Apple iPhone 6s Plus vs. Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+: Double positive

Performance

Apple A9 is one of the best chips on the market today, but so is the Exynos 7420. The best way to check which one is better is to run some synthetic benchmarks and see what happens.

The new generation of iPhones is powered by a brand new Apple A9 chipset, which packs a dual-core 1.85 GHz Twister processor, PowerVR GT7600 six-core graphics and 2GB RAM. The chips are made either by Samsung on 14nm process, or TSMC on 16nm process. All of these mean the A9 has more processing power, a stronger GPU punch, double the RAM and better thermal properties.

Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ packs an Exynos 7420 chipset developed in-house by Samsung with 1.5 GHz quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU, 2.1 GHz quad-core Cortex-A57 CPU, Mali-T760MP8 GPU, and 4GB of RAM. Save for the slight bump in RAM, the hardware setup is the same as in Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge.

Apple has always focused on the single-core performance since it is the most important one when it comes to interacting with the iOS user interface and early tests showed that the 64-bit Twister core is the best and fastest CPU core currently on the market. On the other hand you are only getting two of those, so we'll see how it goes. In come the benchmarks.

The multi-core score of GeekBench 3 shows how powerful the new dual-core Twister processor is. It beats the Snapdragon 810 chips with their quad-Cortex-A57 CPU, but trails behind the Exynos 7420, which uses a similar architecture but a higher clock speed.

GeekBench 3

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+
  5158
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  5095
• OnePlus 2
  4429
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  4413
• Sony Xperia Z5
  4017
• HTC One M9
  3761
• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  2884
• Apple iPhone 6
  2835
• Meizu m2 note
  2649

The single-core results show you the difference. A single Twister does insanely better than any other CPU core on the market today. In fact, a single Twister core is equal to the 8-core Cortex-A53 performance on the Meizu m2 note.

GeekBench 3 single core

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  2537
• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  1594
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+
  1490
• Samsung Galaxy S6
  1484
• Sony Xperia Z5
  1351
• HTC One M9
  1239

AnTuTu 5 painted the exact same picture. The Galaxy S6 edge+ posted a score very close to the 70,000 points range - just like its smaller relatives and better than any of their Snapdragon-equipped competitors. The A9-powered iPhone is behind, but still better than any other S810-device.

AnTuTu 5

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  70053
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+
  68324
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  58582
• HTC One M9
  51427
• Sony Xperia Z5
  50611
• OnePlus 2
  47207
• Apple iPhone 6
  45545

The compound BaseMark OS II 2.0 test gauges CPU, GPU, Memory, Web and System performance. In this test there is no one to come even close to the iPhone 6s Plus thanks to Apple's optimized OS. The fact that it has the latest A9 chipset doesn't hurt either.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  2261
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+
  1789
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  1750
• OnePlus 2
  1622
• Sony Xperia Z5
  1482
• Apple iPhone 6
  1429
• HTC One M9
  1365

Next - graphics performance. The new iPhone generation utilizes the six-core PowerVR GT7600 GPU, which is quite the beast. The Galaxy S6 edge+ relies on a Mali-T760MP8 octa-core GPU, but it has to handle four-times the pixels.

The on-screen tests are rather predictable, as the iPhone 6s Plus runs on a 1080p resolution, while the Galaxy S6 edge+ displays everything at Quad HD.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  59.6
• HTC One M9
  50
• OnePlus 2
  46.7
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  39
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+
  37

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  38.6
• HTC One M9
  24
• OnePlus 2
  22
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  15
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+
  15

The off-screen benchmarks is where we can actually check the raw performance of the two GPU. Once again though, the PowerVR GT7600 is an absolute ruler of our charts.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  79.6
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  59
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+
  56
• HTC One M9
  49
• OnePlus 2
  48
• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  44.6

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  39.5
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  26
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+
  25
• HTC One M9
  23
• OnePlus 2
  22
• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  18.6

Finally, Android uses OpenGL ES 3.1 as its latest generation graphics API, while iOS 9 has the Metal API. Both allow games to make full use of the built-in GPUs and there are already several benchmark apps, which allow the cross-platform comparison of graphics-intensive apps. Combined with the lower resolution of the iPhone 6s, the Metal test really produces outstanding results.

Basemark ES 3.1 / Metal

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  916
• HTC One M9
  409
• Apple iPhone 6
  370
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+
  348

Unfortunately, at the time of writing the BrowserMark 2.1 web test isn't compatible with the new version of Safari and we couldn't perform the benchmark on the iPhone 6s Plus. We were able to test the pure JavaScript performance via the Kraken benchmark though, and it came out class-leading.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  1731
• Apple iPhone 6
  2880
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+
  3767
• Samsung Galaxy S6 edge
  3989
• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  4650
• HTC One M9
  5500
• OnePlus 2
  6808

Winner: Apple iPhone 6s Plus: Apple A9 is a beast - there's no other way to put it. The iPhone 6s Plus is not only the fastest iPhone to date, it's probably the best performing smartphone too. Apple's choice of designing its own processor and OS pays out every year and makes sure iOS users never have to worry about lackluster performance.

The only test the iPhone 6s Plus is slightly behind the Galaxy S6 edge+ is the multi-core processor benchmark, which takes a toll on the AnTuTu performance, too.

While the Samsung's Exynos 7420 chipset is a flagship-grade and the best you can find in the Android ecosystem, the Apple's A9 is the better performer in the majority of the tests.