iPhone 4S Speed Test: How It Stacks Up Against iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, Galaxy Nexus And More (VIDEOS)

Sure the iPhone 4S has a "brilliant" camera, a "magic" voice-recognition A.I., and an operating system that is "more polished and feature-complete than it has ever been," but what about speed?

According to Wired's Brian X. Chen, the 4S's new dual-core A5 chip means that "everything from typing to sending a text, and from powering on the phone to taking a photo is zippier." Daring Fireball's John Gruber wrote that the improved speed was especially evident in the new iPhone's camera, "The most profound difference between the 4S and 4 cameras has nothing to do with image quality. It's that you don't have to wait nearly as long." MG Siegler at TechCrunch went so far as to say "the iPhone 4S blows away the iPhone 4 when it comes to speed."

According to Geek.com, the Galaxy Nexus, which was announced by Samsung last week, and is probably the only recent phone to get even close to as much hype as the 4S, has a 1.2GHz processor. This could put the Nexus at an advantage over the 4S, whose processor is only 1GHz. Although they're quick to point out that "performance can be defined by more than just cores and speed."

To see for yourself how the iPhone 4S stacks up to the Galaxy Nexus, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and more check out our slideshow below.

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Comments

[hpxmas2011]

05:36 AM on 11/28/2011

hot iphone 4s apps free download : iphone4s.xstudio.biz

[TopTenScams]

11:36 PM on 11/25/2011

hi, i found site where you can test iPhone 4s
http://newiphone4s.co.cc/
i love it new iPhone 4s - best phone ever

[Stewpendous]

08:49 AM on 10/25/2011

My cousin just got his new 64 gig 4s on AT&T last night and we did some speed test to see if it was faster then my HTC Evo 3D on Sprint. Sorry to let all you (not really) Iphone lovers but my phone was faster on 3g......, sometime by double the mbps We were pretty much neck and neck on Wifi, Both around 10 mbps give or take but his Iphone was consistently faster on the upload but not by much. The Siri was pretty cool expect when he was trying to show the hot bartender and it kept getting confused by the little background noise. I have a similar feature which can be used to text, but the Siri is very easy to access and use which I feel would be a great feature if you were driving and needed to send out a quick text. I personally like the phone alot but wouldn't buy one because apple did not add 4g to the new phone. That is just a deal breaker since where I live I have 4g and it is 5x to 10x faster then 3g!

[BigJoeD]

11:55 AM on 10/24/2011

As an iPhone 4s owner I can you that having the voice software is definitely worth it. I use the voice dictation and not necessarily from Siri all the time.

[oliver clothesov]

09:44 AM on 10/24/2011

I am glad I did not upgrade. I am good with the 4. Seriously, does having the faster phone really make that much of a difference? It is getting ridiculous at this point. and I have a factory unlock with TMobile... from what I understand that is not coming out for 4S until November and I will pass then too.

[Daniel Myers]

02:17 PM on 10/24/2011

Yes, prompt technology is very important. That said I am getting an iphone 4s to upgrade from my BB8300. Approximately a 60x speed upgrade That is achieved 2x at a time over several generations. If I had a standard iphone 4 it's not a strong consideration, but it's an excelent time to upgrade from older tech.

[Stewpendous]

08:57 AM on 10/25/2011

On wifi you will notice the phone being a little faster while browsing the web and/ or downloading content but while on your 3g service it will be about the same. You can have the fastest processor in the world but the phone can only work as fast as the service. The 4s is nice but in my opinion, the fact that it does not include 4g it is a deal breaker and a waste of money to upgrade from the 4. If I was a current iphone owner and in need of a new phone I would probably.... be shopping other brands. The Siri has some neat features but not worth the price and hassle of getting a new phone.

[Stewpendous]

09:02 AM on 10/24/2011

I am not arguing that sprint is slower then At&T and Verizon but I just ran the same speed test on sprints 3g Service and I blow all three phones away with my HTC Evo 3D. I am not impressed at ALL with the iphone 4S. I didn't even turn on my 4G which would have been ten times better! What does that mean besides my HTC is faster then An iphone 4S?!?! For one, the iphone is now behind the Curve!!

[ipv4]

09:38 AM on 10/24/2011

Iphone is officially behind the curve on their latest phone.

[Layman23]

12:23 AM on 10/24/2011

His finishing touch with siri was classy!

[proudloudlib]

02:10 PM on 10/24/2011

I have serious Siri-envy. My brother was just visiting with his 4S, and I really like Siri, and I really like the camera. But I will wait. The 4 is really doing just fine, and I want to be eligible for an upgrade when the 5 (finally) comes out.

[nightowl007]

12:04 AM on 10/24/2011

C-Spire is getting the Iphone4s and I can't wait! They have the best deal 1st cell79.00 and 2nd cell 39.99 for unlimited data, wireless and text!

[themacgenius]

06:39 PM on 10/23/2011

Just thought I'd point out that the A5 chip inside the iPhone is more then likely not running at a GHz, but more then likely 800 MHz. Apple typically under clocks their CPU's for the iPhone to help conserve the battery life.

[Stewpendous]

09:07 AM on 10/24/2011

I believe it.. I have an HTC Evo 3d on Sprint and I just ran the same test on my 3g Service and blow all three phones away w/ a 1.11 mbps download....

[William Walko III]

09:16 AM on 10/24/2011

I don't know if your post is sarcastic or not... but, on wifi, my 4S was downloading at 2.18mbps.That seemed kinda slow, so I turned off the wifi and tried again on the AT&T 3G service-bumped it up to 4.12 Mbps.

[proudloudlib]

02:11 PM on 10/24/2011

We heard you twice the first time.

[nobodyzhome]

05:30 PM on 10/23/2011

Having two cores instead of one, does not mean that the phone should be twice as fast. That's not how that works. However, all other things being equal, your dual core phone should feel snappier than your single core phone.

I'm not an iPhone developer, but I'd bet that most of the software in the appstore was not designed with multiple cores in mind. In fact, a fair number of them probably never will be; not all problems can be parallelized.

[maxfax]

06:32 PM on 10/23/2011

Unless of course if you have Sprint, they're #3.

[tnlcallen]

03:54 PM on 10/23/2011

I have an Iphone 4, and based on what I see here, it isn't worth upgrading. I do hope that they bring Siri to the Iphone 4 soon though.

[poppa1138]

01:15 PM on 10/23/2011

makes me wonder will iPad3 also incorporate Siri as it is tipped to have the A6 chip the same as iPhone5 due next summer.
The Nexus has a amoled screen but the Galaxy II has a amoled plus screen which is far superior in tests.

[MrVee]

11:15 AM on 10/23/2011

Good review. I dug it. I'm staying with my Windows Phone but if I changed platforms, I'd grab the 4s.

[edmundpua]

11:06 AM on 10/23/2011

where is 4g ?

[His Shadow]

05:41 PM on 10/23/2011

Until 4G chips are smaller and don't drain batteries, it's not worth considering.

[maxfax]

06:32 PM on 10/23/2011

That's accurate, the battery drains faster than Lestat sucks blood.

[frank day]

07:53 PM on 10/23/2011

Son is loving his Galaxy 4G service.
Battery hasn't been a problem.

[Stewpendous]

09:11 AM on 10/24/2011

TY... I say the same thing. It was a huge mistake to not incorporate 4g in the new phone. I like iphones but will stick with my 4g android device until apple gets make in the game. For me it would be a downgrade to get an iphone. LOL

[ipv4]

09:40 AM on 10/24/2011

Big time.

[DRaymond]

01:02 AM on 10/23/2011

Frankly with all the hype about a dual core processor the real-world difference is pretty limited.  So as I have said elsewhere the only compelling reason to get the 4S is Siri.

On the other hand, based on this and a lot of other demonstrations of Siri it seems like the main thing it is used for is lame references to old films and creepy pretending that the phone is your girlfriend.

[icposse2000]

11:34 AM on 10/23/2011

REally? That's the only use you can see for it now?

I like being able to make appointments just by saying "Set up a meeting a five tomorrow with Bob". A LOT faster than opening up the calendar app, hitting the date for tomorrow, adding an event, typing in "meeting with bob", setting the time for 5 pm, clicking save, etc., etc. It's a difference of 2 seconds vs. probably 30 secs.

Moving forward, this is how you're going to be giving commands to most of your mobile devices in 5-10 years (if not less). It's what is going to make the iPad just as useful as a laptop for most things other than complex data entry (e.g. excel) or high-processor intensive tasks (e.g. movie editing). It's essentially the next evolution of the user-computer interface: command line>mouse>touch>voice. Really not that hard to see that's the direction it's going if you have any imagination.

[DRaymond]

03:04 PM on 10/25/2011

Oh, I agree with the potential for Siri, it is just that almost every time you see a video of somebody demonstrating Siri it usually winds up with them saying things like 'do you love me' or 'what is the meaning of life' or 'who's your daddy' or 'open the pod bay doors'. And I really hope that they solve the accent problem, not that I have one (actually, for doing voiceovers I have dozens) but that we would loose a lot of our diversity if everybody had to speak neutral vanilla english just so they can use their phone.

[KarateKid]

04:48 PM on 10/23/2011

Siri gives mean head.

[Kay Nicks]

05:00 PM on 10/23/2011

lmao! Ooohmygosh! Wonder if that comment will make sales now go up too....