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iPhone 8, iPhone X vs Android flagships: Speed tests say it's not even close

Apple's new A11 Bionic chip is by far the highest-performing system on the market.
Written by Liam Tung, Contributing Writer
geekbenchiosmulti.jpg

The iPhone 8 Plus leads on the multicore benchmark, followed closely by the iPhone 8 and iPhone X.

Image: Geekbench, Primate Labs

Apple's A11 Bionic system on chip (SoC) makes the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X by far the highest-performing smartphones available today, according to Geekbench results.

As Apple boasted when unveiling its 64-bit, six-core A11 Bionic, the new SoC would blow away the performance of the A10, which powers the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

That claim has now been confirmed in official results for the A11's performance on Primate Labs' Geekbench iOS benchmarks, which were updated today with official measurements for the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X, which were probably submitted by reviewers.

There's a minor difference in single-core and multicore performance between the three new iPhones, but all three have a massive lead over top-performing Android phones, which are led by Samsung's Galaxy S8 with either its own Exynos octa-core chip or Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835, and Huawei's Honor V9 with its HiSilicon Kirin 960.

geekbenchandroidmulti.jpg

The three new iPhones all have a massive lead over top-performing Android phones, which are led by Samsung's Galaxy S8, here in the multicore test.

Image: Geekbench, Primate Labs

The iOS single-core benchmark shows that the iPhone X, iPhone 8, and iPhone 8 Plus, have scores between 4,204 and 4,181.

The iPhone 8 Plus leads on the multicore benchmark with a score of 10,078, followed closely by the iPhone 8 and iPhone X with scores of 10,065 and 9,955, respectively.

As noted by Apple Insider, a fair comparison is between the A10-powered iPhone 7 and A-11 powered iPhone 8, which share similar specs besides the chip.

The results indicate that the A11 is about 25 percent faster on the single-core test and 80 percent faster in a multicore comparison. And these benchmarks don't even account for the iPhone 8's new Apple-designed GPU, which Apple suggests gives the new iPhone a 30-percent performance lead in graphics over the A10's GPU.

Android benchmarks meanwhile top out at 1965 on a measure of single-core performance, while multicore scores don't exceed 6,494. The Galaxy S8 with Samsung's Exynos 8895 octa-core chip lead on both measures.

On single-core performance, the lowly iPhone SE with an A9 chip outranks Samsung's Galaxy S8 on Geekbench.

While Apple has carved out a long lead in performance with its chips, Samsung has focused on display technologies, such as the OLED screens in the Galaxy S8 and Note 8.

Screen benchmarking firm DisplayMate gave both devices an A+ in its tests, and recently found the Note 8's display to be the brightest on the market.

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