IPhone Performance

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October 9, 2008 1:00 AM PDT


To obtain some useful workload information required installing a termal application on my iPhone and then remoting to it so that I could run TOP and at least see the basic system statistics in real time as applications were running.

It's useful to see what kinds of loads different activities put on the hardware and can be useful when making comparisions to MID devices. If nothing more it's a great starting point for continued comparisons.

This initial review shows that the browser uses more CPU load than nearly any other application at times up to 100%. The YouTube application is optimized and uses much less around 30% once the video is streaming, though it does briefly hit 100% as things initially load. The phone and music player were VERY impressive in the light loads they caused for the system.

I have screen shots of the screens I obtained these numbers from and will post them once I can get upload permissions through the Wiki owners.

 

iPhone performance numbers

Here is your guide to these numbers

  • the first part is the app or workload
    • the second number is the CPU % used for that workload
      • the third number is the # of processes in that workload
        • the fourth number is the # of threads in that workload
  • Idle w/top
    • 7.3 % load
      • 20 processes
        • 93 (as low as 90) threads
  • Phone Call
    • 10% load
      • 20 processes
        • 93 threads
  • Playing MP3
    • 20% load
      • 20 processes
        • 93 threads
  • YouTube
    • 30% load
      • 22 processes
        • 119 threads
  • Safari Browser
    • 100% load
      • 21 processes
        • 100 threads

The safari load was a flickr.com page that included many small graphics, as nearly every flickr page does. It was at 100% for several seconds and then once loaded went back to the idle screen.

If you have questions, comments or want to discuss an issue via email please write me at: dale dot t dot taylor at intel dot com.