[NewsPoster]

Early tests from PC performance sites Tom's Hardware and AnandTech have revealed that early iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus buyers aren't just buying style and elegance -- they're also getting a smartphone that appears to be the best all-around performer available, in some cases by a significant margin. Significant improvements in GPU performance, JavaScript performance and battery life once again see the iPhone outperforming phones with quad-core chips and twice the RAM.

Measuring graphics performance using GFXBench 3.0 and the T-Rex HD onscreen test, the iPhone 6 bested all comers apart from the Nvidia Shield Tablet with a score of 49.5, a 20 percent improvement over the iPhone 5s. Oddly, the iPhone 6 Plus came in fourth behind the 5s with a score of 34.4 (the iPhone 5s offered 40.2 frames per second, while the Nvidia entry hit 57.1fps). These were significantly higher scores than another other flagship phone, including the HTC One (E8 and M8 versions), Moto X, Samsung Galaxy S5, Google's Nexus 5, the Sony Xperia Z1s or the LG G2 or G3.

The SunSpider 1.0.2 benchmark found the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus taking first and second place, respectively, followed by the iPhone 5s. The Shield tablet, and Huawei Honor 6 rounded out the top six models. The scores for the iPhone 6 models, at 336.8 for the iPhone 6 and 343.8 for the 6 Plus represented a 13 percent gain over the A7 chip, which scored 414.7 in the iPhone 5s.

The iPhone 6 Plus took second place in the web browsing battery life testing, clocking 13.71 hours, significantly ahead of the 12-hour life seen on the HTC One (E8) and 11.47-hour Moto G. The iPhone 6's tying score of 11.47 hours was extremely impressive, however, considering that it sports only an 1810mAh battery with 3.83 nominal voltage, notes 9to5Mac. The Moto G offers a 2070mAh battery, by comparison. The iPhone 6 Plus' hefty 2915mAh battery -- twice the power of the iPhone 5s battery -- was beaten in endurance only by the Huawei Ascend Mate 2, a 6.1-inch phablet with a whopping 4050mAh battery. The Ascend Mate 2 saw 18.74 hours of battery life compared to the iPhone 6 Plus' 13.72 hours.

Tom's Hardware ran a suite of tests on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus against only the iPhone 5s and the Samsung Galaxy S5, confirming AnandTech's SunSpider results and comparing other graphics tests. The Galaxy S5 was able to best the iPhone 6 on sRGB gamut and the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited test, but on all of the other 10 tests conducted, the iPhone 6 models or the iPhone 5s won out.

In particular, the iPhone 6 Plus display was found to be the brightest (in nits), offering 537 compared to the iPhone 6's 504, the iPhone 5s' 470 and the Galaxy S5's 373. The iPhone 6 was just barely able to edge out the S5 on the Geekbench 3 CPU test, despite having a much lower-speed and dual-core processor (albeit 64-bit). All three iPhone models bested the S5 by a factor of four on the N.O.V.A 3 test, while the iPhone 5s was found to have the loudest speaker -- barely -- over the iPhone 6.

[Jeff75]

Great job, Apple!

[climacs]

I wish I had a buck for every bitter fandroid who thinks "Samsung did it first" matters so much.

[DiabloConQueso]

Doesn't matter who's first, it matters who's best -- like the iPod. Wasn't the first, but was certainly the best.

Simply adding a feature to a device just to say the device now sports that feature isn't good enough, and sometimes it's better to NOT add a feature if it can't be integrated correctly or doesn't enhance the overall user experience. Kind of like fingerprint readers: Apple wasn't the first, but they're certainly on the road to being the best at it -- and by "best" I mean most easily integrated, seamless, useful, and positive implementation.

I can't image going back to sliding-to-unlock -- in fact, it feels downright weird on my iPad now. That's how you know a company got it right: when you become accustomed to the new feature and think, "Hell, how did I ever get along before this?"

Another example: Androids had huge screens before -- long before -- the iPhone, but without Reachability (where elements at the top of the screen slide down for easier thumb access), they certainly weren't the best implementation of larger screens. Apple's analysis of thumb-usage patterns during their keynote made it apparent that they do things other companies don't -- like question, "Ok, a bigger screen makes it difficult to get at the top-most elements on the screen -- is there something we can do to overcome that?"

It's plain to see that for the most part, other device makers simply lack that "extra something" that Apple clearly has. Apple's not infallible, nor do they get it right 100% of the time, but they certainly pay attention to the details that other hardware manufacturers aren't even aware exist.

If Samsung and the other smartphone manufacturers could somehow attain this "extra something" then Apple would really be in trouble -- but as it goes for industrial design, there are few companies that can compete on Apple's level.

It's been hinted before that Apple isn't a computer company, they're an industrial design company that happens to make computers (and personal electronics), and it's absolutely true. The interface and design is what you encounter first, and what you continue to encounter and interact with throughout the life of the device. If you can't get that first-step right, and instead have too many engineers and programmers determining the final product, then you're going to end up with a device with tons of power and potential and lackluster execution with regard to any one specific detail.

[climacs]

good analysis Diablo. I'd add that Samsung is too busy coming out with new models all the time to get the little details right. They are not thinking holistically about the entire experience.

[Charles Martin]

Sometimes, having a feature first IS important. But often, it's much more important to get it right. The recent tests with the iPhone 6 cameras that we wrote about is a good example: on paper, its an underwhelming camera compared to most others. In real-world tests, however, it came out on top. This article, about the processor and GPU and RAM, shows the iPhone beating phones with literally twice the spec in all three departments.

When we tested the Samsung Galaxy S5 for our hands-on, we found that the fingerprint sensor and the heartrate monitor simply didn't work very well. Lousy, in fact. There are things about the S5 that we liked very much, but flagship features ought to work as advertised and they don't. As Diablo says: Apple isn't perfect, but they *try.* The others are too busy moving on to another new phone too much of the time, IMO.