Apple iPhone 6 Plus Review: Is Bigger Better?
Performance: CPU & Device Benchmarks
Performance is always a delicate topic when it comes to Apple. Comparing the iPhone 6 Plus to Android phones and Windows Phone can take some work to level the playing field. However, there are few cross platform and browser-based benchmarks available, where equal workloads can be applied and conclusions can be drawn.
On the surface, it would appear Apple is behind the times with the A8 processor powering the iPhone 6 Plus. The 1.4GHz dual-core A8 processor is slower in terms of clock speed, and many Android phones (like the Galaxy Note 4) are already shipping with 2.3GHz and faster quad-core chips. In addition, 1GB of system RAM is standard with the iPhone 6 Plus, which is only a third of what many flagship Android phones possess. When running single applications, 1GB may be enough, but load a bunch of apps and webpages, and that 1GB quickly becomes a limitation.
But Apple hand-tuned their SoC architecture and OS for optimal performance, and the company also places a large emphasis on graphics performance, which shows in the benchmarks.
Web browsing on the iPhone 6 Plus is very quick. And our SunSpider javascript test rings up at an impressive score of 350.7ms, which is must faster than the iPhone 5s (which sported scores of around 424ms in our testing) and even quicker than two of the newest Android rivals: the Galaxy S 5I and latest Moto X
The other browser-based benchmark we ran was Browsermark, which netted a score of 4629. That smokes the competition, including the iPhone 5, 5s, 4S and iPad 4.
On the surface, it would appear Apple is behind the times with the A8 processor powering the iPhone 6 Plus. The 1.4GHz dual-core A8 processor is slower in terms of clock speed, and many Android phones (like the Galaxy Note 4) are already shipping with 2.3GHz and faster quad-core chips. In addition, 1GB of system RAM is standard with the iPhone 6 Plus, which is only a third of what many flagship Android phones possess. When running single applications, 1GB may be enough, but load a bunch of apps and webpages, and that 1GB quickly becomes a limitation.
But Apple hand-tuned their SoC architecture and OS for optimal performance, and the company also places a large emphasis on graphics performance, which shows in the benchmarks.
Looking at Geekbench, we netted an overall multi-core score of 2911. That's a good number, but not quite as good as some of the faster Android device currently available, which feature quad-core SoCs. The iPhone 6 Plus' single-thread performance, however, led the pack.
Web browsing on the iPhone 6 Plus is very quick. And our SunSpider javascript test rings up at an impressive score of 350.7ms, which is must faster than the iPhone 5s (which sported scores of around 424ms in our testing) and even quicker than two of the newest Android rivals: the Galaxy S 5I and latest Moto X
The other browser-based benchmark we ran was Browsermark, which netted a score of 4629. That smokes the competition, including the iPhone 5, 5s, 4S and iPad 4.
