How do Android users feel about high-end Android phones losing performance battles against iPhones?

[Oyeve]

But it's still an iphone. Boring.

 

[Sushisamurai]

Unfortunately, a perfect eye has an arc minute of 0.4, while the average person is 1 (I wear glasses, and I have stigmatism and therefore greater than 1). 1.0 arc minutes can discern at most 300PPI at 1 foot. An adult forearm by rough estimations is approximately a foot. If you hold your phone closer than a forearm's distance to your face I would argue that a 400PPI is superior, otherwise >1 foot your eye can't render those extra pixels (an additional ~200PPI at >=1.5 ft or more multiplied by screen size).

Edit: that's why I surmise Apple branded it as "retina screen", as they took average viewing distances to find the lowest common denominator for PPI.

Also, screen PPI and screen resolution size doesn't determine picture accuracy. Display tech does. I would anecdotally say AMOLED screens are by far the worst screens for picture editing and accuracy especially since your color accuracy degrades over usage time.

 

[VashHT]

For me the 6P has been the best phone I've owned to date, it doesn't really have slowdowns (only really notice any if I'm updating apps) and everything runs mostly smooth and it gets by far the best battery life of any phone I've ever used despite what benchmarks say. I don't really play games but for everything I use my phone for it hasn't struggled for power. I will say I'm always impressed how much power Apple gets out of it's processors, can't say it really was noticeable when I had my last iphone (the 6) as there were apps that were still pretty choppy and it didn't feel too much faster than the Android phones I had at the time.

I cared much more about processor power and benchmarks like 5 years ago, back then a phone with better hardware would run noticeably better to me, nowadays it's not as noticeable.

 

[Eug]

For me the 6P has been the best phone I've owned to date, it doesn't really have slowdowns (only really notice any if I'm updating apps) and everything runs mostly smooth and it gets by far the best battery life of any phone I've ever used despite what benchmarks say. I don't really play games but for everything I use my phone for it hasn't struggled for power. I will say I'm always impressed how much power Apple gets out of it's processors, can't say it really was noticeable when I had my last iphone (the 6) as there were apps that were still pretty choppy and it didn't feel too much faster than the Android phones I had at the time.

I cared much more about processor power and benchmarks like 5 years ago, back then a phone with better hardware would run noticeably better to me, nowadays it's not as noticeable.

Lots of people complained about lagginess of the 6 Plus, esp. with iOS 9. This was corrected in the 6s Plus, presumably because it had twice the RAM.

In fact, that's why I never bought my wife the 6. I was 100% sure it'd run into RAM-related problems very quickly. Waited for the 6s and glad I did.

 

[Eug]

iPhone 7 gets the AnTuTu treatment:

http://www.antutu.com/view.shtml?id=8272

This 178397 score puts it faster than the iPad Pro 12.9", and destroys the Android competition.

To be fair though, this is not a pure CPU test, and even for the CPU I believe it favours single-core performance over multi-core performance, so it puts 8-core designs with slower cores at a disadvantage.

 

[lopri]

never mind.

 

[Kazukian]

Not buying into actually caring about performance for over a year now, but this was interesting

 

[Oyeve]

Not buying into actually caring about performance for over a year now, but this was interesting

That was brutal but these test don't really mean much. All it takes is one bad app to kill processes or grab too many processes and skew the whole test. But yea, that was pretty bad.

 

[Zaap]

Great, the iPhone is faster at opening apps and doing random tasks it's capable of (says nothing for the fact I can't do things with it my N7 can)

But the only comparison I really care about...

HOLY yuck those bezels. Thing just plain looks OLD compared to the Note 7.

They drop something they shouldn't have- a useful audio jack, but keep something they shouldn't have... bezels from 2012, smaller screen in comparision but not even really a smaller size.

it just looks old and primitive to me, whereas the N7 is sleek and way more modern. I care more about that by far than times I'll never notice in the real world.

 

[shortylickens]

HOLY CRAP I should definitely spend 600 bucks to open apps a little faster and no longer use any of my headphones.

 

[Kazukian]

HOLY CRAP I should definitely spend 600 bucks to open apps a little faster and no longer use any of my headphones.

They include an adapter so you can use your headphones.

What phone do you use now?

 

[badb0y]

Don't worry guys the Note 8 will definitely beat the iPhone 5S

 

[Zaap]

And the iPhone 8 will surely have feature and screen to bezel ratio parity... by the time there's a Note 10.

 

[Eug]

Assuming there is even another Note. One wonders if they'll change the branding considering the Note brand is now in the toilet, given the several spontaneously combusting units out there. What makes it even worse is the fact it was a Samsung subsidiary that made the batteries too, not some third party.

 

[sweenish]

Doesn't help Samsung is a bit notorious for garbage memory utilization/allocation. Last year they showed a G4 beating an S6.

I don't think the Note brand is going anywhere. By next year, no one will care.

 

[Zaap]

A few challenges I'd like to see:

Fast charging shootout... GO!

Sit both on a wireless charging pad.... GO!

256GB added storage shootout... GO!

Replace stock apps race... GO!

Pressure sensitive pen write on screen, even when off... GO!

Natively plug in a set of standard headphones... GO!

Explode test.... GO! (oop! Maybe not that one!)

 

[Crono]

Simple answer to the question: don't care. It is hard to actually put that performance difference in testing to good use in actual usage of your phone. And I'd still take Android over iPhone if the gap was twice as large because of ease of rooting and modifications versus jailbreaking iOS or waiting for jailbreak each version.

 

[Hmoobphajej]

I've never personally owned a iPhone but I wouldn't give them a chance at this rate either. I hate how their ecosystem is and honestly I'm much more devoted to my Android ecosystem as well now. To make me switch to Apple would be near impossible but I definitely recommend them to the right people. I'm just not the right people.

When it comes to performance for me its like the windows vs linux debate. They both have their uses, one is just more useful than the other for me. I don't expect them to perform closely in any metric other then the fact that they work for what I want them to do.

 

[ControlD]

As someone interested in technology I always look forward to Apple's releases, in particular to see how much more they are able to squeeze out of their processors.

As a consumer, I buy my mobile devices based on what features they provide not how much processing power they contain inside. I don't need a lot of power or cutting edge hardware honestly on my phone. It doesn't take a lot of horsepower to make calls, send text messages or surf the web. I just want the ability to customize my device to my liking and of the two platforms only one meets that requirement. Would I like to have the SOC optimization Apple has in their devices? Sure, why not? It isn't even close to a requirement however.

 

[Kazukian]

For me, the performance is more of a want than a need, the promotions to upgrade my iPhones were very good this year, so I jumped.

Phones got fast enough some time ago for me.

 

[DeathReborn]

They include an adapter so you can use your headphones.

What phone do you use now?

Apparently a German magazine tested the adapter in the box and found reduced audio quality compared to the headphone jack on the 6S. Perhaps they should use some of that "mega" performance to correct that... oh wait, they can't.

 

[mikegg]

Not buying into actually caring about performance for over a year now, but this was interesting

Interesting. Thanks for posting that. This basically confirms why whenever I pick up an Android phone, it feels sluggish and almost unusable because of how slow things are compared on the iPhone.

 

[mikegg]

As someone interested in technology I always look forward to Apple's releases, in particular to see how much more they are able to squeeze out of their processors.

As a consumer, I buy my mobile devices based on what features they provide not how much processing power they contain inside. I don't need a lot of power or cutting edge hardware honestly on my phone. It doesn't take a lot of horsepower to make calls, send text messages or surf the web. I just want the ability to customize my device to my liking and of the two platforms only one meets that requirement. Would I like to have the SOC optimization Apple has in their devices? Sure, why not? It isn't even close to a requirement however.

I agree with you there. However, speed is a feature. And a major one at that.

 

[fr]

I have conceded that Apple has had the fastest phone/tablet for years now. I don't care.

 

[Anubis]

I agree with you there. However, speed is a feature. And a major one at that.

I agree with you but its only a feature to a certain point, both families of phones have been fast enough since the IP5 came out and whatever else android had at the time GS3? currently it makes little difference

phones have gotten to where computers are for the 99%.