Apple A13 and A14 Beat Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 in Benchmarks

Image: Qualcomm

With Qualcomm unable to send reference devices powered by the Snapdragon 888 — its latest System on a Chip (SoC) for upcoming flagship phones — to the media for independent benchmarking due to COVID-19, the company released benchmarks conducted in-house instead, reports AnandTech.

GeekBench 5

Image: AnandTech

The Snapdragon 888-powered reference device posted the best GeekBench 5 scores of any Android device to date, with a single-threaded score of 1,135 and a multi-threaded score of 3,794. The SoC showcased a 23.5% boost in performance as compared to its predecessor, the Snapdragon 865.

However, the chipset didn’t even come close to touching the scores of the Apple A13 Bionic-powered iPhone 11 Pro or the Apple A14 Bionic-powered iPhone 12 Pro, which sit pretty at scores of 1,331 and 3,366, and 1,603 and 4,187 respectively.

GFXBench

Image: AnandTech

GFXBench revealed the Snapdragon 888 as being a whopping 55% faster than any Snapdragon 865-powered device with an output of 86 frames per second (FPS). That said, the reference device fell short of even the 2nd Generation iPhone SE, leaving the members of the iPhone 11 lineup and the iPhone 12 lineup well out of its reach.

For the sake of accuracy, Qualcomm ran each benchmark at least three times, and published the results of all three runs.

While the Snapdragon 888 blows any Android device on the market right now straight out of the water, it is outperformed by both the latest and preceding generations of Apple’s mobile chipsets.

As things stand, Qualcomm doesn’t stand a chance at beating Apple in sheer performance. However, the Snapdragon 888’s one saving grace may be its power efficiency.

If Qualcomm has managed to reel in power consumption on the Snapdragon 888, sustained performance over a period of time, combined with the typically larger batteries of flagship Android phones, may give the chipset a slight edge over its competition. But that remains to be seen.