Samsung Galaxy S4 Active Processor Benchmark Tests Revealed

Samsung recently announced a tougher and durable variant of its flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4, which is touted as the Galaxy S4 Active. The S4 Active packs the same processor configuration that is found in the LTE variant of Galaxy S4 (GT-I9505) including Snapdragon 600 chipset with quad-core Krait 300 processor (clocked at 1.9GHz), 2GB of RAM and Adreno 320 GPU.

In recent processor benchmark tests conducted by GSMArena, the S4 Active battles for supremacy against its elder siblings Galaxy S4 GT-I9500 (Exynos 5 Octa) and Galaxy S4 GT-I9505 (Snapdragon 600) as well as its nearest rivals HTC One, Sony Xperia Z and LG Optimus G Pro. Given the identical specifications of S4 Active and Galaxy S4 I9505, it is expected to be a close contest between the two smartphones with a few surprises considering a slender margin of error.

Benchmark Pi

Benchmark Pi puts the S4 Active single-thread performance (130 points) on par with its elder siblings, the S4 I9500 (132 points) and S4 I9505 (132 points), to achieve the top ranking. In other words, the S4 Active's quad-core Krait 300 processor clocks higher than its competition including HTC One which runs quad-core 1.7GHz (151 points), Sony Xperia Z with quad-core 1.5GHz (264 points), LG Optimus G Pro running quad-core 1.7GHz (147 points) and several others. The rankings are based on lower to higher points (lower is better).

Linpack

The Galaxy S4 Active once again proves to be the winner in the Linpack test with a score of 818 points, which is about 4% better than its competitors and way ahead of its rivals. LG Optimus G Pro finishes at the fourth position with 743 points, while HTC One and Sony Xperia Z take the fifth and sixth positions respectively. The rankings fall from higher to lower points (higher is better).

Geekbench 2

Geekbench 2 also reveals a similar score as the Linpack test with a marginal difference of 5% among the Galaxy S4 siblings. Galaxy S4 (Octa) takes the top ranking (3324 points) followed by the Galaxy S4 Snapdragon 600 (3227 points) and the S4 Active finishes third with a score of 3046 points. LG Optimus G Pro, HTC One and Sony Xperia Z retain their positions at the fourth, fifth and sixth spots respectively. The rankings are given from higher to lower (higher is better).

Both Geekbench 2 and Linpack tests evaluate the processor performance across single and multithreaded benchmarks, wherein the S4 Active proves to be one of the fastest handsets in the market.

AnTuTu and Quadrant

In AnTuTu and Quadrant benchmarks, the Galaxy S4 Active performs lower than the regular Galaxy S4 variants and finishes at the fourth (21363 points) and fifth positions (11346 points) respectively. No surprises here, as the Galaxy S4 (Octa) and Galaxy S4 (Snapdragon 600) take the first and second positions respectively in both the benchmarks, owing to their better optimised firmware. Galaxy S4 (Octa) scores 26275 points (AnTuTu) and 12446 points (Quadrant), while its Snapdragon 600 variant secures 24716 points (AnTuTu) and 12376 points (Quadrant) respectively.

HTC One records a score of 22678 points in AnTuTu to secure the third place, while the Xperia Z takes the fifth place with 20794 points.

In the quadrant benchmark, however, the LG Optimus G Pro beats both the HTC One and S4 Active with a score of 12105 points, while the Xperia Z finishes sixth with 8075 points.

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt and GLBenchmark 2.7 T-Rex (1080p off-screen mode)

GLBenchmark 2.5 and 2.7 also favour the S4 Active, despite the fact that the test was run in 1080p off-screen mode to provide a level-headed platform for non-1080p devices. Running at the native full HD (1080p) resolution, the Galaxy S4 Active performs on par with its siblings on the GLBenchmark 2.5 version with a marginal 1fps difference in 2.7.

In other words, the S4 Active levels the score with S4 Snapdragon 600 (placed second) and secures the third spot with 41 frames per second (fps), while the S4 Exynos 5 Octa secures the top position with a score of 43fps in GLBenchmark 2.5. However, the GLBenchmark 2.7 puts both the regular Galaxy S4 variants in the top position with 17.1fps, while the Apple iPad 4 is ahead of the S4 Active (16fps) with a marginal 0.8fps difference at 16.8fps.

Running the latest mobile games on the S4 Active should pose no challenge as the handset reportedly scores close to 60fps in the Epic Citadel processor-gaming benchmark test, which runs on popular Unreal Engine 3. Overall, the S4 Active secures the second place (with an average of 57.5fps) behind Galaxy S4 Octa in the gaming test.

SunSpider, BrowserMark 2 and Vellamo

Quite surprisingly, the Galaxy S4 Active performed below par in the JavaScript performance benchmark via SunSpider, as it finished at the eleventh position behind HTC One (1124) with 1196 points. As expected, the regular Galaxy S4 (Octa and Snapdragon 600) variants topped the rankings with 804 and 810 points respectively.

In contrast, the Active's BrowserMark score shows a difference within 5% of the regular S4 score. In other words, LG Optimus G Pro secures the top ranking in this test with a score of 2555 points followed by Galaxy S4 Snapdragon 600 (2438) at the second place, while the S4 Active finishes third at 2338 points.

Finally, the Vellamo benchmark puts the smartphones through a series of web tests, wherein the Galaxy Note 2 emerged the surprise winner with a high score of 2418 points. HTC One takes the second spot (2382) and Sony Xperia Z finishes third (2189), while the S4 Active secures the seventh position (1936) behind the regular Galaxy S4 variants. The high ranking for Galaxy Note 2 must be taken with a pinch of salt, as the device has to render pages only at 720p instead of regular 1080p, unlike the S4 variants.