That silly Galaxy Note7 vs. iPhone 6S speed test is meaningless

Sorry nerds, but the days of claiming "Phone X" dramatically smoking "Phone Z" are over.

Nobody cares which phone has a faster clock speed or more cores or more RAM. Speeds and feeds haven't mattered in years. 

SEE ALSO: No, the Samsung Galaxy Note7 doesn't 'need' to be cheaper than iPhone

Phones are now fast enough to do all of the daily tasks like web browsing, messaging, email, playing music, taking photos, playing games, etc., that a speed test only tells one increasingly meaningless part of the user-experience story.

There's a speed test video from Phonebuff making the rounds that pits Samsung's new Galaxy Note7 and the iPhone 6S in an app-launching race.

Fourteen apps are loaded in order and the iPhone 6S takes the lead and finishes in about 40 seconds faster on the first trial and and almost a full minute on the second run.

Yawnnnn. 

Naturally, the tech press latched onto it and iPhone fans went back to banging their chests with "proof" the iPhone 6S is better than even the best Android smartphone.

Uh... no.

Apples and oranges

Comparing Android to iOS is and always will be like comparing apples to oranges. Sure, the Note7 and iPhone 6S are both touchscreen smartphones, but like fruits, they're different inside.

iOS has and likely will always be knit tighter with its hardware than Samsung, or any other Android brand, will be.

One of the real advantages of iOS is that it can do more with less. Hence why the iPhone 6S only has 2GB of RAM while most other flagship phones have 3-4GB (some even have 6GB like the OnePlus 3). iOS is optimized to be both performance- and energy-efficient in ways Android isn't.

Likewise, Android is optimized in ways iOS isn't. Apple only needs to make its software work for a handful of new iPhones (and their predecessors), whereas Android needs to be be configured to work with hundreds of devices from an unnameable number of manufacturers.

None of this gets into how skewed the test is to begin with.

Different OSes aside, the Note7 is tasked with handling more. Its screen has more pixels to push and Samsung's handy edge panels are working on the sidelines. Even little things like the speed of animations can impact these speed tests.

Not to mention the order in which the apps are launched and which apps are opened matters just as well.

In Phonebuff's speed test, they open four apps native apps (Clock, Camera, Gallery/Photos and Settings). The other ten are third-party apps. I downloaded seven of these apps and ran my own speed tests and the speed differences varied greatly depending on the order I launched them. Phonebuff chose to go launch a graphic-intensive app like Asphalt 8: Airborne towards the beginning and that slowed everything else down.

As you can see in my speed test below, there is a lag between the time it takes to launch an app on the Note7 compared to on the iPhone 6S Plus.

Whether this is intentional or not is subjective. The animation time difference that Apple thinks is best for an optimal user experience is different from Samsung's.

Yes, the Note7 is slower in some cases — it really depends on the app — but for common day-to-day usage (messaging, email, web browsing, social media, etc.), the actual perceivable differences are negligible.

Meaningful features

This test isn't representative of real daily usage. Nobody's sitting there loading apps all day long one after another.

As Mashable Chief Correspondent Lance Ulanoff said during this week's MashTalk on Facebook Live, there are a million different variables that could affect these kinds of tests:

A speed test puts a phone into perspective so we know where it slots in compared to other phones, but it's not the be-all and end-all.

Features like water-resistance and fast charging and fast wireless charging and expandable storage and the S Pen and the GIF maker and the Edge panel shortcuts all add up to real added value for users.

Who cares if the iPhone can launch apps faster if it falls into the toilet and can't be saved? Call me when I can go for a swim with it.