Video Faceoff! New iPhone vs. Old iPhone vs. Palm Pre.
by Peter Kafka
Posted on June 19, 2009 at 1:43 PM PT
Still waiting to get your hands on the new Apple (AAPL) iPhone 3G S? Here’s something that should occupy you for a few minutes while you wait: A side-by-side-by-side-by-side comparison of four iterations of iPhones going through various speed tests, performed by Pali Research analyst Walt Piecyk.
One unexpected result from the test Piecyk’s tests suggest that older iPhones running on the new iPhone operating system may actually be a bit slower. And yes, I checked with Piecyk–the tests were performed using AT&T (T)’s network, with Wi-Fi turned off, in midtown Manhattan.
But wait! That’s not all! Piecyk also puts the Palm Pre through its paces against the new iPhone and says (pretty hard to tell on this clip) that the Palm (PALM) phone offers a better version of clips from Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. Piecyk’s thesis: Sprint (S) is sending a less compressed version of the YouTube files to the Pre then AT&T sends to the iPhone.
Comments
Peter,
It is Palm Prē and not Palm Pre.
,dave
Posted by Dave Barnes at June 19th, 2009 at 8:06 pmGrammar Nazi
Even though I believe Piecyk when he says the quality of YouTube on the Pre is better, his video comparing YouTube quality between the two phones, as it was shot, doesn’t illustrate this–it seems to show the iPhone with better YouTube picture quality–better contrast and detail, even accounting for the awful focusing job he did. The quality of his video is so bad that I don’t know why he released it, and why it was posted. It’s out of focus, apparently shot with a cellphone camera without auto-focus, and the light exposure between the two phones is mismatched because he has the brightness turned up on the Pre (and/or the brightness turned down on the iPhone), making the Pre’s image over-exposed. Also, the picture on the Pre is larger, because Piecyk didn’t expand the picture on the iPhone to maximum size.
Posted by John Sawyer at June 20th, 2009 at 6:19 amWhile the first video adequately shows the differences in speed between the four iPhone iterations, someone needs to teach Piecyk how to shoot a video. As with his video in which he tries to show the difference in YouTube picture quality between the new iPhone and the Palm Pre, he hasn’t bothered to make the brightness on each phone equal, or set their display dimming timeout to maximum, so each iPhone’s display’s brightness goes up and down independently during the video, not in sync with his camera phone’s exposure control. During much of the video, the iPhone 2G’s display is too bright to make out much detail. Also, for a couple of his timing tests that don’t depend on 2G/3G download speed difference, the differences in raw app load time seem to about equal to the differences in time it takes for each of his assistants to press the icons. Though it may be obvious to some people, he doesn’t mention that the 2G’s much slower speed for some tasks, occurs not so much due to some difference in processing power, but only when it’s downloading something over its slower data connection (in other words, it’s not 3G speed–it’s using its EDGE connection).
Posted by John Sawyer at June 20th, 2009 at 6:40 amDoes anyone know how to fix videos that the new iPhone does not play correctly? I have many videos that have played wonderfully for the past 18 months and now Apple has destroyed my videos and I need to know what to do to correct their error.
Thanks
Posted by George Mizzell at June 20th, 2009 at 8:17 pmhey George
strange your videos wont work.
i copied mine from my ipod to my new iphone and they worked ok.
check the error msg you get when you try and add them to your phone.
its either your accounts not being recognized, or maybe the files to sync them are not configured?
good luck.
Posted by mike diaz at June 22nd, 2009 at 12:40 am