Nokia N95 fails to grasp the top benchmark — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{N93 has still the best acceleration} Nokia N95 fails to grasp the top benchmark

Bigger is better. Nokia N93 is bigger and older than Nokia N95 but it has stronger 3D and system performance.

7 May 2007 at 09:30 GMT Timo Poropudas

November 2006 Futuremark-MobileMonday test story claimed: “The Nokia N93 is the world’s best mobile phone platform.” This seems still to be true even if Nokia’s new, much acclaimed N95 was included in new test batch.

Nokia N93 and N95 use the same hardware platform base with 3D hardware acceleration.

“These phones represent ultimate performance in 3D graphics. Nokia E90 will follow the same path,” say Petri Talala, who heads the mobile division of Futuremark.

N95 and N93 have the test scores that are close to each other. N93, however, gets the best marks. The pair is a way ahead of several other Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones that use the Symbian 9 operating version.

Talala says that Sony Ericsson M600i and P990i use the same hardware platform base also with 3D HW acceleration, but Nokia seems to have more powerful 3D hardware acceleration than to SonyEricsson.

"3D hardware acceleration brings also clear benefits in system tests even if the difference is not as dramatic as in 3D graphics."

"Personally I was a bit surprised that N93 beats N95," Talala said.

The test results from November and May are not directly comparable since different test were used.

Best performing

The claim about the world’s best mobile phone is limited only to those qualities that the test measures. Such important features as size, weight, memory, ergonomics, picture and sound quality, or unique features - such as GPS-receiver – are not considered in this comparison. Yet, the Futuremark SPMark for Symbian OS v9 evaluates the basic capabilities of a Symbian phone, the ability of the phone platform to run the applications that make the phone work.

What was tested

Futuremark SPMark for Symbian OS v9 is focused on high-end capabilities of Symbian phone. It measures the ability and speed to calculate and draw 3D images and general system capability.

SPmark Score is a single figure that combines all the test scores. It enables to compare phones in a simple and straightforward way.

3D score is a combination of three different tests: 3D Game, 3D FillRate and 3D PolyCount.

The system score is a combination of six different tests: 2D Image, Image Scaling, JPEG Encoding, Contacts, Calendar and Disk Access.

A detailed description how the tests are run and how the scores are combined can be found in the Futuremark Whitepaper by Sami Niemelä.

Nokia N93 is still the tops in the graphics comparison
Bigger score is better
Phone model	N93	N95	N80	E50	SE M600i	SE P990i
SPMark Score, 1)	5362	4881.2	1754	2025	2152	1757
3D Score, 2)	9061	6825.0	865	1052	2496	1131
System Score, 3)	2205	2196.8	1368	1532	1208	1226

Details: 3D Performance
3D Game	84.6	70.8	7.1	10.1	28.29	26.03
3D FillRate	40.8	27.0	2.9	3.1	18.33	2.86
3D PolyCount	695.6	552.2	89.1	107.5	46.38	47.55

System Tests
2D Image, 4)	64.2	64.2	64.2	64.2	64.24	64.21
Image Scaling, 5)	6.1	7.4	3.6	3.9	3.25	3.32
JPEG Encoding, 6)	1221.2	1189.4	624.1	761.5	277.35	289.9
Contacts, 7)	11.8	10.4	7.5	8.1	6.16	6.75
Calender, 8)	7.7	8.0	3.5	4.7	4.18	4.23
Disk Access, 9)	34.9	31.5	23.7	23.8	27.59	25.63

Source: Futuremark. 1) Overall Score of Performance, 2) Overall 3D Performance Score,
3) Overall System level Performance Score (basic usefulness score),
4) Performance of 2D Image Drawing Operations,
5) Performance of Image Scaling Operations,
6) Performance of Image Covertion/Encoding Operations,
7) Basic Contacts Application Test from Performance/Usefullness point of view,
8) Basic Calender Application Test from Performance,

9) Performance of memory (file open/save/delete) operations