Earlier this week, Qualcomm announced its latest mobile chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, promising to “revolutionize flagship smartphones”. The new SoC (System on Chip) is expected to launch in high-end Android smartphones later this year, but benchmarks suggest it won’t outshine Apple’s A16 Bionic chip, which powers the iPhone 14s. Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
Apple still ahead of Qualcomm
Although the latest chip won’t officially launch in smartphones for a few weeks, Geekbench scores for the chip have already been spotted in an unreleased Android phone. According to the results published by the Twitter account StuffListings, the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip scored 1483 in single-core and 4709 in multi-core. Figures to be compared with those of the A16 Bionic chip which had obtained a score of 1874 in single-core and 5372 in multi-core. For comparison, the A15 Bionic chip, found in the iPhone 13 Pro and lower-end iPhone 14 models, also outperformed Qualcomm’s latest chip, with 1,709 in single core.
In a press release about the new chip, Qualcomm said it “will set a new standard for connected computing, intelligently designed with breakthrough AI across the board to enable extraordinary experiences.” Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of mobile handsets at Qualcomm, said:
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will revolutionize the landscape of flagship smartphones in 2023.
Compared to the first-generation Snapdragon 8 chip, Qualcomm says the new platform offers a 35% increase in CPU performance, a 25% increase in GPU performance, and an increase in power efficiency. Yet Apple’s A14 Bionic chip and even the A13 Bionic chip already beat out Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 chip that was launched in Android devices last year.
In contrast, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 offers WiFi 7 and Lossless 48kHz audio with sub-50ms latency, perfect for gamers.
A chip also produced by TSMC
The A16 Bionic chip in the iPhone 14 Pro, like the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, is built on the TSMC 4nm process, and both offer improved performance and power efficiency. The A16 Bionic chip features 16 billion transistors, a 6-core CPU, a 5-core GPU, and a 16-core neural engine.
Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, at the Apple event in September, proudly said:
The competition is still striving to catch up with the performance of the A13, which we first introduced with the iPhone 11 three years ago.
Conclusion, Apple is always years ahead of its competitors. More than the processor, the American manufacturer also offers software optimization that others cannot offer, apart from Google, which is starting to produce its own chips in its Pixel 7.