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What's the best smartphone for gaming - iPhone 6 vs Samsung Galaxy S6

Phone fight

What's the best smartphone for gaming - iPhone 6 vs Samsung Galaxy S6
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Phones

The maker of mobile benchmarking tool GameBench has used its software to pit iOS against Android in the one criterion that really matters: gaming performance.

The team compared Apple's iPhone 6 with three Android-powered devices: the Samsung Galaxy S6, the Nexus 6, and the HTC One M9, and measured their frame rates while playing a number of high-end games.

The GameBench tool runs in the background on each device, while testers play the same level on the same game, with the same graphical settings, for 15 minutes a pop.

The games tested included Asphalt 8, Dead Trigger 2, Modern Combat 5: Blackout, Marvel: Contest of Champions, GTA: San Andreas, and Monument Valley.

The team was looking at three specific factors surrounding frames per second: the median FPS, the minimum FPS, and FPS stability. In all three metrics, a higher score is better.

Each game perfomed quite differently with some running better on an Android and others on iOS. But when averaged across all the games, the iPhone 6 won in all three criteria.

iphone

The Apple device "tended to have the highest median frame rate (40fps) and the highest minimum frame rate (32fps)," says GameBench. "It was the only device in our ranking to maintain an average minimum frame rate above 30fps".

The iPhone 6 also had the greatest frame rate stability of all the test devices, with a rock solid 92 percent.

The Galaxy S6 wasn't too far behind, mind you, with a median of 36fps, a minimum of 29fps, and a stability of 84 percent. The other Android devices didn't perform so well, with more frequent drops below 30fps.

GameBench is aware that the tests aren't perfect. The Galaxy S6 has a much higher screen resolution than the iPhone 6, for example, meaning games need to push more pixels.

And the firm says a number of factors could be behind the Android downfall. "Poor gameplay can result from poor optimisation of the device, poor optimisation of the game or game engine, differences in screen resolution, RAM, or the design of the processor".

But whatever the case, iPhone users now have one more reason to be insufferably pleased with themselves.

You can get the full report on GameBench's blog.

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer