A new type of smartphone face-off has become increasingly popular over the past couple years. In an effort to measure real-world performance, YouTube vloggers have devised an unscientific test that compares the speeds of two phones. In a nutshell, they have a preset list of apps that they open in succession once to see how quickly a smartphone loads the apps. Then, they open all the apps again in the same order to see how quickly a smartphone can recall them from memory.
Ever since this new breed of smartphone speed tests emerged, one line of devices has been unbeatable. Despite seemingly never quite measuring up on paper in terms of specs, Apple’s iPhones continued to trounce any and all Android comers. But now, for the first time ever, an Android phone has finally topped Apple’s latest iPhone to steal the crown and become the fastest phone in the world.
We typically try not to spoil the ending when we post about these real-world speed tests, though in the past the ending has always been obvious. Regardless of which new Android flagship phone faces off with the iPhone, it always ends up getting embarrassed. In fact, we’ve even seen brand new Android powerhouses lose to previous-generation iPhone models in the past.
On Tuesday evening, however, the unthinkable finally happened. Apple’s latest iPhone model, the iPhone 7 Plus, was pitted against the just-released OnePlus 5 in one of these real world speed tests. The race was a close one. While the iPhone 7 Plus was able to win the first “lap,” albeit narrowly, the OnePlus 5 and its whopping 8GB of RAM blew past Apple’s iPhone while recalling apps from memory in the second lap. In the end, the OnePlus 5 took the crown.
It might be considered a cruel twist of fate that the Android phone to finally supplant Apple’s iPhone as the world’s fastest phone is a handset that copied the iPhone 7 Plus so blatantly, both inside and out. We suppose that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. The full speed test video is embedded below.
