Like we weren’t excited about the Galaxy Nexus enough already. The crew at AnandTech has been busily benchmarking Android’s new flagship against Apple’s top performer. The results? The Galaxy Nexus is the new king of the hill in some key areas.
In the SunSpider Javascript Benchmark (version 0.9.1) the Galaxy Nexus scored a very speedy 1879 versus the iPhone 4S’s 2250. Obviously, lower is better in this test. The Nexus also outperformed the 4S in the Rightware BrowserMark test, scoring 98,272 versus the 4S’s 87,841 (higher is better). The translation of this clusterflock of numbers is that page rendering on the Galaxy Nexus should be faster. Experientially, our Mat Honan found web browsing on the Nexus to be very quick indeed. The thing is the processor on the Galaxy Nexus is nothing otherworldly, which means that Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) has made some serious software enhancements. In other words, when ICS comes to a phone or tablet with beefier specs it’s going to give you whiplash.
But don’t worry, Apple fans, when it came to the graphics processing benchmarks the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2 both beat the Galaxy Nexus. The Nexus did extremely well, just not as well. This means that, theoretically, gaming performance and other graphically intensive tasks should be slightly better on those iDevices. You can see all of the numbers over at AnandTech.
Benchmarking is a handy tool to give you relative, objective numbers about how a device performs. That said, these numbers don’t always translate to user experience. I’ve tested phones that benchmarked well, but then were slow and terrible to use in practice. However, in this case preliminary testing of the Galaxy Nexus has been extremely favourable (as it has been with the iPhone 4S, obviously), so it’s nice to hear that there are some raw numbers to back up these first impressions. [AnandTech via 9to5Mac]
MotorMouth
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 10:30 AMNo WP7 phones for comparison, how insulting!
Andy
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 11:06 AMCouldn’t fit it in the chart because it’s way too slow…
Roland
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 10:40 AMWould have been nice to at least have the graph of the graphics performance showing the iPhone4s better than the Nexus… Fair reporting goes a long way sometimes…
light487
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 10:49 AMIndeed.. and that the older SGSII is 25% faster than the Nexus on that same chart.. what is that test about anyway? Does it test Video playback? Gaming video?
Chris
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 5:01 PMThe galaxy SII did better as it was an off-screen processing test while the screen was still on, the higher resolution screen takes up considerably more processing power, so without the chip specific benchmarks we cannot know which GPU is truly better.
Hugo
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 10:59 AMThe Nexus probably performed slower on the graphics due to the higher resolution.
Little Phil
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 11:01 AMI’ll take an iPhone ANYTHING over any other phone any day. I prefer the best, so I use iPhone not crummy rip offs
S0ULphIRE
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 11:17 AMThis just in! All phones discovered to be crummy ripoffs of iPhones!
mr_herkt
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 11:33 AMlol +1
IFRUITS?
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 11:43 AMat least we get a preference in our food choice(desserts). i dunwanna eat fruits 4 the rest of my life. and even if apples keep me out from the doctors, oranges n MANGO does gives u vita’s that the fruit cant.
If u want to make a statement, plz put in the link for where the JUST IN part research. oh yeah, so u telling us all phones with touch screens and does what an ifruit does is a copy crummy ripoff? well tell me who made handhelds be4 ifruits? ifuits? and ifruits? nokia did some touch based phones, htc did many expensive ones, heck every1 did some. tech wasnt prefect then so shut the pie hole and grab ur fruit and get to work.
iTurd
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 2:22 AMMore like all phones are improvements over little white iJobs boxes.
yehh boi
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 11:19 AMwhat are you preaching about? It’s ok if you are obsessed with apple products but it CLEARLY isn’t “the best” so go sit on your iDildo and shut up
Jackson Bison
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 11:39 AMSnap!
Jackson Bison
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 1:15 PMWow! you’re like totally blowing my mind with your poor grasp of the English language…
However, that being said, from what I can decipher, you actually do have a good point… I think.
Mitch
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 11:56 AMIt’s people like you who make me ashamed I recently jumped on the iPhone bandwagon. iPhones are great, but that doesn’t mean all these Androids are nothing but crummy ripoffs. Some of the big new features of iOS 5, which OS did they get those ideas from? (Notifications bar anyone?)
Unless of course you’re just trolling.
IFRUITS?
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 12:05 PM+1, im a iphone user, windows 6 user, and android user and currently a Symbian user u cant mock 1 phone for another as there will be improvements (dono where they get the ideas *wink) but if pple blame andro for coppying iphones, remember they are all dev phones and pple will sometimes prefer fruits stuff so u can stuff it in an androi. fruits doesnt as itz locked. prefrence.. windows isnt really opimised during the 5-6.5 era but now 7 and mango is quite impressive. symbian is dying due to the lack of wanting to change, their choice. moking ALL Phones as crummy is just like being a white mocking the black, but since itz ALL, u r also moking the yellow, red, brown, and green(martians). so GTFO if pple like to troll. TROLLING IS RESERVE FOR U IN FORUMS WHERE THEY WILL BASH U FOR INAPPROPRIATE CONTENT.
Joel
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 12:02 PMErr, I think you’re all getting trolled.. just sayin’
Steve
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 5:28 PMYou’d think that… But some of the other posters on Giz AU like Rooboy are 100% sincere.
Rooboy
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 9:13 AMNice to know I’m in your thoughts Steve, but watchout .. my wife might get jealous!
Jackson Bison
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 11:42 AMThis is a little unfair – I mean the iPhone 4S is already a few weeks old – you can’t fairly do a comparison between a phone that’s new to one that’s obviously starting to date.
At the time of its release, the iPhone 4S was the best phone ever, hands down
light487
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 12:04 PMHrmm.. no.. a few weeks is nothing.. if it were a few months, fair call.. but a few weeks doesn’t make a big difference.
Christian
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 5:23 PMenter sarcasm here
Ed
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 12:50 PMThis just in, who gives a shit. Be happy your phone is more powerful than a 5 year old PC.
z3d
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 1:29 PMi’d look at android again if they brought out something like an “upgrade path certification” – a minimum spec level to ensure in one shape or another, you can upgrade your device to the next version of android within a fixed period of time. an “android world download day” would be awesome for buzz. it’d be pretty annoying sitting on a ginger sgs2 knowing it’s running about half the speed compared to if it had ICS rather than being only slightly faster than a 2.5 year old 3gs.
mattt
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 1:42 PMI think the fact that there is very few restrictions on android hardware is fantastic for the mobile market. People looking for low spec smartphones can pick up an entry level android handset for as little as $100, however those more tech savvy can spend their coin on a top of the range flagship device which is more likely to be updated in the future. Android world download day would be one of the greatest I.T feats ever. 200m + OS downloads in 24 hours would require some serious hardware.
z3d
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 4:05 PMwe’re talking about google here. if there is one company in the world that should be equipped to handle it, it’s google. incidentally, those numbers are what apple go through with am ios update. obviously not all 200M iOS devices get updated in the first 24 hours. but if apple can handle it (albeit with a few bumpy hours), google definitely should.
DarkAura
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 1:45 PMDon’t know if this would help you but
CONFIRMED: Google and Partners announces 18 Months Android Upgrade Guarantee [UPDATE]
From: http://www.theunwired.net/?item=confirmed-google-and-partners-announces-18-months-android-upgrade-guarantee-update
My understanding is its got some big names behind it But lacks a few guild lines and punishments.
Blake
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 1:49 PMWhat be more interesting would be performance of several year old phones in their respective modern OSs.
I mean everyone knows that the new nexus and new iphone4s run great respectively on the new hardware.
But since most people have a phone every two years or so, it would be interesting to see what the comparative performance drops are like with older phones using newer operating systems.
moloko
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 2:36 PMIt will be interesting to see what the SGII will be like when ICS arrives in a week or two.
z3d
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 4:08 PMweek or 2?
Christian
Monday, November 21, 2011 at 5:24 PMCtrl+F ‘week’ replace with ‘month’