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Supposed iPhone 6 ran through Geekbench, once again suggests 1 GB RAM, dual-core A8

The same person who posted the original convincing videos of a working iPhone 6 is back with some more analysis, after having the device for a couple of days. In particular, zzray ran his device through Geekbench to try and find out some technical specifications. The supposed Geekbench results say that the device (with identifier iPhone 7,2) has 1 GB of RAM and an ARM processor clocked at 1.4 GHz.

Although the included RAM is disappointing, with many hoping Apple would bump RAM to 2 GB this generation, the small change in clock speed should not come as a surprise. 9to5Mac reported that the A8 would focus on power efficiency, rather than extreme performance improvements. It is likely that Apple has focused on other engineering improvements aside from base clock speed for any Apple A8 speed gains. Still, the chip managed a Geekbench score of 1633 for single-core and 2920 for multi-core.  For comparison, the Geekbench website shows that an iPhone 5s scores 1412 in single-core and 2540 in multi-core tests. This is still a substantial increase to compute performance.

(via GforGames)

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Comments

  1. maledaniel - 10 years ago

    Corrections are good to take more progress from others mind

  2. dominicrn - 10 years ago

    Also battery life is disappointing, See the clock it says 23:24 on 29% but it means the battery drops every one minute compared to other screenshot…

    • Benjamin Mayo - 10 years ago

      Not necessarily. If the battery life percentage hadn’t dropped for *five* minutes before 23:24 for example.

      • dominicrn - 10 years ago

        That could be. But i’ll await for at least for 3 months before buying an iPhone because i’m more concerned about battery life lasting…

    • SteveZ (@nerdAFK) - 10 years ago

      This logic….

  3. and 5,5″ version?? :(

  4. Matt - 10 years ago

    My 5s is fast enough. Just make the 6 super power efficient–I like how my MacBook Air battery life is outstanding, it is its best feature.

    • standardpull - 10 years ago

      iOS 8 will help a lot:

      There are a lot of poorly written apps by name brand vendors that seem to function wonderfully from the user’s perspective despite major flaws. Simple apps can suck power like a jet fighter with the afterburners on if they’re written poorly.

      iOS 8 will provide information to users so they can see which of their apps steal a lot of resources. Those that steal a lot of resources will get a lousy reputation, which will in turn induce developers to spend at least a little time optimizing their code. It might take a few weeks or months, but a constant stream of bad reviews about power suck will definitely help fix the popular but poorly designed apps out there.

      I’ve written a lot of apps in my day. Spending a day or two optimizing code can usually result in incredible reductions in resource utilization. But if app developers don’t have an incentive, they usually don’t bother to do the work.

      Of course, the other strategy is to have a bigger battery in the phone, which means throwing a hardware resource at a software problem. A bigger battery means a bigger and heavier phone, and there are real constraints in terms of how big one wants their phone to be. A bigger battery is not a sustainable solution, as if developers don’t care, they will manage to deplete whatever finite resource they’re given.

      The Tragedy of the Commons, so to speak. iOS8 publicly puts abusive grazers on notice.

      • thomasskyg - 10 years ago

        And facebook will finally be decent.

  5. Weibin Ho - 10 years ago

    So apps which haven’t been optimized for bigger screen will still give you full screen experience then.

  6. That’s the iPhone 6.. Not the iPhone 6 Plus ;-)

  7. DTS (@tDrexis) - 10 years ago

    I’m completely fine with this actually. Power efficiency means a lot more to me than an already-smooth UI and fast-performing device.

  8. Jacob Ørum (@jacoborum) - 10 years ago

    Am I the only one that thinks that these screenshots looks like they are taking from a 5S???

  9. rogifan - 10 years ago

    Just give me 2GB in the iPad.

    • macmaniman - 10 years ago

      why tho, have you ever noticed any ram shortages in the A7 iPad?

      • Wes - 10 years ago

        Have you done large GarageBand or iMovie projects? It doesn’t crash, but it gets iffy.

      • Safari webpages get evicted pretty quickly. And if you’re a developer, you can use Xcode to see a ton of “out of memory” warnings logged in the console.

      • jrox16 - 10 years ago

        Yes, Safari tabs reload constantly, even if you have just a few open. The device needs more RAM without a doubt. The iPhones should be updated to 2GB as well by now. But I’m skeptical of all the leaks and benchmarks. I’ll wait to see the real thing before any judgement.

  10. gatortpk - 10 years ago

    No! I hope this is not legit. However, it does seem plausible, but it’ll be the first time since the iPhone 4 that Apple didn’t double the (CPU) performance of it predecessor. The iPhone 4 seemed to have about 30% performance improvement over the 3GS. The iPhone 4S was around 100% faster than the 4 (by going dual-core), the iPhone 5 was more than 150% faster than the 4S. And of course the iPhone 5S was again double the speed of the iPhone 5. (I’m not counting the Original iPhone to the iPhone 3G, because they were both the same generation, iPhone 1,1 and iPhone 1,2). I’m still hoping for an iPhone 6 with ~100x CPU performance over the original iPhone.

    I am pleased Apple appears to be staying dual core for now. I’d rather have two faster cores than 4 slower cores. Perhaps Apple can double the raw CPU speed once again next year with a quad-core SoC, but only after very well written multi-threaded apps have been added.

    • jrox16 - 10 years ago

      This is just one benchmark, it might score higher or double in others. And of course this could be all fake too.

  11. Mr. T (@t87) - 10 years ago

    If these are the results of an iPhone 6, how is the screenshot still the same size as that of an iPhone 5/5s? Is it because the aspect ratio is the same?

    • macmaniman - 10 years ago

      good question, and my guess is yes, higher pixel density on the same aspect ratio

    • sporga1derpahkiin - 10 years ago

      It’s because apps are still hard-coded to the iPhone 5’s display, duh?

      • Mr. T (@t87) - 10 years ago

        But when you take a screenshot, you should get a picture that is either pixellated on a bigger display or one with a large black frame. Neither of them are here.

  12. Tim Jr. - 10 years ago

    They don’t usually focus on CPU design on the base models.. we usually see major CPU changes every other year.

  13. mpias3785 - 10 years ago

    A 15% increase in speed seems kind of anemic.

    • rogifan - 10 years ago

      I wasn’t aware that the 5s was slow. Why does it need a bigger speed increase?

      • mpias3785 - 10 years ago

        Well, the 5 was about 225% faster than the 4s and the 5s was about 95% faster than the 5, so a paltry 15% increase in speed is embarrassingly pathetic at best.

      • thejuanald - 10 years ago

        Also because of the size of the screens/resolution. A 15% increase over a processor with a much smaller screen would probably mean that the 6 and especially the 5.5″ 6 would feel slower than a 5s. How do people not realize this?

    • jrox16 - 10 years ago

      We might be reaching the limits of performance given battery technology and device size limitations. Also, at this point, the A7 is already faster than most if not all apps can even take full advantage of. It’s probably smarter to focus on efficiency rather than speed. There’s no reason to believe speed performance should double (or any consistent increase) with each new generation.

      • mpias3785 - 10 years ago

        I’m getting sick of Apple making the phones thinner and thinner rather than installing higher capacity batteries. I really don’t need a paper thin phone!

      • o0smoothies0o - 10 years ago

        @mpias3785 You know absolutely nothing about how batteries work. Which is better more surface area or thicker? What will a 0.6mm increase in the thickness of the battery (keep in mind the battery takes up less than half of the area of the case) do to real world battery life? It could literally add 10mins for all you know. Everyone decides to talk about things they are completely ignorant about. Sad.

      • mpias3785 - 10 years ago

        I’ve been keeping an eye on Li-Ion batteries for a number of years and changes in chemistry and the reduction in the thickness of the films being used can make a big difference in capacity. That’s why 18650s can range from 1000 mAh to 3000 mAh while keeping the same dimensions. I was satisfied with the thinness of the 4s and would not have complained if they had kept the same thickness with the 5/5s and used the extra room for an extended capacity battery.

      • thejuanald - 10 years ago

        mpias3785, don’t bother arguing with o0smoothies0o, he always just states that you don’t know what you’re talking about and when you prove him wrong he completely ignores it

  14. Wow very impressive yet again Apple. In comparison these are the results from top android phones at the moment. (Though it isn’t an exact comparison it will give you an idea, so back off fandroids)

    Name: Single core score – Multi core score

    iPhone 6 (4.7″): 1633 -2920
    Motorola MOTO C (2014): 980 – 2913
    SAMSUNG Galaxy S5: 920 – 2760
    Somy Experia Z1 Compact: 910 – 2722
    HTC One M8: 909 – 2654
    SAMSUNG Galaxy Note 3: 883 – 2614

    It even beats Samsung’s top Tablet, Galaxy Tab S 10.5: 907 – 2720

    • Nycko Heimberg - 10 years ago

      Note 3 is 2013
      Xperia z3 and Z2 ?
      Galaxy Note 4 ?

      • You know where google is. Search for the scores yourself. I just picked the top ones from a site I found. And none of those were in that list. I couldn’t care less what models are which, I know that all of those have quad core processors and are recent models.

  15. Park HaYoung - 10 years ago

    In my 5s, geekbench 3 result page shows the same layout of supposed 6’s.
    I just mean that, there’s two scenario on there, first is the app in 6 is just stretched, the other is that screenshots are fake.
    Geekbench score and some letters can be manipulated easily! But I feel that it’s true, because, the leaks that is least is mostly ture.
    Anyway, I feel so DISAPPOINTED of it. Because, no matter what I do, I would buy 6..
    And I slightly hope the 5.5 model has 2GB RAM and ships on same day compared to 4.7’s.

    • jrox16 - 10 years ago

      No reason to be disappointed in those scores, they are still better than pretty much every phone out there right now. The 1GB of RAM is disappointing, but again, this could all be fake.

  16. o0smoothies0o - 10 years ago

    If that really was a legit iPhone 6, that guy is a piece of trash for leaking it 2 days before, and I sincerely hope they find them and prosecute. I can’t tell what’s worse the iPhone 6 he was using and it’s software appearance (6 rows) or his shirt.

  17. Heart7 (@heart7wings) - 10 years ago

    According to this guy’s Weibo (Chinese twitter), there is no NFC in iPhone 6, at least no NFC function in current iOS 8.

  18. Rob H. (@RHeidenreich572) - 10 years ago

    Geekbench needs to be updated more than likely to support the additional improvements to the processor and instruction sets, just like in version 3.1 and a few divisions after that of geekbench 3.

  19. Anyone noticed the time ? At 23:25 it shows 28% but at 23:24 it shows 29%

    • jrox16 - 10 years ago

      That doesn’t mean anything because it could have been at the very edge of 29%, meaning, 29.05% or something and just happened to turn during the testing.

  20. johnmfoley (@johnmfoley) - 10 years ago

    I’ve always suspected this guy was fake. A potential test will be the appearance of the Passbook icon in the keynote (I’m still predicting a separate payment app). Or if Apple comes out and says it’s a quad-core processor then we’ll know for sure.

    • o0smoothies0o - 10 years ago

      Yeah I don’t think there will be any payment in any app, if anything it will be in the settings. I know for a fact Apple won’t make you open an app to pay for things, that’s completely illogical and goes completely against seamless, easy, quick payments. Something will pop up on the screen and ask you to confirm, you hit yes or no and then use Touch ID, simple, effective.

  21. weakguy - 10 years ago

    If it’s real, I’m very disappointed. I hate apps having to reload every time I reopen them (especially Safari). 1 GB of RAM also makes it really hard to use more than 2 apps at once. Oh well… I guess Apple doesn’t want their iOS users to multitask.

  22. Jim Phong - 10 years ago

    It seems highly unlikely that the A8 SoC would be just 20% faster than the A7 one when the A7 is more than 100% faster than the previous A6…

  23. hungarianhc - 10 years ago

    5% ish is substantial?

  24. Mingding Wang - 10 years ago

    This would be the first time Apple won’t be saying “doubled performance” in terms of SoC? Sounds unreasonable. I stipulate that A8 would be quad core. My theory is that the current un-upgraded version of geekbench is only able to detect 2 cores and run a test on these.

  25. Franklin Tabora - 10 years ago

    I’m skeptical, this is probably Samsung marketing trolling Apple fans who care about specs haha!

  26. paul55br - 10 years ago

    To those of you engineers that have created your own OS and Hardware, remember that there is a lot more to RAM than its capacity. More RAM would be required to keep an app more responsive with larger projects opened (less disk swapping). I think RAM’s capacity is being blamed here for more than what it really is. App developers (include Apple devs) need to always watch for how much RAM their app is using.

    • Scott (@ScooterComputer) - 10 years ago

      There is no “disk swapping” in iOS. When iOS runsout of RAM, it’s over; iOS starts evicting pages and apps crash. So yes, many of the symptoms listed, especially the constant Safari page refreshing and absurd need to continually reload apps from start when switching, absolutely are RAM deficiencies.

      But it gets worse than that. On iOS devices, the video buffers are shared with main RAM; there is no dedicated video memory. So with these new iPhones, with larger screens, more pixels, there will be even LESS available RAM for applications than on the 5 because RAM will be reserved for video buffers.1GB is a nonstarter for the 5.5″ if it moves to a 3x Retina density.

      Either this is a hoax or a preproduction test unit or Apple engineering has its head up its ass.

      • paul55br - 10 years ago

        Scott. Yes, you’re correct, there is no backing store in iOS for developer apps. Any backing store has to be done manually (which is what I was talking about). Which is very common in embedded development.

    • So you are suggesting constraining the apps to conform to the low ram? No thanks…

  27. darkenv2 - 10 years ago

    If this turns out to be true I will be incredibly upset. I love Apple, I really do but if they expect me to pay top dollar then they need to provide top specs, Android has improved vastly over the years and they have cheaper price tags to go along with some very high end specs. For me I love iOS though, today will be a deciding factor for me. Apple needs to prove themselves today that they still are the pioneers of innovation

  28. I’m not digging the 1 GB of ram if true, I’ve written my share of games and it doesn’t take much to start getting memory warnings when using around 80 MB – 120 MB on the 5s currently (even with iOS 8). You can get near 250 MB without getting into trouble most of the time but I personally try to stay fair away from that for safety. With retina textures this is fairly easy to hit this usage and forces us to make compromises on visuals. I really would hope Apple would give us 2 GB to work with so we could take some of these games an apps to the next level.

  29. klepp0906 - 10 years ago

    Apple is pretty amazing if you ask me. The specs by themselves make you a bit underwhelmed. Then you realize that they have half the ram, half the cores, and half the clockspeed yet they still perform better than all existing phones and 99 % of existing tablets. Insane

    • klepp0906 - 10 years ago

      Before kids chime in asking for sources without even knowing it.. Here ya go.

      http://browser.primatelabs.com/android-benchmarks

      Enter contorted and created excuse as to why it’s wrong or irrelevant. Me – I’ll be stoked with my new iphone 6, and not choosing it due to the fact it’s faster at all.

      • klepp0906 - 10 years ago

        Awaiting moderation? Wth?!? Site must be outside of the USA. Here in the US we pride ourselves on free speech – it’s the first amendment right for goodness sakes.

        I love me some interwebz!

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Avatar for Benjamin Mayo Benjamin Mayo

Benjamin develops iOS apps professionally and covers Apple news and rumors for 9to5Mac. Listen to Benjamin, every week, on the Happy Hour podcast. Check out his personal blog. Message Benjamin over email or Twitter.