iPhone 5 performance tests

Ally's already given you a comprehensive accounting of how the new iPhone 5 and its Apple A6 processor score on Geekbench, HTML5, and Sunspider, so check that out before watching the video.

Devices are more than just numbers, however. How fast something is also represents how long it takes. We all only have a finite amount of time in our day and in our lives, and every second we spend waiting for our phone to boot or reboot, for an app or game to launch, or for a webpage to load, is time we can't spend on getting things done, or taking a much needed break.

So, in the video above Rene and I pit the 2012 iPhone 5 against the 2012 iPad 3, the 2011 iPhone 4S, and the 2010 iPhone 4 so you can not only read about but see the differences.

Spoilers: Overall, the iPhone 5 is a monster. It obliterates everything else in our tests. The iPad 3 actually did worse than we expected, but so much of its power, including its quad-core graphics enabled Apple A5X chipset is spent pushing pixels on that huge Retina display, it shouldn't really come as a surprise. The iPhone 4S held up extremely well. It can't beat with the iPhone 5, obviously, but it remains incredibly competitive. The iPhone 4 didn't do nearly as well. Like the iPad 3, it was the first Retina device in its class and again, a lot of its processor seems to go towards that, not leaving as much available for everything else.

Check out the video above, go over Ally's iPhone 5 benchmark results, and then let me know, how important is raw speed to your daily device usage? Do you always want the latest and the fastest, or are you happy when your tech stays competitive year after year?