A recently released report by PC Mag put the iPhone 5 against previous iPhone models, then against top Android models including Samsung’s Galaxy SIII released in June and Google’s Motorola Droid RAZR M released just last week. Guess what? Apple’s iPhone 5 was declared the world’s fastest smartphone.
When compared to previous years’ iPhone models, the iPhone 5 obviously came out ahead. If that wasn’t enough, it should be noted that it often came out ahead by a factor of two. In browser tests, it scored nearly twice as fast as the iPhone 4S in Browsermark, where it was more than three times as fast as the iPhone 4, even with all phones upgraded to iOS 6 (which boasts improved browser speeds for all). The graphic tests resulted in the iPhone 5 scoring 2.2 times as high as the iPhone 4S and more than 8 times as fast as the iPhone 4. In general, PC Mag said the iPhone 5 was overall 2.5 times as fast as the iPhone 4S and over 4.2 times as fast as the iPhone 4.
When Apple’s new iPhone was pitted against Android phones, PC Mag noted that last year’s iPhone 4S running iOS 6 on its dual core, 800MHz A5, “is about on par with leading Android 4.0 phones like the Samsung Galaxy S III and the Motorola Droid RAZR M, both of which are using 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processors, ” adding that “obviously, the difference is that Safari is a faster browser than the Android browser.” PC Mag continued by saying that the new iPhone 5 “takes things to the next level,” stating that “its Browsermark score is 80% higher, and it shows much quicker Sunspider times.”
The iPhone 5 won overall by a narrower margin, but as noted, “the ‘memory’ and ‘stream’ scores, both of which test loading data in and out of RAM, come out much better on the Apple device.” In a graphics-specific processing test, the iPhone 5 beat the S III and RAZR M by more than a factor of three. The report concluded that “based on these benchmarks, the iPhone 5 lives up to the promise of being twice as fast as the iPhone 4S. I’s also, for now, the fastest handheld computer sold in the U.S.”