The Samsung Galaxy S4 deemed world’s fastest smartphone, laying waste to iPhone 5 and HTC One
UPDATE: The UK version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 will now be carrying Qualcomm's Snapdragon 600 processor.
The Samsung Galaxy S4, thanks to its 1.9GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor, has been crowned the fastest smartphone in the world, fending off competition from Apple’s iPhone 5 and the HTC One.
Not all Galaxy S4handsets are built the same though. In the UK, we’ll be getting Exynos 5 Octa version of the Galaxy S4 while the US, Canada, and Sweden will be treated to the blazing fast 1.9GHz Snapdragon 600 variant.
Both setups should provide excellent performance, however, with Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa being based on ARM’s latest big.LITTLE microprocessor architecture. This uses heterogeneous computing, whereby two central processing units (CPUs)—a quad-core Cortex-A15 CPU and a quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU—are integrated into the same chip.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 is no slouch either and is responsible for Samsung’s Galaxy S4 earning the title of world’s fastest smartphone ahead of the HTC One, which uses the same processor just clocked at a slightly lower speed.
Using GeekBench 2, John Poole of Primate Labs compared the Galaxy S4 to some of 2013’s top handsets. The results speak for themselves, as you can see below:
- Samsung Galaxy S4: 3163
- HTC One: 2687
- Nexus 4: 2040
- Samsung Galaxy S3: 1717
- iPhone 5: 1596
Being clocked at 1.9GHz, however, could cause issues for Samsung Galaxy S4, according to Poole. And is perhaps why HTC used a lower clock speed of 1.7GHz aboard its HTC One handset. Poole also believes the HTC One’s overall performance will improve slightly once it’s updated to Android 4.2.2 – the same version of Android present on Google’s Nexus 4 and the Galaxy S4.
‘The Samsung Galaxy S 4 is twice as fast as the Samsung Galaxy S3. Given that the Samsung Galaxy S3 is less than a year old, that's a remarkable achievement,’ said Poole.
He added: ‘what's not clear is how the Galaxy S4 will handle the increased power and cooling requirements that generally come with faster processors.’
On the subject of which is best: Snapdragon or Exynos 5 Octa, opinion for the most part is undecided. Early benchmarks taken on a pre-launch Galaxy S4 in China showed the Exynos 5’s performance to be below Qualcomm’s 600 CPU.
Samsung maintains there should be no difference in performance between the two variants.
We look forward to finding out, but for now our money is on Qualcomm.
