iPhone XR Benchmarks: Fast Like iPhone XS But with Better Battery Life

Looking at performance benchmarks for the new iPhone XR, it becomes clear that the cheapest new iPhone of 2018 is every bit as fast as the flagship iPhone XS / XS Max featuring the same A12 Bionic processor running the same speeds, albeit with a better battery life due to a much lower-resolution LCD display (via MacWorld). 

When the iPhone XR’s Geekbench 4 results are compared with that of the XS and XS Max, as well as last year’s iPhone X and the iPhone 7 Plus from two years back, the device is found to offer 13% faster single-core performance than the iPhone X, and about 10% faster multi-core performance. In the GPU-powered Compute benchmark, the performance is about 40% faster. 

Similar results are seen with AnTuTu and 3DMark benchmarks showing identical GPU and 3D graphics performance on the iPhone XR as the XS and XS Max. However, things get quite interesting in the battery performance tests.

When comparing the iPhone XS to the iPhone XS Max, the battery life considerations were relatively simple. The end result is that the iPhone XS Max lasts for about an hour more screen-on time than the iPhone XS. The iPhone XR is a different matter. 

In this test, the iPhone XR ran 19 minutes longer than the iPhone XS Max, and more than an hour longer than the iPhone XS. In a real-world scenario (i.e. not running benchmarks nonstop), that will likely translate into about 30-45 minutes more screen-on time than the iPhone XS Max and two hours more than the iPhone XS, depending on how you use your phone. The iPhone XR holds a charge better than any other iPhone ever made.

It seems that unlike when Apple released the iPhone 5c, this year’s cheapest iPhone model makes no compromises on performance or battery life.