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Josh P. Miller/CNET
Editor’s note: The “A few notes about the tests” section was added to make the testing methodology clearer.
Soon the iPhone 4 will be available to everyone who patiently waited (years, for some) for Apple to offer it through a service provider with a better service history.
Over the next few days, there will be many questions concerning which is the better iPhone 4, and so begins our attempt to answer that question.
We’ve not yet had time to run any battery tests, but rest assured, those are coming. Also, though I’m personally not a fan of synthetic benchmarks, we did conduct some around-the-city testing of the two iPhones using such benchmarks as well as a few real-world tests.
For the purposes of this blog however, we’ll be focusing only on real-world tests.
First, I wanted to get a baseline feel for each phone’s Wi-Fi performance over the Web and used one of my favorite sites Giantbomb.com to test it. The best reason to load this site is the lack of Flash on the home page. We also wanted to see how both phones compared with Android, and using this site allows for a more direct comparison with Android phones.
Though moving from one service provider to another shouldn’t affect the results of this test, we wanted to be sure.
Our second test is boot time. As an iPhone owner, I’ve experienced plenty occasions where problems have arisen after downloading a new app, only to be fixed with a reboot of the phone. For those curious as to how long that actually takes, we have the results.
We’ll update this post soon with Windows Phone 7 results. There were some technical issues (like the fact that Windows Phone 7 isn’t capable of finding hidden networks) that we weren’t able to overcome by press time.
A few notes about the tests:
- The results are taken from the average of three iterations. I chose the lowest three numbers that were within 5 percent of each other.
- Factory resets were performed on each phone, but a few apps were installed afterward. Default settings for each phone were used.
- No apps were running in the background when the tests were done.
- Boot tests: iPhones: After the lock screen appears, the slider is movable, and the default cellular connection is made i considered the phone fully booted.
- Boot tests: Android phones: After the SD card is booted and a cellular connection is made, we considered the phone fully booted.
- The website load speed tests were conducted while the phones were connected to the same secured WiFi router, located about 5-7 feet away form the phones.
- For boot time tests, each phone was tested in the same location, with no confirmation made to which cell tower the were connected to.
OK, without further ado, I give you, the results:
| Phone name | Wi-Fi Web speed (in seconds) | Boot time (in seconds) |
|---|---|---|
| Apple iPhone 4 (AT&T) | 10.7 | 35.5 |
| Apple iPhone 4 (Verizon) | 9.6 | 38.6 |
| Samsung Nexus S | 7.3 | 27.1 |
| HTC MyTouch | 9.8 | 5.7 |
Look for more test results, including talk-time battery, audio battery, and video battery numbers in the coming days and weeks.
