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Why I think iPhone 7 will mop the floor with the Galaxy S7 and LG G5

Updated Dec 19th, 2018 9:12PM EST

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I know what you’re thinking: How can we even compare these three phones when neither is out yet. And how can the iPhone 7 possibly beat the Galaxy S7 and LG G5? Well, the available information about the Galaxy S7 and the LG G5 point to a simple conclusion: For at least one more year, none of the top Android devices out there will be able to beat the iPhone when it comes to performance.

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With every iPhone iteration, you can bet your paycheck that Apple will come out on stage and explain to the audience two things: How the phone’s camera is so much better than last year, and how its new iPhone will have the best CPU and GPU performance in town. Some will laugh, but when benchmark scores start popping up online, they’ll show that the new iPhone easily beats the competition in terms of performance. Then, in actual usage tests, the brand new iPhone still wins, even though its rivals may sport better hardware specs.

Galaxy S7 Geekbench 3 benchmark test

So how can we already conclude that the iPhone 7 will outshine the Galaxy S7 and LG G5? It’s pretty simple actually. These upcoming Android handsets can’t beat the iPhone 6s in benchmarks just yet, as some recent leaks seem to indicate. So it’s likely they won’t be capable of outscoring the iPhone 7, which will ship with an even faster A10 processor on board that should offer a speedier performance than the iPhone 6s.

The Galaxy S7 will be powered by Samsung’s Exynos 8890 octa-core chip and Qulacomm’s Snapdragon 820 chip. The LG G5 will only get the latter model. According to benchmark tests comparing these two CPUs (image below), the Exynos is the winner in single-core Geekbench tests (2282 vs. 1873), and the Qualcomm silicon is faster in multi-core testing (4979 vs. 5946)

Galaxy S7 benchmark test for both Exynos and Qualcomm variants

These scores are lower than what the iPhone 6s got in single-core tests (2490), and higher in multi-core tests (4340). If Apple managed to pull that off with the dual-core processor of the iPhone 6s, we can’t help but be excited about the upcoming A10 chip.

If that’s not enough, we’ll also point out a very recent Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 performance test, found by Phone Arena, that revealed the chip can’t beat Apple’s A9 processor inside the iPhone 6s Plus when it comes to any of the onscreen GFXBench tests, though it did win in offscreen ones.

LG G5 Geekbench 3 benchmark

That doesn’t mean that Samsung and LG’s new phones will be slouches. They’ll probably be among the top five new Android smartphones you can buy this year. And yes, these Android devices have high-resolution screens, and the benchmarks were performed on prototype units. But these tests still show that Apple is well ahead of its competitors when it comes to critical performance measurements. In fact, its A-branded chips might become so powerful in the coming years that Apple might want to use them in laptops as well, not just in iOS devices.

iPhone 6s Plus Geekbench 3 benchmark
Chris Smith Senior Writer

Chris Smith has been covering consumer electronics ever since the iPhone revolutionized the industry in 2008. When he’s not writing about the most recent tech news for BGR, he brings his entertainment expertise to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe and other blockbuster franchises.

Outside of work, you’ll catch him streaming almost every new movie and TV show release as soon as it's available.