Despite the inclement weather, Google was still able to announce the new LG-made Nexus 4 handset yesterday, and like the Optimus G on which it is based, this new phone should be quite speedy. Both phones use a 1.5GHz quad-core version of Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 Pro (part number APQ8064) paired with an Adreno 320 GPU. To put that in context, the dual-core versions of the S4 routinely match or beat the quad-core Tegra 3 and Exynos 4 from NVIDIA and Samsung, respectively, so the quad-core version of the chip should be a real monster.

To explore just how fast the new Nexus phone will be, I asked our own Florence Ion to send me the benchmark results from the LG Optimus G she's currently reviewing. While there will be some subtle differences between the performance of the two phones—the Nexus is running Android 4.2, for example, while the Optimus G is still stuck on 4.0.4 for the time being—looking at how its non-Nexus cousin runs is going to tell us a lot about the latest Google-branded phone and whether it can stand up to the competition on both the iOS and Android sides of the fence.

Let's dive right into the benchmarks to see just what kind of performance these phones will be able to deliver.

The CPU

In the Sunspider test, the quad-core Snapdragon handily beats the other Android devices in the lineup and the A5X in Apple's third-generation iPad (and, by extension, the A5 chips in the iPad 2, iPad mini, iPhone 4S, and iPod touch). The combination of the A6 and mobile Safari's generally faster JavaScript engine help the iPhone 5 stay ahead, though. The story is slightly different for the Google Octane test, where the Optimus G bests the iPhone 5 but can't outscore the dual-core Snapdragon in the Galaxy SIII, possibly a sign that the Optimus G's extra CPU cores are going unused.

Moving on to our other CPU tests, Geekbench shows the Optimus G pulling ahead of the dual-core A5 in the number-crunching integer and floating point benchmarks but falling behind in the memory bandwidth tests. Memory bandwidth has long been a bottleneck for ARM chips (particularly those using Cortex A9 CPU cores, as we can see in the low iPad 3 and Nexus 7 scores), and its high memory and stream scores are probably what's helping the iPhone 5 outscore the competition in Linpack by such a ridiculous margin (the Optimus G can't beat the iPhone 5 here, but it does clobber the older Android devices).

The GPU

The quad-core version of the S4 also includes a beefed up Adreno 320 GPU, and its results are less ambiguous than our CPU tests—after years of playing second fiddle to the graphics performance in iOS devices, Android is beginning to catch up. In the GLBenchmark offscreen tests, which render the same scene at 1080p on all GPUs to put them on even footing, the Optimus G keeps pace with the A6 and A5X in the Egypt HD test but falls behind in the older Egypt Classic test. As we can see in the onscreen test, however, this discrepancy shouldn't affect games too much when played on the phone's 1280×768 display.

Conclusions

The Nexus 4 will wipe the floor with the Galaxy SIII and Nexus 7 in both CPU and GPU performance, and while it doesn't always beat the Apple A6 in the iPhone 5, it's always very close in synthetic benchmarks. Between the two, the iPhone's dual-core A6 may have the advantage in real-world performance, since not all apps will be able to take advantage of all four of the Snapdragon's CPU cores, but we need more real-world comparison time to say for certain. If you can get past the lack of LTE, the Nexus 4 (and by extension the Optimus G, which will give you LTE but take away the Nexus line's guaranteed updates) is easily the fastest Android handset you can buy today. Look for our full review of both the Nexus 4 and Optimus G in the coming weeks.

The GPU performance in particular is a good sign for Android devices—taken with the Nexus 10 tablet, which ships with a powerful Cortex A15-based Exynos 5 chip and a quad-core GPU, it shows an Android ecosystem that is finally beginning to take graphics performance as seriously as Apple's devices do. Expect our review of the Nexus 10 to go up next week, if Hurricane Sandy doesn't get in the way.