Samsung’s latest phone is here and it’s already one of the best phones of the year. Along with a 200MP main camera, 100X zoom, and a 6.8-inch giant screen, the Galaxy S23 Ultra also features a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy which has a higher CPU clock speed (3. 36 GHz versus 3.2 GHz) and GPU clock speed (719 MHz versus 680 MHz) than the standard chip, with 12 GB of RAM. That means it should be the fastest Android phone ever.
But that doesn’t mean it’s the fastest phone ever. Apple’s chips have historically handled the latest Snapdragon chips with ease, but with a relatively weak speed bump from the A15 to the A16, it seemed possible, if not likely, that Qualcomm would finally catch up with Apple’s new iPhone chips.
Not so. In benchmarks recorded by our colleagues at TechAdvisor, the Galaxy S23 Ultra is heavily beaten by the A16 in the iPhone 14 Pro and the A15 in the iPhone 13 Pro, and can’t even keep up with the A14 chip in the iPhone 14 Pro. iPhone 12 in Geekbench single. basic test. The S23 does better in multi-core tests, but it also has more cores and RAM and still barely beats last year’s chip.
For more details, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has an 8-core processor while the A16 has a 6-core design. On the graphics side, Apple uses a 5-core GPU and the Snapdragon has an Adreno 740 GPU. As you can see in the Wild Life benchmark above, the S23 Ultra really shines when it comes to graphics, actually outperforming the A16 in 3D Mark’s Wild Life Extreme Unlimited test, which will be great for gamers.
It also shows how Qualcomm prioritized graphics improvements with the Gen 2 chip. In the same test with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip, the Wild Life Extreme Unlimited benchmark recorded 2577, making the new chip more than 40% faster. Meanwhile, the A16 was a somewhat minor upgrade, with gains of around 10% over the A15. While Apple has made major gains with the GPUs in its Max and Ultra Mac chips, iPhone graphics have stagnated somewhat.
But when it comes to day-to-day performance, the S23 still lags behind the iPhone, and the gap is expected to widen this year. While leaked Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 benchmarks show scores of 1930 (single-core) and 6236 (multi-core), which both beat the A16, Apple is likely to take a huge leap in performance with its A17 3 chip. nm when the iPhone 15 handsets launch. But at least S24 Ultra buyers will get a phone that beats the iPhone 13.
