Apple iPhone 6s review: The more it changes…

Apple A9 chip performance

The new generation of iPhones is powered by a brand new Apple A9 chipset, which packs a dual-core 1.85 GHz Twister processor, PowerVR GT7600 six-core graphics and 2GB RAM. The chips are made either by Samsung on 14nm process, or TSMC on 16nm process. All of these mean the A9 has more processing power, a stronger GPU punch, double the RAM and better thermal properties.

Apple has always focused on the single-core performance since it is the most important one when it comes to interacting with the iOS user interface and early tests showed that the 64-bit Twister core is the best and fastest CPU core currently on the market. On the other hand you are only getting two of those, so we'll see how it goes. In come the benchmarks.

The multi-core score of GeekBench 3 shows how powerful the new dual-core Twister processor is. It beats the Snapdragon 810 chips with their quad-Cortex-A57 CPU, but trails behind the Exynos 7420, which uses a similar architecture but a higher clock speed.

Both iPhone 6s and iPhone 6 used for the tests below are running on iOS 9.0.1.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6
  5215
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  5095
• Apple iPhone 6s
  4427
• Sony Xperia Z5 Compact
  3796
• HTC One M9
  3761
• LG G4
  3509
• Apple iPhone 6
  2835
• Meizu m2 note
  2649
• Apple iPhone 5s (iOS 8)
  2552

The single-core results show you the difference. A single Twister does insanely better than any other CPU core on the market today. In fact, a single Twister core is equal to the 8-core Cortex-A53 performance on the Meizu m2 note.

GeekBench 3 single core

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s
  2542
• Apple iPhone 6
  1594
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  1484
• Sony Xperia Z5 Compact
  1351
• HTC One M9
  1239

The compound BaseMark OS II 2.0 test gauges CPU, GPU, Memory, Web and System performance. In this test there is no one to come even close to the iPhone 6s thanks to Apple's optimized OS. The fact that it has the latest A9 chipset doesn't hurt either.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s
  2195
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  1750
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  1674
• LG G4
  1584
• Sony Xperia Z5 Compact
  1440
• Apple iPhone 6
  1429
• HTC One M9
  1365

Next - graphics performance. The new iPhone generation utilizes the six-core PowerVR GT7600 GPU, which is quite the beast. The 1080p off-screen benchmarks speak for themselves.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s
  79.8
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  59
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  59
• Sony Xperia Z5 Compact
  56
• HTC One M9
  49
• LG G4
  34.5
• Apple iPhone 5s (iOS 8)
  28.7
• Huawei Honor 7
  17

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s
  39.5
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  26
• Sony Xperia Z5 Compact
  25
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  24
• HTC One M9
  23
• LG G4
  14.9
• Apple iPhone 5s (iOS 8)
  12.9
• Huawei Honor 7
  9.2

The iPhone 6s has a sub-1080p display resolution, which gives it an edge over the 1080p and Quad HD phones in the performance chart.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s
  59.6
• Sony Xperia Z5 Compact
  57
• HTC One M9
  50
• Apple iPhone 5s (iOS 8)
  40.7
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  39
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  38
• LG G4
  24.7
• Huawei Honor 7
  19

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s
  53.6
• Sony Xperia Z5 Compact
  39
• Apple iPhone 5s (iOS 8)
  24.3
• HTC One M9
  24
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  15
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  14
• LG G4
  9.4
• Huawei Honor 7
  9.3

Finally, Android has OpenGL ES 3.1 as latest generation graphics, while iOS 9 has Metal. Both allow games to make full use of the built-in GPUs and BaseMark has launched the BaseMark ES3.1 / Metal apps so we can compare the performance cross-platform. Combined with the lower resolution of the iPhone 6s, the Metal test really produces outstanding results.

Basemark ES 3.1 / Metal

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s
  879
• HTC One M9
  409
• Apple iPhone 6
  370
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  311

Unfortunately,the BrowserMark 2.1 web test wasn't compatible with the new version of Safari and we couldn't perform the benchmark. We were able to test the pure JavaScript performance via the Kraken benchmark though, and it came out class-leading.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Apple iPhone 6s
  1737
• Apple iPhone 6
  2880
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  3989
• LG G4
  4085
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  4154
• Apple iPhone 5s (iOS 8)
  5396
• HTC One M9
  5500
• Sony Xperia Z5 Compact
  7868
• Huawei Honor 7
  11493

Apple A9 is a beast - there's no other way to put it. The iPhone 'S' series typically stand for Speed and the iPhone 6s is not only the fastest iPhone to date, it's probably the best performing smartphone too. Apple's choice of designing its own processor pays out every year and makes sure iOS users never have to worry about lackluster performance.

Apple A9 has the power to handle everything you can get on your phone today and is future-proof for the years to come with some huge power reserves under the hood.