Actual performance difference between the different devices

[TheBuilder]

I know that specs and such have been discussed earlier on the forum, but I want to know a bit about actual performance on the different devices.

We plan to release our game on all of the iDevices that is supported by UDK, but we do not have access to all of them for testing purposes. Up till now, we have only been testing on iPhone 4 (and therefore optimize for it), but will try to get a hand on as many other devices as possible before release.

I just want to hear if somebody who own multiple devices can tell a bit how they actually perform compared to each other, preferably in relation to iPhone4. Do we have to expect the FPS to be much lower on the 3GS? I know the specs are lower, but on the other side the resolution is lower and should therefore require less power.

Other things we want to know is if we can assume the game works on a certain device without testing, provided it work on a certain other device. For example, will a game that works well on iPad1 and iPad 3 work well on iPad2? (we are not sure if we are able to get our hands on it)

[Davision]

What i think you should now worry more about is the ram. The iphone 4 has 512mb ram while the ipod4, ipad1 and iphone 3gs have only 256mb ram. It could be that your game crashes on these devices if a map is too big or the textures are too big.
The 3gs has of course also a worse cpu. The lower resolution will only matter really if your game is gpu bound, which it is most likely not. You could just try your game on your iphone 4 with setting the resolution in the ini like the 3gs and then see if the performance improves. I would just not support the 3gs since most iphone users have already upgraded their devices.
The cpu and gpu wise the ipod4 iphone4 and ipad1 are very similiar, so if it works fine on one of these you should be fine for all devices except the 3gs of course. What you should still worry about though are the menus, buttons and UI. That they work fine with all the different screen sizes and resolutions.

[TheBuilder]

Thanks for the information. GUI stuff are no problem as you can emulate the different resolution in the mobile previewer. The same goes for most features disabled on certain devices.

[Davision]

Thanks for the information. GUI stuff are no problem as you can emulate the different resolution in the mobile previewer. The same goes for most features disabled on certain devices.

yea but you still might want to try your controls with the different screen size of the ipad since it can feel much different.

[XilenceX]

I would just not support the 3gs since most iphone users have already upgraded their devices.
The cpu and gpu wise the ipod4 iphone4 and ipad1 are very similiar, so if it works fine on one of these you should be fine for all devices except the 3gs of course. What you should still worry about though are the menus, buttons and UI. That they work fine with all the different screen sizes and resolutions.

hmm so does that mean the 3GS is a weaker device than iPod4? I might indeed remove support for it then since I will only be testing on my iPod4. For the UI I plan to use SimpleExtended HUD script from hourences.com. This allows for "relative" display sizes and positions of the elemets. So if I understood it correctly they will allways use up the same ammount of the screen and be at the same positon regardless of the resolution. I tested the settings in mobile previewer and it worked like a charm.

[order66]

hmm so does that mean the 3GS is a weaker device than iPod4? I might indeed remove support for it then since I will only be testing on my iPod4. For the UI I plan to use SimpleExtended HUD script from hourences.com. This allows for "relative" display sizes and positions of the elemets. So if I understood it correctly they will allways use up the same ammount of the screen and be at the same positon regardless of the resolution. I tested the settings in mobile previewer and it worked like a charm.

I don't think that this is the best solution. If the elements seem to fit on the iPhone they seem quite big on the iPad. So I would say, that the relative size on iPad should be smaller than on iPhone/iPod.

I highly recommend to actually test it on an iPad!