re: Nexus 5 vs iPhone 6: is an old Nexus better than a new iPhone?

God damnit. Do I have to post all of this shite again?

Java (Android) requires 2x-8x more RAM to run as efficient as Objective-C (iOS)

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In other words, you need four or eight times more memory, than you are actually using to be super efficient. But when the memory becomes constrained, that performance goes way down.

This is why Android devices have all that RAM.

iOS does not use this style of garbage collection and does not slow down in constrained memory environments.

So 1GB for iOS results in more performance than 3GB for Android.

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Android OEMs are deceptive on CPU clock speed

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With a modest boost in CPU clock speeds from 1.3GHz to 1.4GHz (an 8% speed-up), the 25% improvement obviously comes from various other tweaks and tricks. Before diving deeper in benchmarks, though, here is the place for a quick insert about clock speeds and the state of the industry. Commentators in forums are quick to point out the apparent inferiority of Apple clock speeds in comparison to the much faster speeds declared in rival Snapdragon and Exynos chips, for instance. The most up-to-date example is the Snapdragon 805 with a declared clock speed of ‘up to 2.7GHz’. At first sight, Apple’s Cyclone core looks like a sore loser with its declaration for just half that at 1.4GHz.

Most people would call it a day at this point - the Snapdragon outperforms the A8 hugely, case closed. This, however, would be naïve: running real-world applications and games shows instantly that the 2.7GHz speeds can only be achieved for a very short periods of time, but after those short outbursts, the chip quickly throttles back to the much more sane ~1.3GHz. Put simply, the 2.7GHz number that you read about is not the nominal frequency, but maxed out turbo speeds that are not sustainable for the long term. In fact, Apple is being much more truthful as it declares actual nominal (and not turbo) speeds for its chip, plus, the company goes on to disclose a second big thing about its chip: sustained performance times. Apple actually claims its A8 is capable of running flat at its nominal speeds for (at least) 20 minutes.

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Nexus 5 Geek Bench

1128 Single Core
2746 Multi Core

iPhone 6 Geek Bench

1632 Single Core
2924 Multi Core

About being "wall huggers", Wednesday when I got home from work, my iPhone 6 had 83% battery left. Granted, I didn't use it much. Yesterday I used the crap out of it. Waze for 6 hours, streaming podcasts for 6 hours over bluetooth, couple hours of browser usage, few phone calls, emails, about 30 text messages and when I got home I was at 24%.

Android is a great OS for tinkerers, hobbyists, and many others. The Nexus line are great phones. But to post a click-bait article that argues a year old Nexus is as good or better than a new iPhone is just trying to flame the board. I am now dumber for having read the article and I award you no points CAD.

I'll probably never buy an iPhone again. Android L was a good time for me to switch to Android. I'll probably also never buy a non-phablet again.

It's amazing how quickly I got used to the Nexus 6 size. 7 years of iPhones, then less than a month of using the Nexus 6, my iPhone 4s now looks like a baby phone.

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About being "wall huggers", Wednesday when I got home from work, my iPhone 6 had 83% battery left. Granted, I didn't use it much. Yesterday I used the crap out of it. Waze for 6 hours, streaming podcasts for 6 hours over bluetooth, couple hours of browser usage, few phone calls, emails, about 30 text messages and when I got home I was at 24%.

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It doesn't matter what phone you have; all of them have a "honeymoon" period where battery life is somewhere between pretty good and phenomenal. But of course from the day you first turn it on, that battery is losing capacity every charge cycle, sometimes compounded by any extra heat to the battery which contributes to degradation. That's why Samsung's "wall-hugger" ad was clever from a marketing standpoint, to bring in some iPhone converts. Someone in the market for a new phone might've had their current phone for a couple of years. By that point, most people will have some amount of degradation but may not be aware of it. If you were using, say, an iPhone 4s that could barely make it through the day around the time that ad surfaced, the other side of the fence starts to appear greener.