iPhone 6 Plus performance - the simple math

Specs:

iPhone 5S resolution 640 x 1136 = 727,040 pixels = base
iPhone 6 resolution 1334 x 750 = 1,000,500 pixels = 1.376 times higher
iPhone 6 Plus resolution 1920 x 1080 = 2,073,600 pixels = 2.85 times higher


Estimated performance of the GPU: 1.5 times higher than on iPhone 5S
Estimated on screen performance (pixel fill rate dependent):

iPhone 5S = 100%
iPhone 6 = 109%
iPhone 6 Plus = 52%


This benchmark indicates the 5S is pretty close to the iPad air when it comes to fill rate (I can't tell I only have the iPad Air - can anyone confirm that benchmark?): http://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?D1=Apple iPhone 5S&D2=Apple iPad Air&cols=2

Hence the fill rate bottleneck performance of the 6 Plus should be comparable to the iPad Air?

 

Your numbers aren't quite right, as the 5/5S are 1136x640.

But yes, 50% more GPU power doesn't mean much when you're adding a huge amount more pixels, and in terms of actual framerates, it looks like the 6 is going to be about the same as the 5S

Looks like the 5S and 6 will perform similarly, and the 6 Plus will be a bit weak - although for games it might be worth rendering at a reduced resolution on that.

 

Oh damned you are right - I've mixed it up with 4 and 4S

 

fixed it

 

I hope we don't get another fill-rate bound device. The iPhone 4 was enough for me

We'll see, we have to wait until the devices are actually available.

 

On the plus side, even the 4S was pretty powerful. The 5S is a beast when you're still aiming to support the gen 4 ipods out in the wild

 

Seems the iPhone 6 Plus will be worse until Unity 5.
This article (german) says the 6 Plus is using 1242 x 2208 pixels when rendering and scales it down to 1080x1920. It seems this affects any 3D game too unless it uses Metal, because you can only use the native resolution with Metal.

http://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/Appl...r-hoehere-Bildschirmaufloesungen-2394857.html

 

Hi guys - thanks for all the info above. I'm a pretty intermediate programmer, so need some advice re the 6's. I've only just started my 2D game and use 2D Toolkit for cameras. Now pre-iPhone6 i had my native resolution set for iPhone 5, but now I'm not sure whether I should use the iPhone6+ resolution as native or not?

I need to start making final sprite assets and really not sure what I should be aiming for. Do the iPhones 5 & 4S scale down if I make sprites for iPhone6+ at 1920x1080 resolution?

Thanks for the advice.

p.s. I NEVER buy the first release device - always wait for the second one - e.g. "iPhone6S"... history confirms every time the first one is a bit of a dud. What do you think?

 

I think this is not true, the iPhone 3GS, the 4S, the 5 and the 5S were all a huge leap forward.
The official names are weird marketing stuff and does not fit to the internal ones: http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Models
The iPhone 6 is the iPhone 7.
Maybe you have noticed that the 2nd iPhone was called iPhone 3G because it supported 3G but in almost any other aspect it was identical to the original iPhone.
The 3GS was the real 2nd iPhone (hence Apple calls it internally iPhone 2,1) with a completely different hardware. From its specifications the 4 was much closer to the 3GS than the 4S to the 4. But the difference between the 5S and 6 is still higher than between 3GS and 4 even if it reminds me a bit on that situation.

Really weird is Apple's way to handle the internal names for the iPad. The iPad mini retina is called iPad 4.x but technically it is an iPad air which is correctly called iPad 5.

The good thing is that they can't make the phones larger anymore. The bad thing is people could think they need a higher resolution in the future for the idiotic 4k stuff.

Whatever the iPhone 6 plus is currently the iOS device that has most pixels to fill. My guess (or better hope) is this time the next iPad might get the real speed bump next month. It might be clever when the high end iPad is always the most powerful device. Especially when iPhone screen sizes are higher today.

(I never did anything 2D, no idea how sprites in Unity work)

 

Well, not quite, it's 2.7M pixels (before downscaling) and the iPad Air is 3.1M pixels.

Textures on meshes.

--Eric

 

Oh, yes. I was blended by the 2208 and forgot that the 1536 is much higher than 1242.

 

The article is wrong. In a graphics app that uses Metal or OpenGL ES, content can be easily rendered at the precise dimensions of the display without requiring an additional sampling stage.

https://developer.apple.com/library...le_ref/doc/uid/TP40014205-DontLinkElementID_1