Image Source: Zach Epstein, BGR
Posted on 10/04/2017 11:38:24 PM PDT by Swordmaker
The A11 Bionic moniker may admittedly be nothing more than a marketing gimmick, but Apple’s next-gen processor is nothing short of a monster. In the days leading up to and following Apple’s iPhone media event, the iPhone 8 Geekbench 4 scores from Primate Labs’ Geekbench test were truly jarring. So while iOS and Android have arguably come close to reaching feature-parity in recent years, the overall system performance provided by Apple’s custom-designed A-x processors continues to leave Android handsets in the dust.
In fact, with Apple’s new flagship iPhone models running more than 50% faster than top of the line Android handsets in some tests, Primate Labs founder John Poole can’t help but wonder why we’re only seeing huge performance improvements emanating from Apple.
“The thing that I don’t fully understand is why performance has seemed to stagnate on the Android side,” Poole said in an interview with Tom’s Guide. “Where you don’t see these big leaps forward. I don’t understand what’s happening there.”
“At this point, you’ve got desktop-class performance in a handset. There’s no way of looking at it any other way,” Poole later added. “I wouldn’t have thought to use my first-generation iPhone to edit video. I would’ve thought you were crazy.”
Even though most iPhone users may not necessarily need to take advantage of all the processing power afforded by Apple’s next-gen processor, the larger point is that Apple is better positioned than its Android counterparts for the future of mobile computing.
Indeed, Apple’s decision to bring chip development in house has turned out to be one of Steve Jobs’ shrewdest decisions. As Apple chip guru Johnny Srouji said earlier this month, “This is something we started 10 years ago, designing our own silicon, because that’s the best way to truly customize something that’s uniquely optimized for Apple hardware and software.”
I still have an S4 purchased about a year or so ago. Phones are so expensive these days so I don’t rush out to get the newest especially when I don’t do fancy things on it. However, browsing the web when needed is getting pretty slow. How fast is yours?
The day is not far off when you'll be able to** set your phone on the table next to a wireless keyboard, mouse and monitor and have it work as well or better than a modern desktop pc. The same is true of phones interacting on your behalf with commerce, transportation, education, other people (actually, by then, the 'phone' will be the least of the capabilities of the device). Scoff if you like, but the world is changing and it's not taking surveys to find out if this is ok with you. I'm not saying it's a better world that's coming, I'm saying it's coming and offering the suggestion that you'll be in a very unfortunate spot if you don't acknowledge and prepare for this.
You may not know or appreciate that the day is not far off when your bank and other entities will tell you that they'll only deal with you through an app on a smart phone. In the short term, they may allow you to deal with them the 'old way', but they'll charge you a premium for the luxury. You say, "Screw that, I'll change banks". Yes, maybe, but you'll be dealing with inconvenience and eventually competition will drive those banks on board. If you think I'm being facetious about this, go walk through the aisle of an electronics store; they don't make TVs with remotes anymore. You download an app and use your phone. And I'm not talking about top of the line TVs, I'm talking about all TVs, down to the cheap ones. Same with ceiling fans and thermostats, even lamps. I think it's nuts, but no one asked me.
The arrival of the technology will become even faster; the adoption by society at large will be steadier and slower, but inevitable.
What reads as sarcasm in your post (intended or not) should instead be a posture of scrutiny and vigilance on your part.
You should be glad that Apple is at the forefront of privacy and personal security and you should be demanding the same of any tech company you deal with. If you don't understand or appreciate how Apple is doing that, I strongly suggest that you ask Swordmaker (in a PM if you're embarrassed to do so on this thread) to guide you to understanding why what Apple is doing is critical.
And if you say, "I'm fine with my dumb phone", I say, great, but they'll make you pay and eventually you won't be able to do simple things that today you take for granted. And if you say, "I'll buy a cheap Android phone", again, great, but in a world of hackers Android is a screen door. You might as well print out your most private information and tape it to the front of your house. Google is not interested in your privacy; they'll throw you to the government goons and leave you to the worst of the identity thieves in a heartbeat.
** actually, be required to
Not a pro or anti post at all, but I can’t help consider the fact that a hand-held device is generally not used for serious computing. If the phones are already working faster than the humans can keep up, what does the quantum leap forward in speed actually accomplish?
Again - I am neither supporting nor opposing any product or product line. I’m just asking if there is a limit on the benefit of speeding up products that already out pace their users.
“Poole is referring to the difference between burst performance and sustained performance. Laptops can keep up their speeds for a longer period of time because they have active cooling. With an iPhone or other smartphone, the processor will eventually generate more heat than the case can dissipate.”
“But that doesn’t diminish what Apple has accomplished with the A11 Bionic chip. Whether it’s for 5 minutes or 10 minutes, the performance gap between iOS and Android has suddenly widened. And when you’re paying $700 to $1,000 for a new phone, you want something that feels future proof.”
Interesting, I will have to read more.
But it looks like this testing is all about opening the most complex apps faster, which for some apps can take twice as long on most Android phones.
Yea and then they jam you for another $100-200 for storage space. Two bad you can’t order a phone with different processors, memory, maybe an extra sim slot or two memory slots, and a turbo option;)
The amount of raw computing power in modern handsets is astounding. Unfortunately, the fast majority of all that power is wasted executing the ‘idle’ instruction.
Now that is a fact. . .
The whole widget, that’s classic Apple from way back.
50% faster is another way to say twice as fast, so, yes, they are leaving Android in the dust.
50 percent really is leaving the competition in the dust. There is no other way to credibly describe it. I was gone for 18 months, and the venom continues. Oh, and I still use a flip phone, which amuses users of every feature phone regardless of brand. :^)
Well, miniaturization costs money. The iPhone 8 and X A11 processor benchmarks exceeds the benchmarks for the Intel Core i5 2.3GHz desktop class processor that boosts to 3.6Ghz... and does it in a fanless package. What's even more amazing is that the Neural Engine processor that Apple has included in this generation processor, an entirely new approach, which can churn out 600 billion operations per second, all in a handheld device. That's absolutely amazing.
100% faster is double. 50% faster is just “sesquifaster”.
“But that doesn’t diminish what Apple has accomplished with the A11 Bionic chip. Whether it’s for 5 minutes or 10 minutes, the performance gap between iOS and Android has suddenly widened. And when you’re paying $700 to $1,000 for a new phone, you want something that feels future proof.”
...
How’s the battery life, and does it burn your hand after running it full throttle for a few minutes?
Surprisingly, the products you do use are probably also made by FoxConn. They contract with over 500 Consumer Electronic brands to make their products. Here are just some of the more well known brands and the nations of incorporation that FoxConn contacts to either manufacture their goods or assembles products at their more than 30 assembly plants employing more than 1.5 million workers (US companies in bold):
No, 50% faster is double, by Apple’s typical reasoning:
https://www.imore.com/ipod-touch-speed-test-faster-50
On what planet is 50% faster "twice as fast?"
Apple’s.
C'mon, get with the program. Everybody knows that the iPhones are now made by little toddlers, who are taken from their parents at the age of 2. They are paid 4 cents an hour and they are only allowed to change their diapers once per 12 hour shift. To save additional money, all the iPhone factories have been relocated to the Arctic Circle. That way, we don't have to worry about air-conditioning. We just open the windows and let the cold air rush in. If the toddlers get too cold, then all they have to do is work faster and generate more heat to offset the cold air rushing in. Meanshile, little puppies are rounded up and sent to the factories where they are formed into hardened dog-sled teams. The Apple logo is branded into their hides. They are then responsible for pulling the finished iPods over hundreds of miles of ice and snow to the nearest shipping facility. It's a beautiful system.
No, it's actually not about opening complex apps faster. It's about doing such useful things as rendering video and 3D images much faster, editing 4K faster (on shoot out between a Samsung S8 and an Apple iPhone 8 showed the Apple was THREE TIMES faster in encoding the same video), compressing and decompressing high-resolution images and video faster and to a higher compression rate with less loss faster and better, adding in device ability to process live images in camera to add special effects across the full motion of the live image, then with such speed afforded by the processor, it allows much better realism in gaming with real-time ray-tracing the light and shadows in games for realistic imaging. Also, processors allow adding full color, real time 3D image processing to video screen displays of real-time video viewing for Augmented Reality displays in walk around mode in the X, Y, and Z axis, with live motion that reacts to the motion of the device.
I discovered one thing in my reading on the benefits of iOS 11 that has gone unmentioned that is actually extraordinary: With iOS 11, Apple has also switched to new, higher-efficiency image and video formats — HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format) and HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) — for storing newly taken photos and videos, which should result in new photos and videos taking up half the storage space, although older photos and videos won’t be automatically converted to the new formats. With the higher-speed processor, when a user opts to share the HEIFor HEVC image or video with a friend, the iOS device will attempt to determine if the friend's device can use the new formats or not, and if not, dynamically convert to JPEG o MPEG or that user's preferred format.
That speed of Apple's new concept Neural Processor is what allows the 3D FaceID to work so fast in real time that you don't even notice it as it processes the relative distance of 30,000 infrared projected dots on your face to determine a contour map of your face, convert that contour map to a mathematical hash and compare that new hash to the encrypted stored hash in the Secure Enclave and use an algorithm to decide, using 600 billion operations a second, whether or not the 3D map is close enough to unlock the device.
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