Samsung’s brand newGalaxy S23 Ultra, the flagship phone sporting a custom Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, still can’t keep pace with the 2022iPhone 14 Pro. That’s according to a new report citing Geekbench 5 scores for the two phones.
Samsungannounced the Galaxy S23 lineup in February and it comes with a special version of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 gen 2 chip that is overclocked compared to standard ones. But that doesn’t seem to have been enough to give it an edge over Apple’s almost-six-month-old A16 Bionic, the chip that powers the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
Geekbench scores shared byCompareDialand picked up byMacRumorsshow that the Galaxy S23 Ultra managed a single-core score of 1,480 and a multi-core score of 4,584. By contrast, Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro scored 1,874 and 5,384 respectively. A difference of a little over 20 per cent.
This year is of course the first one where Samsung has ditched its own Exynos chips in favour of Qualcomm’s world wide. Normally Qualcomm Snapdragon chips are reserved for Galaxy S phones sold in the United States. But this year Qualcomm’s custom Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is used across the lineup - a fact that suggests Samsung is well aware that its own silicon can’t compete. And while these Qualcomm scores are closer to Apple’s, they still don’t quite reach the heady heights of that A16 Bionic.
On the positive side, these scores are notably improved over the Samsung Galaxy S22 models with their Qualcomm 8 Gen 1 chip, so there’s that. In fact, if it wasn’t for the work Apple’s silicon team is clearly putting in there’s an argument to be made that these Qualcomm chips are mighty impressive.
Apple is set to replace the A16 Bionic with a refreshed A17 Bionic later in 2023. The new chip is expected to only be offered in the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max however, with the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus making do with older technology.
