At this point it’s pretty much expected that whatever new chipset Apple launches with its latest phones will be better than the top Android alternative, but for the first time in a long time that might not be the case this year.
According to Nguyen Phi Hung posting on X (via Phone Arena), the A18 Pro that we’re expecting to power the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max (and possibly the rest of the iPhone 16 line) will only be 10% faster than the A17 Pro powering the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
That doesn’t sound like a particularly massive boost, and while we’d take this claim with a pinch of salt (especially as this is a new leaker who doesn’t have much of a track record yet), it’s in line with another recent leak.
A18 Pro = A17 Pro + 10% https://t.co/2tuAlLbNdzMarch 10, 2024
Just the other day we heard that the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset (expected to power many of next year’s top Android phones, like the Samsung Galaxy S25) could be more powerful than the A18 Pro. According to that report, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 can achieve a single-core Geekbench result of around 3,500, compared to around 3,300 for the A18 Pro.
However, there are some major caveats to bear in mind. For one thing, the Snapdragon’s Geekbench result was apparently achieved with a 4.3GHz clock speed, which would likely require a greater power draw than is viable on a smartphone. So we’re skeptical that the chipset will actually be capable of this.
A big upgrade in at least one way
Also, putting aside whether the A18 Pro is more powerful than the Snapdragon or not, and whether it’s much of an upgrade in pure power terms on the A17 Pro, it might at least get a major AI boost.
We’ve previously heard that the A18 Pro might have a lot more cores in its Neural Engine (dedicated to AI and machine learning tasks) than the A17 Pro does.
So even if it’s not significantly speedier at running games and the like, the A18 Pro might at least be capable of handling various AI tasks that aren’t available on current iPhones.
Still, the likes of the Google Pixel 8 and Samsung Galaxy S24 already have significant AI capabilities, so Apple is playing catch-up on that front. If it doesn’t exceed what Samsung and Google have already achieved here, and can’t match the next major Snapdragon chipset for power, then the A18 Pro really might be a disappointment.
With the iPhone 16 line not due until September though it’s still early days for leaks. So hopefully in the coming months we’ll hear far more promising news about the chipset powering these phones.
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