The iPhone is a fully fledged computer in it’s right, but how does it compare against “real” computers?
The Key components in the original iPhone are:
- ARM1176JZF with TrustZone, with a clock at perhaps 600 MHz
- ARM Intelligent Energy Manager
- 16-kbyte/16-kbyte code/data cache
- Vector floating point coprocessor
- ARM Jazelle-enabled for embedded-Java execution
- SIMD high performance integer CPU with an eight-stage pipeline, capable of 675 Dhrystones/sec and 2.1 MIPS
- 0.45 mW/MHz power draw (with cache)
According to the Dhrystone Benchmark results from Roy Longbottom’s PC benchmark collection, that’s somewhere between a Pentium II (300 Mhz) & a AMD K62 (500 Mhz). Â But of course, the iPhone 3GS is more powerful and faster…
Wikipedia lists the MIPS for the ARM6 (in the regular iPhone) as being
740 MIPSÂ 
532-665 MHz and the ARM7 (in the iPhone GS) at being 2000
MIPS at 600 MHz. However, I believe Apple underclocks the chip speed
to just 400 Mhz, so I’ll assume a 1257 MIPS rate.
So, a 933 Mhz G4 would be about 2200 MIPS vs. 1250 MIPS for the iPhone
3GS . Â So, if we take the MIPS/Mhz equation the other way, a G4 running at
534 Mhz would be around as fast a processor as the iPhone 3GS. The
original Power Macs G4 were 400Mhz, 450Mhz, and 500Mhz in 1999. That
would make your iPhone pretty much the equivalent of the top of the
line 1999 Power Mac G4.
And, the Power Mac G4 came with 256Mb of memory (compatible with the
iPhone 3GS) and only a 10Gb to 27Gb hard drive, so a 32Gb iPhone would
contain a lot more space.  So, the iPhone 3GS is pretty much equivalent to a ten year old, top of the line Macintosh computer.