The Palm Pre’s Hardware
I’ve gone through this performance comparison once before but I’ll quickly summarize it here. The iPhone and iPhone 3G both use an ARM11 based CPU running at 412MHz. The Palm Pre uses an ARM Cortex A8 based CPU running at 600MHz. The Cortex A8 is significantly faster than the ARM11; while both are very simple in-order cores, the A8 is capable of fetching/decoding/executing/retiring two instructions at the same time - the ARM11 can only do one. Palm has the overwhelming raw horsepower advantage with its hardware, as it should, the Pre was designed much later than the original iPhone (note that the new 3GS should match the Pre in terms of hardware prowess).
Given the incredible performance advantage of the Pre’s hardware, you would expect it to be much faster than the iPhone 3G. Unfortunately, that’s only partially true. Let’s start with some basic application tests:
| Application Launch Time in Seconds | Web Browser | Dialer | Google Maps | Camera | |
| Apple iPhone 3G (3.0) | 1.1 s | 1.7 s | 3.8 s | 4.6 s | 1.2 s |
| Palm Pre | 3.0 s | 1.5 s | 8.6 s | 4.4 s | 3.3 s |
| T-Mobile G1 | 5.4 s | 2.0 s | 4.4 s | 4.9 s | 2.0 s |
Despite a significant processing power advantage, the Pre launches most applications slower than the iPhone 3G. I suspect that we’re bound mostly by the read speed of the Pre’s Flash memory, but even then there’s no reason the Pre couldn’t be at least as fast as the iPhone. The more I tested the Pre the more I realized exactly how much time Apple spent optimizing the iPhone’s OS prior to its release.
Palm made a serious mistake when attempting to duplicate Apple’s success. The iPhone gained traction because it did not allow anything to compromise the user experience; applications and even web pages were quickly evicted from memory to preserve a very fast UI. Palm, with its significant hardware advantage, was not able to accomplish the same thing here.
Even when the iPhone gets slow, it’s still smooth. The Pre’s animations are not as smooth as Apple’s. Even when the Pre does something faster than the iPhone, it fails to do it as smoothly. It all comes down to a lack of optimization; Palm could easily fix these issues, but the Pre seems a tad premature. Compared to every other smartphone on the planet, Palm did an incredible job. Compared to Apple? There’s about 10% more polish needed in the animation department.
Web Page Rendering: The Pre Advantage
Where the Pre doesn’t fail to impress is in its web page rendering performance. First, let’s look at the raw bandwidth numbers:
| 3G/EVDO | WiFi | |
| Apple iPhone 3G (3.0) | 916 KB/s | 3237 KB/s |
| Palm Pre | 881 KB/s | 3973 KB/s |
At my house Sprint’s EVDO and AT&T’s 3G network speeds were about the same. To test web page rendering performance however I visited several sites (full, not mobile versions), loading each one three times and taking the average time to load from the moment I entered the URL to the instant the progress indicator stopped animating.
| 3G/EVDO | Apple iPhone 3G (3.0) | Palm Pre |
| anandtech.com | 20.3 s | 17.2 s |
| arstechnica.com | 23.3 s | 14.0 s |
| hothardware.com | 38.9 s | 20.8 s |
| pcper.com | 43.2 s | 42.8 s |
| digg.com | 44.5 s | 30.3 s |
| techreport.com | 27.2 s | 15.2 s |
| tomshardware.com | 32.3 s | 30.3 s |
| slashdot.org | 33.5 s | 23.8 s |
| facebook.com | 37.1 s | 36.0 s |
| Palm Pre Advantage | 30% Faster |
On average, in my 3G vs. EVDO tests, the Palm Pre managed to render web pages around 30% faster than the iPhone 3G. My network bandwidth tests showed that I was getting relatively similar 3G and EVDO performance, so the rendering advantage is entirely due to the Pre’s faster processor. If anything, this is the sort of performance boost I would expect out of the iPhone 3GS when viewing web pages.
The network continues to be a large bottleneck however. Given the performance difference between the Cortex A8 and the ARM11, I would expect a larger difference in web page load speed - if we’re CPU bound at all. When I reviewed the first iPhone I surmised that we were quite CPU bound; moving to a faster internet connection (WiFi) should show an even larger gap between the Pre and the iPhone 3G if we were indeed CPU bound. Let’s see if I’m right:
| WiFi | Apple iPhone 3G (3.0) | Palm Pre | T-Mobile G1 |
| anandtech.com | 16.3 s | 8.2 s | 17.2 s |
| arstechnica.com | 17.7 s | 7.8 s | 17.8 s |
| hothardware.com | 35.2 s | 11.2 s | 24.4 s |
| pcper.com | 33.3 s | 18.0 s | 34.0 s |
| digg.com | 34.3 s | 22.1 s | 40.0 s |
| techreport.com | 24.1 s | 9.0 s | 20.5 s |
| tomshardware.com | 21.4 s | 13.8 s | 26.0 s |
| slashdot.org | 26.0 s | 20.9 s | 46.0 s |
| facebook.com | 31.7 s | 19.6 s | 37.7 s |
| Palm Pre Advantage vs iPhone 3G | 83% Faster |
Remove some of the network bottleneck and the Pre stretches its legs; the gap now grows to 83%. Not only is the iPhone very CPU bound even while rendering web pages, it’s even more so on WiFi. For the WiFi results I also included the T-Mobile G1, which uses a 528MHz ARM11 processor (compared to the 412MHz ARM11 core in the iPhone 3G). The faster CPU isn't enough to really outperform the iPhone 3G, while it does pull ahead in some cases it isn't consistently faster. Apple needed to use the Cortex A8 to guarantee significant performance improvements in the 3GS.
Given that the iPhone 3GS is expected to use similar hardware to the Pre, this is the sort of performance improvement I would expect to see out of the new 3GS.
It’s Time for Multi-Core
Anyone who has owned an iPhone has experienced the stalling problem. Whether it’s switching between applications, clicking on a link or just trying to unlock your phone, occasionally the process will take much, much longer than expected. We’ve been spoiled by having multi-core processors everywhere since 2005, we haven’t forgotten the lessons behind why single-core is bad have we?
A single core microprocessor without SMT can only operate on a single thread of instructions at a time. Unfortunately for single core processors, we often have tens if not hundreds of threads contending for their attention. Thankfully these CPUs operate at millions if not billions of cycles per second and a good scheduler can cycle through many threads, hundreds of times per second.
If everything works ok, there’s nothing to worry about. All of your running threads each get a slice of time and cycle through until they’re complete. As with most things, the scheduling world doesn’t always work like that. Every now and then the scheduler will pick a thread to execute on the CPU that won’t relinquish its control, or the scheduler will screw up and keep picking the wrong thread for execution (e.g. a background task instead of a foreground task). In these situations you get what feels like a a frozen system.
The iPhone appears to handle these situations very well. The app will either take a long time to respond or it will simply crash and exit. Sometimes the phone will require a hardware reset to recover but most of the time it just behaves strangely for a bit.
The move to multiple cores helps alleviate this scenario by giving the OS a second core to schedule threads on. In the event that one core is busy and can’t handle a more immediate, at least to the end user, task the second core is there to help things remain smooth and responsive.
Luckily, ARM has just the solution - the Cortex A9. The Cortex A9 is an out-of-order ARM processor (the first of its kind) that supports multi-core configurations. The ARM11 actually supports multi-core configurations as well but I don’t expect many manufacturers to step back from the A8 to a multi-core ARM11 processor.
I’m expecting the multi-core A9 transition to happen in the next 12 months. If Apple is particularly ambitious (or feeling threatened), it could attempt to bring about app-level multitasking and multi-core at the same time next year.
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Shadowmaster625 - Monday, June 22, 2009 - link
What is the most important feature of a phone with unlimited data? Obviously it is to be able to provide a broadband internet connection for my desktop pc so I can get away from the comcast bloodsuckers. I find it curious that Anand doesnt even answer this most important of questions. lol. One can only wonder what kind of world Anand lives in ... sheesh... only a moron would do anything more than talk or txt on one of these stupid things.T2k - Monday, June 22, 2009 - link
Like in many other occasions AT misses the point again - Pre is nothing like the iPhone, let alone aiming at it. If it's aiming anything then it's rather the Blackberry and its integrated communication services - which iPhone never came even close to, let alone matching it.iPhone is a geek (music/net/media) phone but NOT a smartphone - what kind of a smartphone could it be with NO MULTITASKING whatsoever?
You might can get almost as much stupid little apps as on WinMo - I doubt it though - but the lack of multitasking by itself makes it immediately a laughable proposition, let alone the long-missing other features that took Apple 2+ YEARS to fix, only to catch up with top phones from 2007...
Typical Apple-RDF idiocy at its best - Anand really needs to pull out his head of Jobs' @ss and needs to take a reality trip to overseas and see how laughable his iPhone is when compared to high-end phones in Europe and Asia (as a matter of fact it's quite embarrassing to have an iPhone in Japan.)
There's a reason why Blackberry beats Apple even in the US, which is typically the strongest market for Apple - it's the fact that iPhone is a reat piece for pseudo-business people but no real corporate person would touch it (would you give out your most sensitive communication for Apple? Because that's what you do with iPhone.)
Palm Pre is FAR AHEAD of iPhone but it's not a big step - there are plenty of phones well ahead of iPhone, there's nothing to see here in this regard, sorry.
finbarqs - Monday, June 22, 2009 - link
Here's what I think that needs to be improved:The balance of the phone. The phone is top heavy, making it very difficult to use it single handed. Additionally, the keyboard is too far away from the screen to call it "useable" with the screen when you have it with one hand. This makes me wish it has a virtual Keyboard! Battery life... well.. is left to be desired. Full charge at 3PM (more like 2:30) talked 3 times, but texted a lot, used e-mail and AIM. lasted t'il approximately 10PM. the talk times lasted approximately 3-4 minutes each.
Slow reaction when launching applications: Anand hit the nail on the head on this one. Still nice, but not as fast as apple. Still time for improvements on this one!
Anyways, Now that the iPhone has 3.0 out, I think it's a serious contender in the smartphone world! Palm pre also lacks video recording and the AF of apple's iphone 3Gs!!!
Ehsan - Monday, June 22, 2009 - link
Hi Anand,When starting messaging part of your review you opened with "The iPhone perfected text messaging". Can you please explain what you meant by this? Did you mean to say that they perfected it from the original one came on 1st Iphone or you meant they perfected it for all smartphones? Because if you meant later you are wrong. It was Palm who implemented threaded sms/mms in Palm OS in Treo 650 times and later customized it on Win Mob for their WM based treos. They were the first and only one till Apple copied that idea. How is that for wakeup call Apple fansboys??
Thanks.
Ehsan
T2k - Monday, June 22, 2009 - link
Nope, it's just another idiocy - iPhone NEVER been a desired texting phone, let alone bringing anything new (originally there wasn't even landscape email writing, let alone the still-missing MMS) - this is just one of the countless ignorant and stupid claims of this article.
Again, Anand badly needs to do some research before he starts putting out more of this kind of embarrassingly ingorant articles...
Sazar - Tuesday, June 23, 2009 - link
I think what Anand is trying to suggest is the format of texting in the iPhone is what is almost perfect.It is essentially like a chat, a running conversation between the parties concerned.
Using various other phones, I became accustomed to running conversations, but they were never really structured. I am sure other phone makers have excellent implementations, but the iPhone really did raise the bar for me.
With 0S 3.0 and it's landscape keyboard, it is doubly awesome :)
Ehsan - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 - link
I fully understand what Anand may be trying to suggest but what I want Anand and you to know is this running conversation between parties, like chat, is called "threaded messaging" which Palm introduces in its Treo 600 days. It was perfect and Palm included IM into it in their new WebOS so not only your sms and mms are in chat format but also your aol and gtalk IM's are in same chat window.What I am suggesting is please give credit where credit is due. Apple implementation of "threaded messaging" is carbon copy of Palm's version which they introduced long time ago in treo 600. Please check out history.
T2k - Monday, June 22, 2009 - link
How about this one?" Coming from the iPhone, this is a huge omission (Apple probably holds the patent on awesome predictive text input, Palm would probably have to clean Jobs‘ toilets weekly to get access to that one). "
Yeah.... you know, it's more than awkward to read things like this in a well-publicized article from a well-known person, on a much-hyped site...
...because this level of ignorance, lack of even basic research (there are at least half a dozen predictive text technologies out there and iPhone is pretty far from being the best) would immediately result in a permanent publication ban at any half-decent news organization or site.
In best case - say you are a junior journo - your editor would be reprimanded and you would be put back in some associate position but in worst case - if you were an editor - you'd be released immediately.
JC Strat - Monday, June 22, 2009 - link
Dear Anand,I hesitate to point this out....
Several of the sites (slashdot, facebook) that you loaded on the iPhone 3GS loaded disproportionately faster on the 3GS than the pre based on other site load times.
It has been suggested that these sites detect the user agent of the iPhone and serve up an optimized site for the iPhone. This has been suggested by using a user agent switcher with Safari. Set it to "Mobile Safari 3.0" - the iPhone browser - and the site loads much quicker even on the same mac.
From a recent post at Precentral.net:
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Even if you don't have an iPhone, you can test it yourself if you have a Mac, and are running Safari 4. Go to the Develop menu on a new tab, and change the user agent to Mobile Safari 3.0 and load up slashdot.org. Now open a new tab (the user agent will default to the regular one) and open up slashdot.org. Compare the two. Notice the differences? Of course the one on iPhone loads faster- it's a different freaking version!! Similar thing on facebook.com.
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Can you confirm that your tests loaded the exact same version of these pages, and that facebook and slashdot did not serve up different versions of their content to the iPhone that was less data or optimized specifically for the iPhone? The evidence seems pretty compelling that if your user agent is "Mobile Safari 3.0" you get a different version of the page, and comparing that with the Pre loading the full generic site is not valid.
I mention this because a variety of news and gadget sites have carried this as evidence of a 20+ % advantage of the iPhone 3GS over the Pre in rendering web pages. If they are not rendering the same page and data, then that needs to be explicitly acknowledged.
It may be that this turns out to be nothing, and the 3GS is rendering the exact same data and page that much faster than the Pre on these sites. But the discrepancy and possible explanation of an iPhone-optimized page should be explored and brought to light.
Personally whether it's 24% or 6% faster than the Pre, I couldn't care less. They are both awesome phones. However, it is appropriate to give the Pre a fair shake.
TheJediSlayer - Sunday, June 21, 2009 - link
Very, very extensive article between the iPhone and the Palm Pre, which I like.Although the iPhone has a quicker response time, smoother layout, and is more sturdy, I have to nail it in this respect. The fact that the iPhone has a "closed" application network for users and that the iPhone doesn't allow for multi-tasking makes the phone looks very undesirable, for me at least.
However, the Palm Pre has an "open" network for application downloading where everyone can contribute to it, like Androi's market. They offer multi-tasking, which is a MUST need for me and I'm sure just about everyone else.
The one thing that disappoints me about the Palm Pre is not its short-comings when it comes to Syngery, IMing, or anything else It's rather the fact that the device itself doesn't sound physically sturdy, as pointed out in the article. I'm sure it would take a big of doing to smash the Palm Pre, but I'm sure I'll end up dropping my own Palm Pre and I want to know that I'm not about to end up with a dead-unit because of one drop.
Nevertheless, the Palm Pre is something I will most definitely consider as I prepare to get my first smartphone in the coming months. I'd much rather the Palm Pre have the Android OS loaded onto it, rather than its own WebOS, but perhaps its changeable?