Whenever Apple takes the wraps off a new iPhone model, there’s the usual bragging about how much faster it is than every previous iPhone. The iPhone 6S, for instance, has a chip that Apple claims is 70% faster than the previous model’s, which was 25% faster than the year before, and so on and so on.
But how does that translate into real-world use? How much faster has the user experience of the iPhone gotten over the years?
[seealso slug="apple-iphone-6s-plus-review"]
To find out, we pitted the new iPhones -- the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus -- against every previous iPhone model. Yes, it’s an Apple battle royale with every iPhone ever.
To make the test as fair and controlled as possible, we reset every iPhone to factory settings, installed the most recent version of iOS each device was capable of running, and made sure no other apps were running for each test.
We raced the iPhones through three fundamental activities: startup, loading an image-heavy webpage, and streaming a YouTube video. As you’d imagine, more recent models fared better overall, but the margin of victory was often not what you’d expect. And there were a few surprises along the way.
The players:
The original (2G) iPhone (iOS 3.1.3)
iPhone 3G (iOS 4.2.1)
iPhone 3GS (iOS 6.1.6)
iPhone 4 (iOS 7.1.2)
iPhone 4S (iOS 9)
iPhone 5 (iOS 9)
iPhone 5C (iOS 9)
iPhone 5S (iOS 9)
iPhone 6 (iOS 9)
iPhone 6 Plus (iOS 9)
iPhone 6S (iOS 9)
iPhone 6S Plus (iOS 9)
See the results for yourself in the video above. And be glad you’re not living in 2007.
BONUS VIDEOS: We review the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus
[video id=1xdjFudzoK2mSay2J_W4HyEKXrCsvxbf]
[video id=5sbzFudzqE8Xzz8AnVRjXDGTCgtCtD8x]