While much of the recent discussion about the new iPhone 5s and 5c has been about colors and availability, the Macworld Lab has been busy thinking about the new iPhones' performance. We put our new iPhone 5s and 5c models to the test and found that the devices to live up to—and in some cases surpass—Apple's marketing claims.
While many things about the new iPhones are similar to last year's iPhone 5 (including the same 4-inch screen, 1136-by-640-pixel resolution, and storage capacity), a number of under-the-hood changes range from subtle to startling.
The iPhone 5s features a brand-new 64-bit A7 processor running at 1.3GHz. The iPhone 5c is powered by the A6 processor Apple introduced in last year's iPhone 5. Apple says the new A7 chip is up to twice as fast as the A6 in both processing and graphics. Interestingly, most of tests we ran show the iPhone 5s to be twice as fast as the iPhone 5c, but the 5c proved to be a bit slower than last year's iPhone 5 with the same 1.3GHz A6 processor.
Higher scores/longer bars are better.
Higher scores/longer bars are better.
The iPhone 5s's Geekbench score was more than twice that of the iPhone 5c. Last year's iPhone 5, however, was about 10 percent faster than the new 5c in this test. The iPhone 5s score was six times that of the score of the iPhone 4S.
I thought it might be interesting to see how the new iPhones stood up against a couple of popular Android phones, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One. Even though those Android phones use quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, the A7-powered iPhone 5s earned a Geekbench 3 Multi-Core score that was 33 percent higher than the Galaxy S4 and 65 percent higher than the HTC One. The iPhone 5s score was more than twice that of the Android phones in the Geekbench single-core tests. The Galaxy S4's single-core score was almost identical to that of the iPhone 5c, but the S4 was 58 percent faster in the multi-core tests than the A6-powered 5c.
Lower scores/shorter bars are better.
The Sunspider JavaScript tests showed the 5s finishing the test in 454 milliseconds versus the 708 milliseconds of the iPhone 5, which was just 1 percent faster than the iPhone 5c. The iPhone 5s was 3.5 times as fast as the iPhone 4S in the Sunspider test. Both of the new iPhones were faster than the Androids in the Sunspider JavaScript tests.
Results are in frames per second. Higher scores/longer bars are better.
Results are in frames per second. Higher scores/longer bars are better.
Results are in frames per second. Higher scores/longer bars are better.
Results are in frames per second. Higher scores/longer bars are better.
We saw some big differences using GFXBench 2.7's T-Tex C24Z16 1080p off-screen test. The iPhone 5s was able to push 25 frames per second (fps), more than 3.5 times the number of frames as the iPhone 5c. In this test, the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5 scores were identical. The iPhone 4S couldn't even manage 3 fps. The T-Rex on-screen test, which runs at the native resolution of the device, had all of the iPhones displaying higher frame rates. The iPhone 5s, which scored 37 fps, was just shy of the three times as fast as the 5c's 13 fps. The iPhone 5 was one frame per second faster than the iPhone 5c.
The Android phones scored around 15 fps in both sets of the T-Rex tests. The T-Rex on-screen results were very similar to the iPhone 5 and 5c results, but not close to the 37 fps the iPhone 5s posted. The off-screen T-Rex results found the Androids pushing more than twice as many frames as the iPhone 5 and 5c, but 10 fps less than the iPhone 5s.
In the less-taxing Eqypt test from GFXBench 2.5, the iPhone 5s was still significantly faster than the 5c and iPhone 5, but it didn't quite break through the 2X barrier. Again, the Android phones scored similarly to the iPhone 5 and 5c in the on-screen Egypt tests. Off-screen, the HTC One and the Samsung S4 were 10 fps faster than the 5 and 5c, but around 15 fps slower than the iPhone 5s.
Battery life
The iPhone 5s was surprisingly long-lived. Clocking in at over 11 hours in our looping-video test, the 5s lasted nearly 90 minutes longer than the iPhone 5 running iOS 7. The iPhone 5c lasted an impressive 10 hours, 19 minutes. Comparing these results to those of some of the Android competition, the Samsung Galaxy S4 made it to 7 hours in the same tests, while the HTC One lasted just 6 hours, 44 minutes. The iPhone 5s was not able to unseat our top battery performer, the Droid Razr Maxx, which recently lasted 13 hours, 28 minutes in our video-looping battery test.
Higher times/longer bars are better.
Check back soon for Macworld's complete review of the new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c.
- Apple iPhone 5c $ 99.00
- Apple iPhone 5s $ 199.00
James Galbraith, Macworld
James is the director of Macworld Lab.
More by James Galbraith
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