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Does benchmark results really matter that much for phones? I don't see myself compiling code, playing graphics intensive video games, multitasking with many eng

Does benchmark results really matter that much for phones? I don't see myself compiling code, playing graphics intensive video games, multitasking with many engineering software running simultaneously, on a phone. Although Apple most definitely still leads on these factors, I think battery life, general latency/responsiveness of doing daily tasks, reliability, etc, are more important than some random coremark.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Battery life (especially idle battery life) and feeling responsive are all I care about. iOS devices have usually done far better on those fronts while having smaller batteries and weaker hardware compared with Android devices, so, yeah, super don't care about it benchmarking as faster than an Android device. Can I still put it on my nightstand at 10pm with 15% battery and have my alarm go off at 8AM with 8-9% charge remaining? Cool, don't care how fast it benchmarks.
- Zurrrrr 4y ago
  Pretty much any phone would only take 5% over 6-8 hours if being inactive and just waiting for an alarm to go off.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Has Android gotten a lot better on that front? Last I developed for Android was after they had some big push to improve battery life and they were still a ton worse.
    - Zurrrrr 4y ago
      They've never been that bad in my experience. My guess is you were using something preinstalled with a ton of battery leeching crap. Android itself doesn't do that, but much like buying a PC, it's hard to stop manufacturers loading it up with cruft.
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        I had a lot of experience with tons of devices from both ecosystems (because I was at least part-time in mobile dev) from about 2011-2019 and a consistent hallmark of Android devices—regardless of manufacturer, Google's own devices weren't much better—was that their battery life, and especially idle battery life, was markedly worse than iOS devices. In fact, I came into that world as an Android user, and gaining extensive exposure to both ecosystems was what convinced me I'd be better off in almost every way by switching. Android devices only stopped being an absolute joke, by comparison, near the end of that span, but were still lagging on both performance (as far as actual in-practice UX, not benchmarks) and real-world battery life. But it's entirely possible they've closed the gap since.
        Zurrrrr 4y ago
        It had to have been the apps that were running on Android. It's nothing to do with the hardware. I used to have my pixels, back from 2012, regularly at less than 10%, and would still last overnight as you describe. If a pixel not running any crap apps was worse, it was only be a negligible amount. The gap was never that big, it was more the software that was running than any hardware issues.
        yamtaddle 4y ago
        > The gap was never that big No, it really was. I wasn't hallucinating stock Android tablets dying over long weekends while iOS tablets would still be usable for testing without needing to plug in, after three weeks in a drawer. Or the phones needing a daily charge if you barely used them, while Apple phones could go 3-4 days under light use. There were no exceptions to this in Android land. [EDIT] Incidentally, yes, I agree it was largely a software issue—but at the OS level.
        Zurrrrr 4y ago
        I don't know what to tell you, but your experience is very different from mine and most androids users (who knew what they were doing). Disable all the software crap and there was no real difference. You think it was more internal to the OS, and maybe part of it was, but even with just ending all the crap that fixed things. We agree there were no significant differences in hardware though, and that was my point.
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    I keep an iPhone 5 in my car for playing music only. It's on airplane mode. Even then was surprised to learn that it lasted 2 weeks on a single charge, and was still at like 20%.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Since when does ios devices have weaker hardware (besides lower RAM)? Even as per the article, years old, low-end iphones easily beat out flagship android devices CPU-wise, to the point it is not even funny. Apple is just generations ahead in CPU design.
throwaway19294 4y ago
I do all of the above on my smartphone. I just use the USB-C connector to plug it into a hub and plug in a display, keyboard and mouse. I have OpenVSCode-Server running within Termux, along with Python installed there. Unfortunately iPhone can't do that so who cares about the better Geekbench score...
- nomel 4y ago
  You should look at nReal Air [1], and skip another 5 years into the future. 1. https://www.nreal.ai/air/ https://www.nreal.ai/air/
  - brnewd 4y ago
    I'm following some nReal topics and to me it still seems like a mixed bag, best suitable for video on a plane. I would jump on it the moment I have enough confidence it can replace my monitors.
robertoandred 4y ago
A faster benchmark means tasks get finished faster, which means improved latency/responsiveness and less battery used.
- picture 4y ago
  Late to reply (sorry) but this is an incorrect assumption. Benchmarks do not generalize to everything, especially loading apps from non volatile memory where users might notice latency the most. This is also usually a bottleneck by the memory related components instead of the core itself. Also, its not hard to just throw more brute clock speed at something, which will absolutely consume more energy overall than a slower but more efficient system.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
> Does benchmark results really matter that much for phones? I would say no, but they are a means to compare raw performance between phones. Which isn't the best metric, but it's one of them. I mean at some point, Samsung was caught fudging the numbers, overclocking or disabling thermal / power saving options when it detected a benchmark app running. So for their customers, or customers comparing phones, benchmark results do matter, to the point where it became a marketing tool. I don't think that's the case anymore though.

yamtaddle 4y ago

Battery life (especially idle battery life) and feeling responsive are all I care about. iOS devices have usually done far better on those fronts while having smaller batteries and weaker hardware compared with Android devices, so, yeah, super don't care about it benchmarking as faster than an Android device. Can I still put it on my nightstand at 10pm with 15% battery and have my alarm go off at 8AM with 8-9% charge remaining? Cool, don't care how fast it benchmarks.

Zurrrrr 4y ago
Pretty much any phone would only take 5% over 6-8 hours if being inactive and just waiting for an alarm to go off.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Has Android gotten a lot better on that front? Last I developed for Android was after they had some big push to improve battery life and they were still a ton worse.
  - Zurrrrr 4y ago
    They've never been that bad in my experience. My guess is you were using something preinstalled with a ton of battery leeching crap. Android itself doesn't do that, but much like buying a PC, it's hard to stop manufacturers loading it up with cruft.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      I had a lot of experience with tons of devices from both ecosystems (because I was at least part-time in mobile dev) from about 2011-2019 and a consistent hallmark of Android devices—regardless of manufacturer, Google's own devices weren't much better—was that their battery life, and especially idle battery life, was markedly worse than iOS devices. In fact, I came into that world as an Android user, and gaining extensive exposure to both ecosystems was what convinced me I'd be better off in almost every way by switching. Android devices only stopped being an absolute joke, by comparison, near the end of that span, but were still lagging on both performance (as far as actual in-practice UX, not benchmarks) and real-world battery life. But it's entirely possible they've closed the gap since.
      - Zurrrrr 4y ago
        It had to have been the apps that were running on Android. It's nothing to do with the hardware. I used to have my pixels, back from 2012, regularly at less than 10%, and would still last overnight as you describe. If a pixel not running any crap apps was worse, it was only be a negligible amount. The gap was never that big, it was more the software that was running than any hardware issues.
        yamtaddle 4y ago
        > The gap was never that big No, it really was. I wasn't hallucinating stock Android tablets dying over long weekends while iOS tablets would still be usable for testing without needing to plug in, after three weeks in a drawer. Or the phones needing a daily charge if you barely used them, while Apple phones could go 3-4 days under light use. There were no exceptions to this in Android land. [EDIT] Incidentally, yes, I agree it was largely a software issue—but at the OS level.
        Zurrrrr 4y ago
        I don't know what to tell you, but your experience is very different from mine and most androids users (who knew what they were doing). Disable all the software crap and there was no real difference. You think it was more internal to the OS, and maybe part of it was, but even with just ending all the crap that fixed things. We agree there were no significant differences in hardware though, and that was my point.
- hot_gril 4y ago
  I keep an iPhone 5 in my car for playing music only. It's on airplane mode. Even then was surprised to learn that it lasted 2 weeks on a single charge, and was still at like 20%.
kaba0 4y ago
Since when does ios devices have weaker hardware (besides lower RAM)? Even as per the article, years old, low-end iphones easily beat out flagship android devices CPU-wise, to the point it is not even funny. Apple is just generations ahead in CPU design.

throwaway19294 4y ago

I do all of the above on my smartphone. I just use the USB-C connector to plug it into a hub and plug in a display, keyboard and mouse. I have OpenVSCode-Server running within Termux, along with Python installed there. Unfortunately iPhone can't do that so who cares about the better Geekbench score...

nomel 4y ago
You should look at nReal Air [1], and skip another 5 years into the future. 1. https://www.nreal.ai/air/ https://www.nreal.ai/air/
- brnewd 4y ago
  I'm following some nReal topics and to me it still seems like a mixed bag, best suitable for video on a plane. I would jump on it the moment I have enough confidence it can replace my monitors.

robertoandred 4y ago

A faster benchmark means tasks get finished faster, which means improved latency/responsiveness and less battery used.

picture 4y ago
Late to reply (sorry) but this is an incorrect assumption. Benchmarks do not generalize to everything, especially loading apps from non volatile memory where users might notice latency the most. This is also usually a bottleneck by the memory related components instead of the core itself. Also, its not hard to just throw more brute clock speed at something, which will absolutely consume more energy overall than a slower but more efficient system.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

> Does benchmark results really matter that much for phones? I would say no, but they are a means to compare raw performance between phones. Which isn't the best metric, but it's one of them. I mean at some point, Samsung was caught fudging the numbers, overclocking or disabling thermal / power saving options when it detected a benchmark app running. So for their customers, or customers comparing phones, benchmark results do matter, to the point where it became a marketing tool. I don't think that's the case anymore though.