance (pictured above), the 4S measures up rather nicely against the Tegra 2-based Honeycomb competition, while out-dueling the iPhone 4 in overall CPU muscle. Geekbench results, meanwhile, clock the 4S at around 800MHz, with a score of 623. That's about 25 percent lower than the A5-based iPad 2, but notably higher than the iPhone 4 (see graphic, after the break). When it comes to GPU performance, GLBenchmark 2.1 tests in 1280 x 720, off-screen render mode place Apple's new handset well above the Galaxy S II, with scores of 122.7 and 67.1, respectively. It still trails the iPad 2, not surprisingly, but the 4S' scores show a major advantage over the iPhone 4, which registered a score of 15.3. For more statistics and graphics, check out the source link below.
Tests detail improved AirPort Extreme, Time Capsule
If you've just recently purchased an Apple AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule, you're in luck. AnandTech has published a detailed review of the new devices showing that they have faster Wi-Fi capabilities than their predecessors. The new devices are physically identical to the earlier versions, with the model numbers -- MD031LL/A for the 5th generation AirPort Extreme and MD032LL/A for the 4th generation Time Capsule (2 TB) -- being the only giveaway. As with previous models, the devices come with four gigabit Ethernet ports and one USB 2.0 port. AnandTech found FCC documents showing the power output for the new and old devices, and in almost every case (with the exception of 802.11b on the 2.4 GHz frequency) power output has essentially doubled (see image above). The tests performed by blogger Brian Klug show that the new devices provide faster throughput, with upstream file transfer speeds being more than doubled when used with a Mac with a current generation internal Wi-Fi card. Downstream throughput, measured with the Iperf network testing tool, was also impressively higher. The TUAW blogging team often debates whether it is worthwhile to regularly upgrade network infrastructure, but the test results seem to show that in the case of the new AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule, the upgrade is definitely worth looking into.
