iPhone 4S Benchmarks - Impressive!

I hate to bring up technical benchmarks because the selling point of the iPhone has never been about specifications.

But, I keep hearing, "specs this," and, "specs that," and, "Why does the iPhone 4S have terrible specs?"

Well, here's a report that you use when the "spec" army comes to your door.  Anandtech posted benchmarks for the iPhone 4S compared with the iPhone 4 running iOS 5 and the iPhone 3GS in addition to popular Android smartphones.  The results may surprise you.

Let's start with browser benchmarks.  A SunSpider Javascript benchmark running the device's stock browser, the iPhone 4S is easily the best smartphone with a score of 2200 (lower is better).  Only the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 running Android 3.1 scored better with 2130.  That is oddly the only tablet that was benchmarked.  The iPad 2 is nowhere to be found in this particular test.  The iPhone 4 running iOS 5 (3545) is comparable, yet better, than the benchmark for both versions of the Samsung Galaxy SII.  The iPhone 3GS running iOS 5 has a score of 4737, which is still better than the Nexus One running Android 2.3.6 (5375).

Using the RightWare BrowserMark, the iPhone 4S shot straight to the top of the list with a score of 89567 (higher is better).  The Galaxy Tab is not far behind (88526) followed by the Galaxy SII (55144).  The iPhone 4 with iOS 5 (51701) drops down to 8th place in this benchmark.  The iPhone 3GS (37276) performs admirably besting the iPhone 4 with iOS 4.3 and just under the HTC Thunderbolt and the Nexus S.

Running some tests, Anandtech belives that the A5 chip in the iPhone 4S is running at 800mhz, slower than the 1Ghz in the iPad 2.  This is because the 4S has a much smaller battery than the iPad.

The GPU in the 4S and iPad 2 smash the benchmarks compared with the Android phones and the Galaxy Tab 10.1.  Again, the iPad 2 is better because of its higher clock speed.

You can check out the full benchmarks at Anandtech.