Understanding the iPhone 3GS
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 7, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
The CPU and its Performance
I keep mentioning that the iPhone 3GS is faster than its predecessor, but these numbers speak louder than anything I can write:
| Application Launch Time | Apple iPhone 3G (3.0) | Apple iPhone 3GS (3.0) |
| Star Defense | 54.4 s | 22.9 s |
| Sims 3 | 28.0 s | 9.5 s |
| Resident Evil | 32.0 s | 22.5 s |
| Messaging App | 4.66 s | 1.97 s |
| Mail App | 2.31 s | 0.85 s |
| Search for "Man" | 4.0 s | 1.91 s |
| App Store | 7.2 s | 3.7 s |
| Power On Test | 39.7 s | 25.0 s |
| iPhone 3GS Advantage over iPhone 3G | 95% |
This is a generational improvement in performance folks. The new 3GS is, at worst, only 42% faster than the iPhone 3G. At best? Nearly 200% faster. Apple was right to abandon the aging ARM11 core used in the iPhone 3G in favor of the Cortex A8 in the 3GS. I also wonder if any of these performance gains are helped by using faster NAND flash in the 3GS. It wouldn't be enough to account for all of the performance boost, but perhaps 5 - 10%.
WiFi and 3G web page rendering speed is also a lot faster on the 3GS:
| 3G | Apple iPhone (3.0) | Apple iPhone 3G (3.0) | Apple iPhone 3GS (3.0) | Palm Pre (1.03) |
| anandtech.com | 41.0 s | 24.2 s | 14.0 s | 17.0 s |
| arstechnica.com | 34.4 s | 18.2 s | 9.6 s | 13.5 s |
| hothardware.com | 84.3 s | 58.3 s | 19.8 s | 23.0 s |
| pcper.com | 67.1 s | 35.1 s | 18.5 s | 22.1 s |
| digg.com | 75.2 s | 47.2 s | 19.9 s | 24.9 s |
| techreport.com | 44.5 s | 25.2 s | 13.6 s | 12.5 s |
| tomshardware.com | 75.7 s | 28.8 s | 22.2 s | 25.2 s |
| facebook.com | 103.4 s | 46.3 s | 15.4 s | 26.8 s |
I re-ran all of my web browsing performance tests on all of the phones to provide the most accurate comparison. I ran the Palm Pre data before the 1.04 OS release came out but apparently that update didn't improve browsing performance so I wouldn't expect much difference there.
The 3GS makes everything faster, including web browsing over the 3G network. Just to be clear, I used the full site versions of all of these web pages - I did not use any mobile or iPhone optimized sites in the timing. I tried to perform all of the tests at the same time to eliminate any network strangeness. Each test was performed three times and I reported the average.
The 3GS is nearly 300% faster than the original iPhone in browsing over the cellular network. Here the 3GS looks to be around 114% faster than the iPhone 3G - definitely worth the upgrade if you do a lot of browsing on your phone. The iPhone 3GS ended up 24% faster than the Palm Pre, but I suspect that most of that is due to performance differences between Sprint and AT&T at my house.
It is important to realize what we're talking about here. These phones, particularly ones that are using old ARM11 based SoCs, are CPU bound while loading web pages. Even while browsing over a relatively slow < 1Mbps cellular network, the CPU still ends up being a significant bottleneck to web page rendering performance. Compare that to how things work on the desktop - when was the last time you felt your PC was too slow to browse the web? The Cortex A8 is a huge step forward here, and once again, there's no excuse for putting any ARM11 in a high end smartphone today.
Let's remove more bottlenecks and see how big of a difference the CPU alone makes, the following tests were performed over WiFi:
| WiFi | Apple iPhone 3G (3.0) | Apple iPhone 3GS (3.0) | Palm Pre (1.03) |
| anandtech.com | 13.3 s | 8.8 s | 10.1 s |
| arstechnica.com | 12.8 s | 8.2 s | 8.2 s |
| hothardware.com | 35.8 s | 15.1 s | 11.6 s |
| pcper.com | 27.8 s | 17.3 s | 21.3 s |
| digg.com | 36.1 s | 17.5 s | 16.3 s |
| techreport.com | 17.1 s | 11.6 s | 7.8 s |
| tomshardware.com | 21.7 s | 12.2 s | 12.4 s |
| facebook.com | 29.3 s | 10.5 s | 22.1 s |
Remove the cellular bottleneck and things mostly stay the same between iPhones. The new 3GS is nearly 100% faster than the old 3G (and iPhone original). The major change comes from the comparison to the Palm Pre. The 3GS is now only 8% faster than the Pre, a significant improvement from the earlier releases of webOS. I do firmly believe that Palm has much room to improve performance on its device to bring it up to speed compared to the 3GS. It's running very similar hardware to the iPhone 3GS, there's no reason for it to feel so much slower.
Let me take this opportunity to also chastise HTC for using the Qualcomm MSM7200A in the new Hero smartphone. Here we have yet another Android OS phone using a horrendously old ARM11 based CPU, it’s just unacceptable. The table above shows you how much more performance is on the table if you move to Cortex A8. I’m still waiting for a handset maker to do Android justice and pair it with a truly robust hardware platform.
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psonice - Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - link
My understanding is that the iphone 3gs GPU is actually a 535, not a 520. At least, this is the current understanding among iphone developers, and there's an SGX535 driver on the phone to support that. The extra power might explain the hit on battery life when playing games.Real numbers are pretty hard to come by, but it seems the 535 is roughly 4x faster than the 520. If so, that's a massive upgrade rather than just a decent one. The 535 also supports HD video decoding where the 520 doesn't - not that apple seem to be supporting it if it does.
I heard too that the palm pre has a 530 GPU, which is 2x faster than the 520. That puts the iphone a long way ahead for graphics instead of behind.
One thing in the article I really disagree with btw: you say that the phone makers should provide detailed specs. I think they shouldn't, as it's not helpful at all for the average buyer. If you go into a shop without having much clue and ask for an iphone because it's the latest thing, and the shop assistant says "well this is like an iphone, but it runs 200mhz faster" you'll end up buying the "better" phone based on the spec sheet, even if it's running win mobile 5.
I was in Japan a while back, and they tend to buy phones based on the spec sheets there. The phones all compete on having the most features. They're all really big and HORRIBLE to actually use. None of that please!
I think apple actually get their commercials right with the iphone on the whole: show somebody actually using the phone to do stuff. If the other manufacturers did the same, that would be a perfect way to compare.
christinme7890 - Thursday, July 9, 2009 - link
I agree with you holistically. There are not many people in this world that even understand the specs. Not to mention when it comes to specs, and the person has no clue, they end up getting the one with the highest numbers. This is bad. I think you are right in saying that the way apple works their commercials is perfect for people. They show people all the great apps that they could use and they say that ALL of these apps can be on one phone.This is why I hate the Best buy MS commercials where the kid goes into the BB and buys a PC instead of a mac. The person always buys the computer with the best specs and care little about the OS, which is what they will be using. Windows, imo after using a Mac for a year, sucks in comparison to Mac. I rarely have a problem with a mac. I sit in class everyday and watch all the pc people have startup errors and os sleep or hibernation errors. I can close my mac and KNOW WITHOUT A DOUBT that it will wake up totally fine. Not to mention it wakes up seamlessly without load screens or anything. I will not compare the two but for business and usability the MAC gets my vote and I think if Apple does their commercials for the macs just as great. Sure most people are still using MS but that is because MS strong arms people into buying their stuff everytime you buy a Computer (not to mention Apple is very strict with their software and rightly so).
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - link
Ooh, very interesting - do you have any links to discussions on the 535 being in the 3GS?I don't think end users need to be bombarded with specs, but I think there needs to be more information put out about these things. We shouldn't have to play guessing games about clocks and specs; don't market them, but don't hide them either - that's my thinking.
Take care,
Anand
BlazingDragon - Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - link
Anand, here it is:http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/25/iphone-3gs-has...">http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/25/iph...has-more...
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - link
Very interesting - thanks guys, I've updated the article.Take care,
Anand
ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - link
It should probably also be noted that the MBX-Lite supports OpenGL ES 1.1 as implemented by Apple not just OpenGL ES 1.0. I believe it's Android's implementation that currently only supports OpenGL ES 1.0.It's also been reported that the iPhone OS 3.1 betas include improvements to the OpenGL stack that include additional OpenGL extensions. Whether these are focused on OpenGL ES 2.0 and the SGX or are also for OpenGL ES 1.1 and the MBX remains to be seen. Although on the issue of reducing market segmentation, it'd be great if Apple could implement the OpenGL ES 1.1 Extension Pack although I don't know if the MBX-Lite can actually support it in hardware.
BlazingDragon - Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - link
Anand, here's it is:iPhone 3GS Has More Powerful PowerVR SGX 535 GPU?
kelmerp - Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - link
I'm trying to decide between the MyTouch or a jailbroken iphone.sxr7171 - Wednesday, July 8, 2009 - link
JB iPhone vs. MyTouch? They're not even in the same league. Pre vs. iPhone is a comparison.pennyfan87 - Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - link
anand,i love you writing and tech analysis.
but please, drop the fanboyism.
3 articles on such a minor upgrade? please.
more SSD stuff please.