We’ve been talking about the zippiness of the iPhone 3GS — S as in Speed — since it launched, and report after report has confirmed that not only is it fast, it’s faster than we initially thought.
Here’s more of the same. Running OpenGL 1.x like the iPhone 3G (never mind that it can run OpenGL 2.0 which the iPhone 3G can’t), the results are most impressive:
- The CPU performance is Faster by 40-70%
- The fillrate* is 3x to 4x higher
- Texture effects and filters are about 10x faster
These are probably better indicators for now, since game developers likely won’t abandon the 40 million previous generation users (and their money) any time soon. Does make you wonder when it will happen, though, and what the games — and other apps — will eventually look like.
[via Gizmodo via glbenchmark via Extremetech viaUbergizmo -- phew!]
Once again validating Dieter’s iPhone 3GS vs. Palm Pre web rendering smackdown, MacRumors reports on Medialets‘ latest Sunspider Javascript tests pitting the iPhone 3GS against the iPhone 3G (both on 3.0 and 2.2.1), Palm Pre, and Google Android G1.
As MacRumors points out, not only is iPhone 3GS’ clear, current speed advantage impressive, but the 3x improvement iPhone 3.0 gives the iPhone 3G is most impressive as well.
Bill Gates’ “power of software” indeed…
Update: Engadget re-did the math and it looks like the iPhone 3G S is actually 21% faster than the Palm Pre (for now).
According to Anandtech, Dieter was spot on in his iPhone 3G S vs. Palm Pre browser speed test video. (as was our iPhone 3G S vs. iPhone 3G smackdown video)
The bigger story, of course, is not only do we have several great devices pushing competition and better serving users these days, but Mobile WebKit (the rendering engine behind Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome Lite, Palm Pre’s browser, and Nokia S60 (tip of the hat to Sascha Segan) has become the mobile internet platform.
That it’s relentlessly standards based, scales elegantly from desktop (where it ironically holds minimal share) to handset, and is continually being improved upon makes us especially happy for all concerned devices.
We mentioned yesterday that iPhone OS 3.0’s Mobile Safari Browser was being reported as faster than the current iPhone OS 2.2.1 version. Now Ars Technica has run the numbers and the results are pretty impressive. Check out their full report for all the details, but this sums it up nicely:
According to our sources, the 3.0 beta still has some stability and speed issues, so that makes these results that much more impressive. While the overall average gives the iPhone 3.0 beta a 300 percent speed advantage, some of the individual tests show 6x, 8x, or even 11x improvements—the bitwise “AND” function even runs 16x faster than in the current version of Mobile Safari.
Should make the release version of the new, Nitro-powered Mobile Safari 3.0 fairly impressive, come summer! Bring on them multi-app Facebook pages, the iPhone will be ready! (Joking… a bit.)
