Since we have an LG G2 unit in the office and are working on the complete review, we have run some synthetic benchmark numbers to see where it stand in the overall mobile hardware landscape. Note that this is not using the final firmware, so the numbers may change by the time the phone is released on American networks. Ready? Here they are:
Antutu is an overall system benchmark that tries to measure a little bit of everything, although it is somewhat biased towards multi-core CPUs since it scales to well with additional cores. What we’re seeing here is that the LG G2 falls relatively close to the Qualcomm reference Snapdragon 800 development device. This is to be expected, and there are no surprises here. The NVIDIA Shield comes at the top, but don’t forget that it has a thermal environment that is much friendlier (that’s a big device with cooling vents).
Geekbench 2 focuses more on CPU speed. As you can see, there is a very tight group that clearly raises above anything that came before, and if you think of it, the Snapdragon 600 of the GS4 was only released about 6 months ago. This basically means that math operations and things like that are world-class for a mobile.
GLBenchmark 2.5 shows something interesting: there is a big of a divergence between the LG G2 and the reference Snapdragon development kit. I’m not sure why, and it could very well be a software thing that would be fixed in the future, but we will keep an eye on this. Hopefully this is not due to a particular thermal constraint due to the relatively small design package and the big battery.
Note that GLBenchmark 2.5 is very “polygon heavy” and does not (in my opinion) represent current Android games, but again this is just one of many performance indicators that the hardware will be judged by.
Conclusion
The LG G2 is 25% to 50% faster than the LG Optimus G Pro and in terms of synthetic performance, Snapdragon 800 is a good upgrade over the 600, so we expect smartphone “enthusiasts” to opt for the latest hardware platform as new phones come out (or are announced) in the next 30 days. September is going to be quite exciting.
Keep in mind that while synthetic benchmarks are very interesting and exciting to look at, they don’t always represent how the user “perceives” performance. There are many other factors at play, including potential user-interface lag, network responsiveness, storage speed (app loading), etc. Stay tuned for our full review of the LG G2. In the meantime, did you read our initial hands-on preview of the G2?
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