Popular Benchmark maker Rightware has received what it believes to be a benchmark score submission from a Samsung Galaxy S4 (model GT-I9500). As expected, the alleged Galaxy S4 performs very well and had no problem landing at the top of the current charts in the BrowserMark suite of tests. In case you are not familiar with the Galaxy S code names, one variant of the Galaxy S3 was named GT-I9300 and one of the Galaxy S2 models was GT-I9100. The upcoming Samsung Galaxy S4 is said to be coming at least in two variants: the GT-I9500 and the GT-I9400. Rumor has it that one S4 variant would be equipped with a Snapdragon 600 processor, while the other would use a Samsung Exynos chip. Whether it is the Exynos Octa 5, or a Dual core Exynos with two A15 cores is still a hot debate topic.
In the Browsermark benchmark, the alleged Samsung Galaxy S4 results shows a score of 2540.35, which is a bit higher than the iPhone 5’s 2416.34. The difference isn’t mind-blowing, but keep in mind that this is a “browser” benchmark -not a CPU becnhmark- and that the scores typically don’t scale linearly with the underlying hardware performance. Typically, those JavaScript benchmarks do stress the virtual machine implementation (Chrome gets very slow performance compared to Safari or the Android browser), and if you use the exact same browser code on multiple machines, this may be a good memory sub-system comparator.
Anyway, this also means that you can expect more results pop as units make their way into partners and even media outlets. The Samsung Galaxy S4 is shaping up to be an impressive smartphone (at least, according to the online leaks) and it will be very interesting to see what features will really come out of the launch. So far, the most popular discussions have been centered around the possible use of the Samsung Exynos Octa 5, an 8-core (4+4) chip that uses ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture. It is also possible that Samsung ships with a dual-core A15 chip, and/or a Snapdragon S600 chip as suggested earlier. The Snapdragon S800 chip will not be available before later this year, so it seems unlikely that the Galaxy S4 would use one.
How do you perceive benchmarks like Rightware’s Browsermark? What do browser benchmarks mean to you and what do you think they should really represent? Leave a comment below.