iPhone 4S benchmarks: Twice as fast as the Galaxy S II, Droid Bionic

AnandTech has seemingly done the impossible and provided preliminary benchmarks for the iPhone 4S and the A5 SoC that is daintily ensconced within. If the numbers are accurate, the iPhone 4S will sport the same processor as the iPad 2 — the same dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU and SGX 543MP2 GPU — but clocked at 800MH , rather than 1GH . As a result, the iPhone 4S is about 20% slower than the iPad 2 — but it smokes the Galaxy S II, the Droid Bionic, and every other phone under the sun.

The most direct (and shocking) comparison is against last year’s iPhone 4, which (spec-wise) has started to show its age: the iPhone 4S really is twice as fast as its predecessor on CPU-intensive tasks like JavaScript execution, and Apple wasn’t lying when it said the iPhone 4S GPU was seven times as fast; the SGX 543MP2 from PowerVR is a monster, and it makes you wonder why other SoC makers don’t use it. The A5 at 800MH also seems to be twice as fast as the Samsung Galaxy S II’s 1.2GH Exynos 4210 (with Mali-400 GPU), and between two and four times as fast as the Droid Bionic with the 1GH OMAP 4430 SoC and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 with a 1GH  Tegra 2 SoC. We don’t have a complete set of benchmarks, though — and the imminent release of Ice Cream Sandwich and the Nexus Prime should certainly be taken into account.

With the iPhone 4S out of the way, Anand’s tables reveal an interesting and unreported tidbit: iOS 5 (due out tomorrow) seems to significantly increase performance over iOS 4.3. The jump is so si able that the iPhone 3Gs is almost as fast as the iPhone 4. This looks like it is mainly down to a new version of Safari in iOS 5, which no doubt improves JavaScript performance and rendering speed, but iOS 5 performance is generally improved across the board. With iOS 5, you could even say that iPhone 4 to 4S is a bigger leap than the 3GS to 4 — redesign excluded, of course.

So there you have it: tomorrow, when iOS 5 and iPhone 4S are released, Apple will regain the performance crown, retain the design mantle, and even provide a healthy dollop of love for the tens of millions using the iPhone 3GS. It also makes you wonder just how powerful the iPhone 5 will be, too, if it is powered by Apple’s quad-core A6 processor, which is due to make its debut next year with the iPad 3.

iPhone 4S benchmarks: Twice as fast as the Galaxy S II, Droid Bionic