Fastest android phones

In the early days of Android, most devices featured the same 528 MHz ARM11 Qualcomm processor and their performance levels were pretty comparable. It was not until Verizon launched the Motorola Droid that we began to see the next generation of chipsets being used, which offered new features like enhanced graphics processors.

Fast forward to today and we now have three major chipsets being used in high-end Android phones. HTC is using the Qualcomm Snapdragon, while Motorola has chosen the Texas Instruments OMAP, and Samsung has designed their own Hummingbird chipset.

All of these processors are based off a similar ARM Cortex-A8 architecture, but each one has been tweaked to offer unique features.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon was the first chipset to bring 1 GHz speeds to Android, but it has the slowest GPU of the three. We have measured this in graphics benchmarks and it has the lowest performance in 3D games (when compared to other 1 GHz chipsets). Qualcomm is hard at work producing a dual-CPU Snapdragon, but no products that use the new chipset have been announced.

Samsung and Texas Instruments have a step up on Qualcomm because they just released their own 1 GHz processors which are based on a 45nm process and utilize faster PowerVR graphics processors from Imagination Technology.

To summarize, the three high-end chipsets being used in Android phones are:

Qualcomm: 1 GHz 65nm Cortex-A8 + Adreno GPU

Texas Instruments: 1 GHz 45nm Cortex-A8 + PowerVR SGX530

Samsung: 1 GHz 45nm Cortex-A8 + PowerVR SGX540

So which Android phones perform the fastest? I wish there was a simple answer, but it depends on a variety of factors including display resolutions, memory, and the version of Android that is installed.

To get a better idea of how the different phones stack up, one turn to Quadrant Professional from Aurora Softworks. A free version of this benchmark was available on the Android Market, but the new versions are only found at alternative app-store SlideME.

The phones that have the software today include:

HTC Magic (CM6 RC1) – 528 MHz Qualcomm MSM7200

Motorola Droid – 550 MHz OMAP3430

HTC EVO – 1 GHz Snapdragon QSD8650

HTC Nexus One (Android 2.2) – 1 GHz Snapdragon QSD8250

Samsung Captivate – 1 GHz Hummingbird S5PC110

Motorola Droid X – 1 GHz OMAP3640

All phones are running unmodified versions of the firmware, except for the HTC Magic which has CyanogenMod 6 installed

cpu test: 

memory test:

i/o tests:

graphics test:

final comparisions/scores:

conclusions:
nexus one is at its top unbeatable, so it is the best android one can buy.