Apple Retakes Smartphone Lead in Q4, Samsung Wins 2011

All good news when there's many good phones on the android platform that does not require "jail breaking" to get the full experience out of a phone. Holding out for a Sammy Quad Core s3 or asus padfone (whatever reviews better). If your stuck with a contract might as well get the best one at the time.

Cheers for healthy competition! (aside from the suing silliness)

Cool, but not really relevant info. Galaxy S2 runs circles around the iP4S and soon the S3 will leave all of them in the dust. Doesn't matter if Samsung has some lead; it matters they have the best smartphone around at this time. The competition looks so... 2010.
When Moto's Droid Razr Maxx comes out in GSM flavor (which I believe they're about to), the competition will heat up again. Can't wait.

Lol you know you dont smoke the plastic on the samsung? Thats the only way I can think of you coming to the conclusion the galaxy runs circles around the iphone 4s

Yeah, it smokes the 4S. Especially that GPU that's barely half as fast as the A5

Rather funny that a company that makes what 2 phones is beating everyone else. I don't like Apple but they are impressive.

I blame those crazy fanatics in mainland China....

The S2 was an older phone...so, big deal. The S3 will blow the 4S to pieces.Btw, you do know all the latest and greatest Apple CPU/GPU is MADE BY SAMSUNG, do you?? LOL.

..lol must have been an Android fanboy who thumbed down my post.

A5 processor in the 4S came out almost a year ago in the iPad 2. And yet today the ONLY processor that's faster is the Tegra 3. Everything else (esp Tegra 2) blows.

Many of Tom's readers are the types to build their own gaming rigs. I wonder which they'd pick:

A CPU that's 10% faster with a GPU that's half as fast. (Samsung GS2)
or
A CPU that's 10% slower with a GPU that's twice as fast. (iPhone 4S)

Of course they'd pick the latter as everyone knows the bottleneck for performance is your video card. 10% CPU is hardly going to be noticeable, but doubling the GPU will be very noticeable.

What's even funnier is the Samsung is clocked at 1.2GHz (vs 800MHz for the 4S), a difference of 50% yet still only performs about 10% faster. Not very efficient, is it?

S3 will blow the 4S? Are we talking about phones that haven't even been announced yet? Then let's include the next generation quad core A6 processor Apple will be using.

to ericburnby:

Isheep like you are truly funny. You fail to understand that Samsung is much better. Samsung also makes some of apple's parts. Samsung beats apple in almost every benchmark including the drop test in which apple goes to pieces. You are among the dumbest isheep trolls I have met. Keep buying over priced icrap made by slaves while the the rest of us will buy samsung phones that beat apple.

I'm not surprised. Siri is a great new product for former, current and new iHipsters.

Me, on the other hand, I'm waiting for Android's response. Maybe we'll see that by Android 5.0. Yes, there are apps out there that kind of achieve the same thing and are compatible with (I think) Android 2.3 and above. It doesn't look like Android 4.0 includes a Siri-like application out of the box, at least that's what I see out of the Google Nexus phone.

I would not buy Apple products even if they offered iFellatio.

I like my HTC Sensation very much but do wish I would have waited for the Galaxy SII.

... totally agree...

4S came out less than 6 month ago.
iPhones need faster GPU only TO BE ON PAR with other phones, since they have higher resolution.

S2 (and S1 for that matter) already does. Not by winning in anand-style misleading syntetic "off-screen" benchmarks, but by having VASTLY SUPERIOR SCREEN. Anyone, who ever compared samoled+ to normal phones would agree.

@nao1120

But many Android phones require rooting to make them work better... like chainfire to play Tegra2 based games, Titanium Backup to backup your phone!

to Larries22

you do not need titanium backup to backup or to root your android phone to get the most of it.

android also has more free apps.

bottom line...Samsung and asus beat apple hands down.

When the iPhone 4 was an 'old phone' - Android fans still compared it to the SG2.

It doesn't matter whether a phone is old or new, basically the fastest phone you can buy today, is the iPhone 4S.

It also has the best battery life and most apps, plus Siri, highest DPI screen and one of the best cameras. Also has best customer satisfaction ratings.

Some people don't want a brick in their pocket, and want the highest performing phone.

Oh and there's nothing inaccurate about the off-screen measurements. That's the only way to compare directly, and it's common knowledge that the 543 in the iPhone 4S runs rings around the Mali-400 in the SG2.

He said the A5 processor came out, not the 4S. So please read. If the iPhone has a smaller screen AND a higher resolution, that says it all - but either way, even on the same resolution, the GPU in the iPhone 4S is faster. If you were educated, you would know that that's why they had to use the offscreen benchmark, to make the resolutions the same.

Bullshit.
The point of doing "off scren" benchmark is to fool the user about the performance of the PHONE. You buy a phone, not GPU on it's own, and if phone forces GPU to do more work, to render the same thing, it's, you know, phones problem.



Which was again FUD. Most "new phones" get CPU that "came out" a while ago.



I have yet to find a user that would care about off-screen syntetic benchmark and won't have "oh dear, this screen is so much better". But I don't have iZombies around me either, people with iphones have no problems admitting problems with them.

Those are both fantastic results for both companies. This is the sort of growth every other market could only dream of.

Well then lets put galaxy note into the mix at 1.4ghz it completes blow away every processing benchmark and after being upgraded to ICS all the graphics will be rendered by GPU. If galaxy nexus is faster than iphone 4s in web based benchmarks, note should kick its a** & we all know amd has better graphics in their apu's but are they better than an i3 for just about everyone I doubt it. And last but not the least galaxy s was the best performer in both the cpu and the gpu section so you left the iphone 4's? Everyone please grow up.....

iPhone 4S: 960-by-640
Samsung Galaxy S2: 480 x 800

On a larger screen too - what a fail! See, people who actually look at screens like higher resolutions. Deny it all you like, and the display looks even more pixellated if you both LOWER the resolution and INCREASE the screen size. Some people prefer clarity over a large, pixellated display. You say the phone forces the GPU to do more, and you're right - the iPhone 4S is capable of higher quality display AS WELL as having much, much superior hardware. Along with better battery life, of course, and more apps, and Siri, and iCloud, and a better camera. You may as well refer back to an old Nintendo and argue that it is better than the Samsung Galaxy S2 because it offers better FPS? Same ridiculous logic would apply. Point is, SG2, much like the iPhone 4S vs the SG2, is much, much higher quality, and the feat of engineering is being able to pull that off without slowing down performance.




I don't care if phones use GPU's or CPU's which 'came out' a while ago, such as the 2 year old GPU in the Nexus Prime, the Android flagship. You didn't say that. You tried to correct his factual statement. Wrongly. As he said, the A5 came out almost a year ago in the iPad 2. If you had called that 'FUD' (you might wanna elaborate what that means by the way), then I wouldn't have necessarily disagreed. I simply informed you that his comment was correct. It still is.




This sentence makes no sense. I already told you most people don't want a brick of a phone and the larger screen is that brick. Indeed, this is backed up by the significantly higher sales of the iPhone 4s despite its higher price. You describe a larger, lower resolution screen as better? That's worse, and large enough to exaggerate being worse. Having a screen size which is a) more usable (thumb reaches over whole screen for ALL users, b) Clearer (higher resolution in smaller size) and c) powered by a better GPU (so higher quality graphics can be displayed on said screen and d) Having the ability to wirelessly display it on your TV where the increased resolution is even more relevant, is obviously appealing to a lot of people, myself included.

Indeed, your pathetic argument that the iPhone 4S has 'more to do' because it's screen is such a superior resolution applies to the moderately faster (despite 50% relative overclock) of the Android CPU. See, not only is iOS much more efficient so utilises the CPU much more effectively, demanding 'less' of the CPU - it also uses the much, much faster GPU acceleration as part of the UI - meaning that resolution isn't always the most relevant factor, and the CPU isn't the only hardware doing the hard work.

Mentioning the crappy drm infested locked-down iPhone 4S coffin in the same line as the sleek and superior Samsung Galaxy S2 is sacrilegious.

Processing performance is not usually the limiting factor on phones, particularly with the move to GPU accelerated OS's, such as iOS. Graphics are. Despite having a moderately faster CPU, the slowness of the GPU is a much greater hindrance. The Galaxy Nexus web based benchmarks showed a tiny, barely noticeable performance benefit over the iPhone 4S (despite being a newer phone), but the GPU performance is 3x slower:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph5310/43402.png

Or lets compare battery life...

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph5310/43385.png
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph5310/43387.png

... oh dear.

Finally, to not realise the difference between now, and the era of the iPhone 4 vs Samsung Galaxy debate, is ridiculous.... and it was not clear which one had the performance lead:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs [...] /24990.png
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs [...] /24985.png
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs [...] /24998.png

Now clearly, I just showed the benchmarks in which the iPhone 4 trounced the Galaxy S, which is also larger, by the way, but lets look at battery life:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs [...] /24986.png
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs [...] /24987.png
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs [...] /24988.png

.. and we see the obvious reasons to select the iPhone 4. Not only that, but Android at this time was much less advanced and had SIGNIFICANTLY fewer apps (and still lacks many apps on iOS) - another reason.

So, while performance between SG2 and iPhone 4 was debatable, battery life, apps, software support, were not. Now, if all of the aforementioned reasons to buy an iPhone 4 were not true, and SG2 did have significantly better performance (the iPhone 4S is 2x faster graphically than SG2) - then the performance would have been reason alone to choose the SG2, just like now, performance is just one of the MANY reasons why iPhone 4S is clearly superior to the SG2. But, you see, all the aforementioned realities DID exist, so overall the iPhone 4 was a better proposition. :-)

So, while performance between SG* and iPhone 4 was debatable

performance would have been reason alone to choose the SG*

There is no DRM on the iPhone 4S.

You can install more ROMs on iPhone exactly in the same way you can on Android.

'superior' by having a much slower GPU (half as fast), worse battery life, smaller app store missing many important apps, and lower resolution screen?

Yeah, right... :-)

I just fell in love with the Motorola Droid Razr, and I thought I was a Samsung man. Review here. Will wait for the Samsung S3 though, cause I love the Galaxy S2.

There is no way I will ever be seen with an Apple phone. They can give me that piece of trash and it will be returned back to the trash bin; and yeah I will post it on youtube.