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Early iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro AnTuTu benchmarks are at odds with Apple's performance claims for the A14 Bionic

The A24 Bionic is well off being a 50% improvement on other smartphone chipsets, currently. (Image source: Apple)
The A24 Bionic is well off being a 50% improvement on other smartphone chipsets, currently. (Image source: Apple)
More benchmarks of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro have appeared online, this time on AnTuTu. CPU scores of the A14 Bionic look good, but initial GPU scores are rather underwhelming, especially compared to the likes of the Snapdragon 865.
Apple iPhone Smartphone

AnTuTu has released its initial benchmark results for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro, and they make for interesting reading. Published on Weibo, the results do not paint the A14 Bionic in a good light. While Geekbench offers an insight into CPU performance, AnTuTu also measures the power of the GPU in the A14 Bionic, pitting it against the likes of the Adreno 650 in the Snapdragon 865 and Snapdragon 865+.

AnTuTu points to a 20% CPU improvement for the A14 Bionic from last year's A13 Bionic, which is comparable to what we have seen in Geekbench. At first, Geekbench presented worse multi-core performance for the iPhone 12 Pro, but subsequent results have shown that the A14 Bionic is scoring around 20% more than the A13 Bionic in multi-core work too.

(Image source: AnTuTu)
(Image source: AnTuTu)

Oddly, the GPU scores of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro are down on the scores for the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro in AnTuTu's official rankings. Their scores of 201,085 and 196,812 are in line with our average scores of the A13 Bionic in the same benchmark, but the iPhone 11 Pro officially scores 215,338 according to AnTuTu. Similarly, practically every Snapdragon 865-powered device in the AnTuTu leaderboard as the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro beat on GPU performance.

Unsurprisingly, the 6 GB of RAM of the iPhone 12 Pro allows it to outperform its predecessor by a margin in the MEM and UX benchmarks. Nonetheless, initial benchmarks suggest that the A14 Bionic is not quite the 50% improvement over competing smartphone chipsets that Apple claims it is.

Apple claims that the A14 Bionic offers 50% better performance than competing smartphone chips. (Image source: Apple)
Apple claims that the A14 Bionic offers 50% better performance than competing smartphone chips. (Image source: Apple)

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2020 10 > Early iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro AnTuTu benchmarks are at odds with Apple's performance claims for the A14 Bionic
Alex Alderson, 2020-10-15 (Update: 2020-10-15)