(Sorry long read/ramble
) Well my belief ( and many others on here) that benchmarks don't tell the full story in regards to real world performance have been justified with a few head to head 'speed tests'.
Over the last week or so I have seen a few videos of real world browser web page speed tests and app opening speed tests for all the main performance smartphone, 6s, mate 8, mi 5 prime, galaxy s7 ( both versions) and the results seem to go against what geekbench composite scores would suggest.
The only exception being iPhone 6s which having the highest single thread geekbench score and faster nand is still the fastest phone in day to day usage, On android however the geekbench single thread does not point to the fastest every day SOC, despite what many tech websites will have you believe.
It's generally believed in the main tech media that single thread geekbench and crappy composite benchmarks such as antutu point to the fastest SOC of a smartphone, some smarter websites point to screen resolution as being a factor, while others are on point enough to recognise that device specific optimisations are also a factor, especially browser and now in ever increasing regularity head dissipation, whether that be metal unibody designs, or even so called 'liquid cooling' ,as well as some web sites picking up on manufacturing process being a factor.
The best tech web sites go into better detail and look at a wider range of benchmarks, looking at nand performance as being a major factor in general smartphone speed, as well as deep diving on power consumption and efficiencies, such as the excellent Anandtech articles we see on a more regular basis.
How ever we are now seeing main tech web sites taking real world 'speed tests' and multitasking tests into greater significance, such as tech radar, although most people on here will rightly point out that smaller lone reviewers have been doing such head to head videos on YouTube for a few years now, such as phonebuff who I believe started this off.
Whilst I am fully aware that such tests are subjective in alot of cases, are hardly scientific such as humann error can be a factor, as well as many of the points mentioned above, I personally would rather buy my smartphone and choose the SOC for that smartphone based on these real world tests, however amateurish they may seem to certain tech purists, time and time again I have seen benchmark topping multi core smartphone being outperformed in day to scenarios which go against benchmark results and what tech web sites would have you believe is the 'fastest, most powerful bla bla) smartphone.
For instance, despite Snapdragon 820 beating the other SOCs in most performance metrics on paper, including most composite benchmarks and graphics, in head to head speed tests it is actually the slowest, and by quite a long way, here I will link a few videos which I hope to point this out:
Exynos 8890 beats it s820 when both versions of s7 are compared:
http://www.ibtimes.com/samsung-galaxy-s7s-exynos-8890-variant-beats-snapdragon-820-video-2337237
Just so we can remove any Samsung optimisation favouritism the xiaomi mi 5 prime also uses the Snapdragon 820 higher bin ( 2.15ghz) ufs 2.0 storage and 3gb ram :
This is a comparison between mi 5 (standard low bin 820 1.8ghz??) And last gen note 5 exynos 7420:
And the so called 'slowest' next gen SOC Kirin 950 in the mate 8 with the lowest geekbench single thread composite score and only eMMC 5.0 nand seems to be the fastest SOC in real world performance, at least when paired up with a 1080p display such as the mate 8.
As you can see despite the Snapdragon performing top of the lost in most standard android benchmarks real world day to day usage does not seem to correlate.
My reason for posting this long rambling post then is to gather some thoughts from the tech savvy peeps on here on why this is, what constitutes a smooth fast smartphone? Is multicore performance more important on android than what most people believe? Or is it my belief that single thread integer performance of a SOC\cpu being the most important alongside nand? Is kryo just a benchmark bully but falls short in real life usage? Or has the new architecture not being optimised properly?
Certainly anantechs article which showed kryo and krait having the same integer execution units raised my eye brows, is this what we are seeing here? Or is cortex a72 paired with TSMC 16nm FF plus just superior combination? Would then porting a benchmark such as spec INT 2006 to android now that we have 4gb ram be a better real world representative benchmark?
I just want to point out I think hi silicon and huawei have done an excellent job with the Kirin 950 and mate 8, which I feel is the best smartphone for most metrics out today.
Despite on paper having the 'slowest nand, slowest single core composite geekbench and slowest graphics, it's seems to handle games with its 1080p screen with aplomb likely in part due to the 16nm FF plus process, has brilliant battery life in part thanks to its 4000mah battery, and is the fastest phone through the UI and app/ web browsing amongst android phones, despite having a custom skin.
Again sorry for the ramble.. Discuss.
Edit.