Joshua Ho's Samsung Galaxy S7 review is out at Anandtech.com and I was totally floored by the fact that even with Samsung's latest phone, last year's iPhone still wins most of the benchmark tests. I didn't expect to see that. I assumed that Samsung would leapfrog Apple and take back the fastest phone crown. In theory, the latest phone released should always be the faster one.
Apple hasn't even introduced their A10 powered 2016 iPhones and they're already the fastest phone on the planet. I suppose this gives Apple the freedom to go for battery savings and not crank up the power on their next SoC.
And lest you forget, Apple is winning these speed tests with a dual-core chip versus Samsung's quad-core chips.
Apple hasn't even introduced their A10 powered 2016 iPhones and they're already the fastest phone on the planet. I suppose this gives Apple the freedom to go for battery savings and not crank up the power on their next SoC.
And lest you forget, Apple is winning these speed tests with a dual-core chip versus Samsung's quad-core chips.
Graphics Benchmarks
Here is one of the clearest differences between Samsung and Apple illustrated in plain sight. Samsung wants to win the spec war so that they can give their marketers ammo for their commercials. Apple wants to make the user experience delightful so that the customer becomes a repeat buyer. Samsung needlessly cranked up the resolution on their phone screens to the point that their GPU can't keep up with pushing all those pixels. This is shown by the on-screen results where the iPhone 6s beats the Samsung phones with the more powerful GPUs. We know that Samsung is using more powerful GPUs because the off-screen results show higher benchmark scores for Samsung.
The problem for Samsung is that pixels are like weight and GPUs are like engines. If you're looking at a Chevy and a Ford truck who both make 300 horsepower would it make a difference if one of the trucks weighed one thousand pounds more than the other? Yes, it would. Samsung phones are like extremely overweight vehicles that can't keep up with all that mass.
The on-screen results are always the more important metric. It's like the 0-60 time in a car magazine. It doesn't matter if you have more horsepower in your Mustang if your buddy's less powerful but lighter Camaro can kick your ass at the drag strip. That's why Apple's iPhone consistently wins the speed tests that use real-world usability tasks.
The sad part is that resolutions are to the point where you just can't really tell the difference anymore. I upgraded from an iPhone 6s with it's 326 dpi screen and went to the iPhone 6s Plus with it's 401 dpi. They look the same to me.
Here is one of the clearest differences between Samsung and Apple illustrated in plain sight. Samsung wants to win the spec war so that they can give their marketers ammo for their commercials. Apple wants to make the user experience delightful so that the customer becomes a repeat buyer. Samsung needlessly cranked up the resolution on their phone screens to the point that their GPU can't keep up with pushing all those pixels. This is shown by the on-screen results where the iPhone 6s beats the Samsung phones with the more powerful GPUs. We know that Samsung is using more powerful GPUs because the off-screen results show higher benchmark scores for Samsung.
The problem for Samsung is that pixels are like weight and GPUs are like engines. If you're looking at a Chevy and a Ford truck who both make 300 horsepower would it make a difference if one of the trucks weighed one thousand pounds more than the other? Yes, it would. Samsung phones are like extremely overweight vehicles that can't keep up with all that mass.
The on-screen results are always the more important metric. It's like the 0-60 time in a car magazine. It doesn't matter if you have more horsepower in your Mustang if your buddy's less powerful but lighter Camaro can kick your ass at the drag strip. That's why Apple's iPhone consistently wins the speed tests that use real-world usability tasks.
The sad part is that resolutions are to the point where you just can't really tell the difference anymore. I upgraded from an iPhone 6s with it's 326 dpi screen and went to the iPhone 6s Plus with it's 401 dpi. They look the same to me.
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