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I was wondering if there's any true performance benchmarks on these three phones. Only thing I've seen is a Javascript benchmark comparing them. I haven't come across any other detailed CPU/memory benchmarks... which is pretty significant considering the CPU's are all quite distinct (i.e. the Nexus One's Snapdragon CPU runs at 1GHz whereas the iPhone 3GS' runs at 600MHz, yet many reviewers peg them as somewhat comparable in computing power... or rather, not nearly a 2x difference).

Arstechnica's review of Nexus One: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/reviews/ ... review.ars

on the benchmark page they ran linpack lol.

Nexus One: 7.1 mflops
G1: 2.4 mflops
Droid: 4.5 mflops

Pretty pitiful

I don't quite see the point in having benchmarks for phones to be honest. Unlike PCs, phones are all about software. The software is what really makes the phones feel fast or slow. Take the iPhone 3GS for example. Despite always having a slightly slower cpu (at least WRT high-end Android phones of today), the iPhone 3GS is never outdone in terms of sheer navigation speed and responsiveness, usually feeling faster than even the Snapdragon-powered Android and WM phones.

Maybe this year, we'll finally see the induction of the first cross-platform benchmarking tool for all major phone OSs. One can only hope.

It's even worse than that, the reviewer mentions that Android 2.1 has optimizations for JavaScript (as does the Palm Pre, to be fair), which would mean that even a Droid running 2.1 would have better results. So, it's not so much what phone you have (I think it's even a question of fashion), but what version of Android is it running. Benchmarking phones seems to be pointless, unless you just want to look at some graphs in a review.

oooo graphs... where!
Right now phone performance is not all that important as long as its in with the pack. Maybe in a year or two when phones are running more intensive and useful programs it will be more important.

drsauced wrote:

It's even worse than that, the reviewer mentions that Android 2.1 has optimizations for JavaScript (as does the Palm Pre, to be fair), which would mean that even a Droid running 2.1 would have better results. So, it's not so much what phone you have (I think it's even a question of fashion), but what version of Android is it running. Benchmarking phones seems to be pointless, unless you just want to look at some graphs in a review.

That may be so, but Linpack isn't a javascript benchmark. The Nexus performs exactly where it should in relation to the Droid considering their respective CPUs.

Actualy javascript performance is of course far faster but that's a different story.


With that said, the Nexus is crippled by how you can only install apps into the internal memory, which is like 190MB. You can pop in that nice 32GB sd card but you won't be able to install apps onto it...

ChronoReverse wrote:

With that said, the Nexus is crippled by how you can only install apps into the internal memory, which is like 190MB. You can pop in that nice 32GB sd card but you won't be able to install apps onto it...

So its like a Blackberry? Why do companies do this? Seems to be pretty stupid to me. Is there some kind of advantage to it that I'm not seeing? Maybe not being able to install your purchased programs on multiple phones?

Apparently, Google says that they'll allow installing on external memory once they've figured out how to copy protect it, so yeah =/

ChronoReverse wrote:

Apparently, Google says that they'll allow installing on external memory once they've figured out how to copy protect it, so yeah =/

Tie it to the ESN of the phone. Sure there will be people that crack it, but it will prevent rampant piracy. Have an encrypted hash of the ESN encapsulate the executable on install, and if it doesn't match, it doesn't run. Similar to the way iTunes works with music files. The song file gets a header written when you 'buy it' before its sent to you with your account name and some other stuff in it that has to match the authenticated token on the 'Authorized' computers and devices it plays on. Wheres my $300K/year job, Google? I just solved your problem.

ESN is a CDMA thing, and could work for CDMA phones.

GSM phones have an IMEI which is unique to the handset itself, but that doesn't take into account users who might want swap SIM cards/handsets on a regular basis. In that case, the software would have to be tied to the MSISDN.

The company I work for does this with our mobile software. When the software registers with our servers, it is activated for that particular handset using device ID's. It works well for us. If the customer gets a new handset, we can reset their license key so that they can re-activate on the new device.

The way I see it, installing to an SD card is a great idea, if they can somehow find a graceful way to manage that card being removed from the device. Unless its handled right, users could have all sorts of goofy behavior when files aren't where they're supposed to be.

I love my Android phone (Samsung Moment on Sprint), and I'm anxiously awaiting a 2.1 firmware in the coming months.

-SF

A couple comments to update this thread as I ran across it while searching for a comparison between the N1 & iPhone.

As with many things in technology, 6 months makes a huge difference.

I've had my N1 now for a week and it's easily multiple orders of magnitude better than the impression coming across in this thread. Prior to that I was a forgivingly satisfied owner of the G1.

First off, my N1 is running a daily/stable custom ROM & kernel based on the Android 2.2 platform and scores 44.011MFLOPS doing a linpack benchmark.

Secondly, even on the G1 I was installing my apps to the SD card though yes that does place the onus on me to be selective about which apps I push top the SD as well as momentarily patient when restarting the phone. Really though, thats a minor and acceptable price for the features of true multitasking and user changeable memory.

All-in-all I love this device, and put way beyond the iPhone 4. Also I trust that the open culture at Google, the Android community and HTC will allow the N1 to continue advancing. Whereas Apple intentionally locks you down making should be available features there after the second or third sale. When will people finally wake up.