Before you take the plunge of upgrading your iPhone to the new 5S or 5C released by Apple this month, you should see how the new phones stack up against the older models. While Apple's new top-line phone certainly is faster, is that little bit of extra speed worth the few hundred dollars that an upgrade would cost?
YouTube user EverythingApplePro conducted a battery of tests on all seven generations of iPhone. Unsurprisingly, the iPhone 5S came out on top in most of them -- it turned on faster and uploaded websites nearly instantaneously. (Surprisingly, the 3GS, 3G and 2G all shut down more quickly than the newer models.) Apple boasts that the iPhone 5S is the first 64-bit smartphone in the world, making its performance comparable to that of a desktop computer.
While the video is a nice illustration of Moore's Law and the advances that Apple and other smartphone makers have made in the past half decade, you might be surprised to find that the speed differences between the last two iterations of the iPhone are not as noticeable as you might have thought. As the video shows, last year's iPhone 5 clocked in start-up and web-browsing times just barely under those for the 5S.
"I learned that the amount of processing power is greater, of course, as the generation goes on," the video maker explains. "But it's marginally less noticeable the higher you go. So if you have a 5, I wouldn't really recommend upgrading to a 5S just based on the fact that you want an extra little bit of power."
For some potential buyers, those extra few milliseconds make all the difference in the world, so an upgrade is worth it. Others will be able to tolerate slightly slower load times -- at least until next year's model comes out. But one thing is true for everyone: Any potential iPhone buyer should watch this video and learn exactly how much extra speed they would get from a 5S and 5C before making a purchase.
[h/tEverythingApplePro]
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