Samsung Galaxy S4 beats iPhone 5, HTC One in benchmarks

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is still a few weeks away from being released, but an early benchmark test suggests it may be much more powerful than competing devices like the HTC One, Nexus 4 and the iPhone 5.

The folks over at Primate Labs compared the Geekbench 2 scores of the Samsung Galaxy S4 against the competition and the latest Samsung device came out on top with a score of 3,163. That compares to the HTC One's score of 2,687, the Nexus 4 at 2,040 and the iPhone 5 at 1,596. 

"It's clear that the Samsung Galaxy S4 will be the fastest smartphone available when it is released in April," Primate Labs wrote. "What's not clear is how the Galaxy S4 will handle the increased power and cooling requirements that generally come with faster processors." 

For those not familiar, the Geekbench 2 app measures the processor and memory performance. Some will rightfully argue that simply having a higher benchmark number doesn't guarantee a better user experience because an optimized hardware/software marriage could still wind up being better. With that being said, it's a great sign that the Samsung Galaxy S4 will be quite a powerful device when it lands. 

BGR also points out that the Samsung Galaxy S4 benchmark may not have even been on the most powerful version, as this was using a quad-core Snapdragon processor that will be powering the U.S. versions, instead of the octa-core Exynos processor that will be inside international Galaxy S4 devices. It will be interesting to see how the Exynos-powered Galaxy S4 devices will compare on these sorts of tests. 

It's not that surprising to see the Samsung Galaxy S4 outpace the iPhone 5 because Apple's smartphone was released last year and the iPhone is generally not as concerned with raw speeds and feeds. We'll be sure to benchmark the next iPhone against the Galaxy S4 to see which one will come out on top. 

Primate Labs points out that the Galaxy S4 is more powerful than the HTC One, which was introduced in February and is also powered by a quad-core Snapdragon processor. The difference may be that the HTC One is clocked at a lower speed and it runs an older version of Android than the Samsung Galaxy S4. The good news is that when the HTC One is updated to Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, its performance should improve.

[Via BGR]