Ever since Android started to take off, there have been countless different smartphones released all over the world, from all kinds of different manufacturers and brands. Some releases get more attention than others, but whenever a new Android device is put through its paces in a review or YouTube video, it’s often benchmarked. There are a number of different benchmark suites available for Android, including the likes of AnTuTu, Geekbench, PCMark, 3DMark and a whole lot more. We use a variety of them in our own device reviews and while they can’t tell you much about the real world performance of a smartphone, they do a good job of letting you know what the hardware is at least capable and roughly where something stands on the totem pole. Now, the popular Geekbench has reached version 4 on Android.
A cross-platform benchmarking suite, Geekbench includes separate tests for both CPU and GPU benchmarking, and while it’s not the most feature-rich benchmarking app on Android, it does a lot to get the job done. In version 4, not much appears to have changed, and it seems as though the leap from 3 to 4 is more about updating things than it is adding anything revolutionary. Over on their blog, Geekbench tell us that version 3 was released back in 2013, and back then the average smartphone was a 32-bit affair, and around 512MB of RAM. Three years on and we’re looking at devices with as much as 6GB of RAM, with 64-bit processors the norm even in the lower-end segment of the market. As such, the team have updated the CPU and GPU benchmarks that Geekbench uses on Android. Including the addition of common codebases such as SQLite, which are often found in everyday apps used by billions of us every day.
Available on Windows, MacOS, Linux and even iOS, Geekbench 4 is one of the few truly cross-platform benchmarking apps out there, and while it’s not all that exciting, it’s good to see that it’s finally been updated. Geekbench say that the new version will put more stress on the CPU inside of our smartphones, and give us a better idea of how strong a performer said device really is. If you’ve yet to use Geekbench, or haven’t tried out your shiny new smartphone, clicking the button below will take you to the Play Store listing.
