PerformanceTest Mobile 1.1.0

You can’t find many apps in the iTunes Store that don’t require at least iOS 4 to be able to use them. Some, however, have remained compatible even with the ancient iOS 3 to this day, allowing even the last living owner of an iPhone 2G to employ them.

From the days of iOS 3

PerformanceTest Mobile may not look very up-to-speed, but it’s got a good-enough UI to convey its purpose. It’s a benchmarking tool that strains your hardware a little to churn out some numbers. The numbers tell you how fast or how slow of a computing machine you have on your hands. It gives you an overview of the hardware-to-test, complete with some nice icons, and then displays the areas-to-test.

Unfortunately if you run it on anything with a 4-inch display it will show two dark stripes at the top and bottom of the screen. That’s because the app still lives in the iOS 3 era when Apple’s entire lineup of iDevices had 3.5-inch screens. It’s really a shame that such a good tool has been left unattended for so long. Surprisingly, PassMark Software did bother to create an iPad-optimized version.

Selective benchmarking

PerformanceTest Mobile gives you the ability to run a full-blown benchmark automatically, or test each hardware part on its own. You can’t find many benchmark tools that do this.

You can take the Integer Math for a spin, test the floating point, find prime numbers, sort random strings, check data encryption and compression, all in good time. Then you can check storage write and read, then memory write and read individually.

Finally, you have the 2D graphics test, broken down by various aspects, such as solid vectors, transparent vectors, complex vectors, image rendering, image filters, etc. The 3D test is divided by Simple and Complex and displays 3D animations of objects moving in space.

Like with most benchmark apps, you can share your results online and compare your numbers with other people’s results.

Add to watchlist:

System infoBenchmark

• System Status Lite 5.2.2
• Relative Benchmark 2.45
• SYS Activity Manager 5.0
• AnTuTu Benchmark 5.2.0
• Bonsai Benchmark 1.0.0