Nexus 5 With Android 4.4 and Snapdragon 800 Challenges Apple A7 In Benchmarks

MojoKid writes "One of the hallmark features of Google's Nexus 5 flagship smartphone by LG isn't its bodaciously big 5-inch HD display, its 8MP camera, or its "OK Google" voice commands. That has all been done before. What does stand out about the Nexus 5 is Google's new Android 4.4 Kit Kat OS and LG's SoC (System on Chip) processor of choice, namely Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 quad-core. Qualcomm is known for licensing ARM core technology and making it their own; and Qualcomm's latest Krait 400 quad-core along with the Adreno 330 GPU that comprise the Snapdragon 800, is a powerful beast. Google also has taken the scalpel to Kit Kat in all the right places, whittling down the overall footprint of the OS, so it's more efficient on lower-end devices and also offers faster multitasking. Specifically memory usage has been optimized in a number of areas. Couple these OS tweaks with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 and you end up with a smartphone that hugs the corners and lights 'em up on the straights. Putting the Nexus 5 through its paces, it turns out preliminary figures are promising. In fact, the Nexus 5 actually was able to surpass the iPhone 5s with Apple's 64-bit A7 processor in a few tests and goes toe to toe with it in gaming and graphics." Ars Technica has a similarly positive view of the hardware aspects of the phone, dinging it slightly for its camera but otherwise finding little to fault.

Comments

This is not a fair comparison

[giorgist]

This is not a fair comparison, the iPhone is twice the price.

Re:This is not a fair comparison

[whoever57]

You've got a Quad-Core ARM running at twice their Ghz and you barely post benchmarks ahead of a Dual-Core A7, you know you're stupid for buying one.

No. you are stupid for basing your decisions on factors that don't affect your usage of the device. All that matters is how fast it brings up web pages, runs apps, etc., battery life, size and other factors such as features the OS and ecosystem provides. The clock rate of the processor is not relevant to the user.

Re:This is not a fair comparison

[timeOday]

That's no different than claiming the A7 is pathetic for needing 64 bit registers to do what the SnapDragon does with 32. Which is to say, very silly.

Now, if double cores and double the MHz give the Nexus 5 less battery life than the iPhone, then you have a leg to stand on.

Re:This is not a fair comparison

[MacDork]

You've got a Quad-Core ARM running at twice their Ghz and you barely post benchmarks ahead of a Dual-Core A7, you know you're stupid for buying one.

Stupid for buying a faster phone at half the price? You have a strange concept of stupid :-)

Re:This is not a fair comparison

[smash]

Also, i forgot another big reason: after-sales customer service. Apple does well at this, with OS upgrades, repairs and other support.

Re:This is not a fair comparison

[AcidPenguin9873]

Quad core doesn't help you on single-threaded, lightly-threaded, or GPU benchmarks, which is most of the benchmarks that I saw in the article. That means you can't say that Krait sucks because it has four cores and barely beats a dual core, since the four cores aren't being utilized. The conclusion you can draw is that a quad core CPU isn't necessary for a good user experience on a phone.

And needing a faster clock to reach the same performance levels isn't a meaningful metric either, at least not in a phone. In a phone that is power-constrained, the metric is performance per watt. If both CPUs burn the same power and give the same performance, they're basically equivalent. How each chooses to provide that performance is immaterial in a phone which is a power-constrained environment. Maybe the Apple CPU has some performance headroom at higher power budgets if it could run at a faster frequency (thus providing higher perf at the same freq as the Krait core), but that doesn't help you if it has to run throttled at all times so as to not blow through the phone's battery life and/or burn your pants.

Re:This is not a fair comparison

[prowler1]

The most common reason I usually get from non-technical people on why they want or why they purchased an iPhone (or iPad) was because they are 'cool' or 'trendy'. None of them has been able to tell me why or what features it has or does better than any of its competitors. Simply put, they didn't give a damn about how well their device functions when they use it, just the image they can reflect or inherit by owning one.

Re:This is not a fair comparison

[jo_ham]

And the Nexus 5 has a SoC with 2 more cores, 80% higher max clock rate and double the RAM. That it can only keep up is pretty amusing.

What is amusing is that the Nexus 5 costs half what the iPhone does. Apple's target demographic has always been people with more money than brains. Thwok....ball's in your court.

That's not really an argument.

Remove the word "Apple" from your argument and you're essentially saying that anyone who buys any product that costs more than the absolute cheapest product available in that class is an idiot.

This sort of bell curve of product purchasing is totally accepted in everyday life (cars, food, houses, sports equipment, televisions, jewellery, books, entertainment, holidays...) but somehow when the same metric is applied to computers, unless you buy from the bottom of the discount bargain bin, you're suddenly an idiot.

It's certainly a strange argument coming from the corner than claims to promote user choice. Or is it only the right choice if they make the same choice that you do? Anything else is the consumer clearly demonstrating they have "more money than brains"? Is it part of the Android experience to not just enjoy the phone and ecosystem you selected based on your own criteria, but also to insult anyone who had a different set of selection criteria to you? Put another way; I don't think all Android users are idiots for not choosing iOS, or OS X.

As is predictable in this thread, when Apple is on top on benchmarks, suddenly they don't matter. When Apple is behind on benchmarks they get bashed for having "expensive, old hardware that can't keep up". In other words, the argument positions between the extremes of the camps swaps over. Still, the underlying "if you didn't buy an Android you have more money than brains" always persists.

Thwok; ball is back in your court.

Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's actually worse than that. A phone that has a SoC with double the cores, cores that have a max clock rate 1 ghz higher and double the memory is only able to win in a couple of tests and just keep up with the A7 in every other test. Sounds like pretty fail.

You still don't get it! Specs do not matter...

[bogaboga]

Qualcomm's latest Krait 400 quad-core along with the Adreno 330 GPU that comprise the Snapdragon 800, is a powerful beast.

If they had not focused much on the specs, but rather on battery life that can last a day of average use, I'd be happier. I ask my self: -

"Of what use is having the"latest and greatest if by mid-afternoon, I will be holding a brick in hand?

This is what I do to these good phones that are limited in the battery department. I underclock them with acceptable results.

By the way: Can one explain to me how Motorola was able to cram a 3000mAH into a phone smaller than this but Google and its LG partner cannot?

Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone

[binarylarry]

Yeah but that phone is half the price of the iPhone.

Pretty impressive to me.

Re:New phone almost as fast as month old phone

[smash]

Sony could release a phone that claimed to cure cancer, solve world poverty and establish peace in the middle east. They're still not getting a cent of my disposable income.

Re:Is it a phone ?

[dreamchaser]

I am curious...

Before the 20th Century did the average person drive an automobile?

Before the Industrial Revolution did the average person have access to cheap, mass produced good?

Before the Agricultural Revolution, did the average person have access to plentiful grain?

Before the Paleolithic, did the average person have access to crafted stone tools?

Don't get me wrong, I'm just curious...