The iPhone XS Max crushes the Google Pixel 3 XL in a speed test

Running benchmarks on smartphones is a good way to see which one does the number crunching faster, but that doesn't always match the real life performance. That's why it's always good to see a speed test, which aims to come closer to your everyday use patterns.

As you can see, the Pixel 3 XL was able to keep the pace with the iPhone XS Max on the first lap but the latter just obliterated Google's flagship phone in the second one. It seems that the Pixel 3 XL struggled to keep the bigger apps open or cached in the background.

And even though the Pixel 3 XL and the XS Max both have 4GB of RAM and iOS is notoriously more aggressive managing memory, the Pixel 3XL memory issues might be to blame.

It still a mystery why Google decided to settle for 4GB of RAM on its both handsets when today's Android mid-rangers easily go above 4GB.

Keep in mind, though, that even this speed test also isn't ideal for measuring real-world performance as it actually measures the time in which the system loads apps from the flash memory to the operating memory. There's also network latency that needs to be taken into account as most of the apps require a connection to the server to download data. And finally, you don't have control over which app gets kicked out of the memory cache - so results may vary depending on set of apps used.