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Right. Once you hit a certain feature set (certain clock speed, core count, hardware shaders, minimum RAM, RAM speed, storage speed and capacity) everything after that becomes much smaller improvements. You won't see doublings of the numbers anymore, instead you'll see much smaller percentage increases that, while important in the long run, aren't going to impact users significantly.

Let's just look at the CPUs:

  1st gen: 412MHz,  1 core, 32-bit (under clocked)
  3G     : 412MHz,  1 core, 32-bit (under clocked)
  3GS    : 600MHz,  1 core, 32-bit (under clocked)
  4      : 800Mhz,  1 core, 32-bit (under clocked)
  4S     : 800MHz,  2 core, 32-bit (under clocked)
  5      : 1.3GHz,  2 core, 32-bit
  5S     : 1.3GHz,  2 core, 32-bit
  6      : 1.4GHz,  2 core, 64-bit
  6S     : 1.85GHz, 2 core, 64-bit
  7      : 2.34GHz, 2 core, 64-bit (4 cores, 2 used)
  8      : 2.39GHz, 6 core, 64-bit
  X      : 2.39GHz (2 cores) & 1.42GHz (4 cores), 6 cores, 64-bit
  XS     : 2.49GHz (2 cores) & 1.52GHz (4 cores), 6 cores, 64-bit
  11 Pro : 2.66GHz (2 cores) & 1.82GHz (4 cores), 6 cores, 64-bit
So you initially got some major bumps (0%, 50%, 33%, 50%) then it starts slowing down until the jump from 6S to 7 (about 33% again), then it's just creeping up each year. Core count makes a major jump from 7 to 8. But after the 8 there really is no major improvement in the CPU itself (with respect to these raw numbers) so most users won't see a major difference between them on that front.

(NB: I took these numbers from Wikipedia, I'm assuming I read them correctly as I just threw this together in a couple of minutes. There's probably a mistake or two, and I skipped some versions like 5C, XR, and 11.)



Emphasizing the RAM would also be nice, which jumped from 1GB to 2GB for the 6S.


Yes, but I got tired of making the tables :) I've pointed that out in some other comments, that was a massive jump and is probably a major reason the 6S is still supported.


Clock speed of the CPUs doesn't tell the tale here at all.

Geekbench does a far better job of capturing the massive improvement in Apple's CPUs in recent years. And the GPU improvements have been even larger.


I know, I just wanted to select one measure for this example, I had no desire to write a thesis on every aspect of improvement on the iPhones.


The 5S was 64 bit.


You are correct. I guess that was one of the details I got wrong. I think I'd clicked on the 5C page when I grabbed those numbers.




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