When comparing phones don't forget the laws of physics. For example there must be a reason why nobody has put even a quad core processor in a 4" device. While most of us geeks like huge screens, there are many people that reject most phones as too big right away, and the very rapid increase of screens the last two years doesn't help (not enough people around carry 5" inch phones to make it feel less ridiculous) so Apple decided to stay at 4", and probably was forced to choose a dual-core due to heat/size/battery. Look at the GS3 mini which obviously is targeted exactly to the people wanting a not-so-huge highend phone, it's dual-core with a not so high GHz count. I bet that Samsung crammed the best processor they could in that phone. (I suppose that's why the Note always had a bit higher clocked processor than the equivalent GS)

So saying that the SoC of the iPhone isn't impressive might be unfair for Apple as it would be unfair for Samsung to say SoC isn't impressive because the i7 in my ultrabook is faster.