iPhone 18 Pro Obliterates Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra in Benchmarks

According to early lab testing and benchmark data from Tom’s Guide, the new iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max deliver unprecedented performance spikes thanks to the all-new A20 Pro processor.

As the smartphone industry’s first 2-nanometer processor, the A20 Pro widens the performance gap between Apple and top-tier Android competitors like the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. Beyond raw horsepower, major internal redesigns appear to have solved one of Apple’s longest-running performance bottlenecks: sustained thermal throttling.

While the exterior design of the iPhone 18 Pro line remains familiar, the internal layout has undergone a radical overhaul. Apple shifted away from traditional memory stacking, placing the RAM side-by-side with the main processor.

To complement this layout, Apple expanded the internal vapor chamber cooling system by three times compared to previous generations. This combination of tighter architectural integration and aggressive cooling allows the chip to run at higher speeds for significantly longer periods without overheating.

In standardized controlled testing—with display brightness locked to 150 nits over a 5G connection—the lab results were staggering across key metrics:

• Geekbench 6 CPU Speed: The iPhone 18 Pro posted a single-core score of over 4,700, representing a 25% performance jump over the iPhone 17 Pro. It outpaced Samsung’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 inside the Galaxy S26 Ultra by 25% in single-core and 10% in multi-core processing.
• 3DMark Solar Bay GPU Test: Powered by a new seven-core GPU, the iPhone 18 Pro Max reached 67.9 frames per second. That marks a 45% graphics leap over last year’s Pro Max and beats Samsung’s top flagship by 37%.
• Sustained Thermal Stability: In a demanding 20-loop stress test, the iPhone 18 Pro Max maintained a 79.4% stability score. This is a 25% improvement year-over-year and makes the device over 47% more thermally stable under continuous heavy loads than the Galaxy S26 Ultra.

The efficiency gains of the 2nm process also translate to improved battery life. The iPhone 18 Pro Max averaged 18 hours and 27 minutes in continuous web browsing tests, cementing its status as the longest-lasting iPhone tested by the publication.

The performance figures also set high expectations for Apple’s upcoming foldable device, the iPhone Duo, which is expected to launch next month using the exact same A20 Pro silicon.