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Huge benchmark leak reveals Apple’s blazing-fast iPhone 13 performance

Published Sep 7th, 2021 12:54PM EDT
iPhone 13 A15
Image: Christian de Looper for BGR

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The iPhone 13 launch event is almost upon us, as Apple might announce the event on Tuesday. The iPhone 13 rumors continue to drop left and right, and the newest ones are quite revealing. We just saw the new MagSafe Charger that Apple created for the iPhone 13 series in FCC documentation. That indicates wireless charging might get some significant upgrades on the new iPhone series. Now, a separate leak gives us early iPhone 13 benchmarks for the brand new A15 Bionic System-on-Chip (SoC).

Apple’s A- and M-series chips are the critical ingredient for iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices. The A-series SoCs have allowed Apple to stay ahead of the competition ever since Apple first released the processor that powers the iPhone. Qualcomm, Samsung, and others have tried to catch up ever since. But speed tests always show that the iPhone has the fastest overall experience.

Like every new generation, the iPhone 13 series is expected to deliver a faster SoC. It’s something we take for granted every year, and Apple always delivers. In this case, we’re looking at the A15 Bionic that will power the entire iPhone 13 line. The chip might also make its way into some of the new iPads launching this year.

The iPhone 13’s A15 Bionic benchmark leak

Previous reports said that Apple ensured it’ll have plenty of A15 chips on hand for the iPhone 13 series this year, in spite of the global chip shortage. Apple is TSMC’s main client, and the Taiwanese foundry has prioritized chip manufacturing for the iPhone maker. Newer reports said that Apple might incur higher production costs for these chips. In turn, Apple might pass on that expense to the consumer with slightly higher prices.

Apple will surely explain what makes the A15 Bionic different from last year’s A14 version during its upcoming keynote. But while we wait, there’s a new benchmark leak that tells us exactly what to expect from the iPhone 13 in terms of performance.

According to a leaked A15 Bionic benchmark, the new chip is 13.7% faster than the A14 version. The chip supposedly reached 198 fps during the first round of Manhattan 3.1 GPU benchmark testing. But the frames dropped to 140-150 in the second round. As noted above, we’re looking at a test for a July A15 Bionic sample. That means the chip likely wasn’t optimized at the time.

The leaker also compared the A15 Bionic performance to the Samsung Exynos 2200 AMD mRDNA chip. This is the GPU chip that Samsung created with AMD. We expect to see it on future Android flagships from the South Korean giant. According to the leaker, the test shows that the Exynos 2200 reaches 170.7 fps at peak performance, in line with the A14 in last year’s iPhones.

As always with pre-release benchmark tests for unannounced products, we can’t confirm these iPhone 13 scores at this time. And Apple will not use traditional benchmark tests to highlight the speed gains. However, the iPhone 13 benchmark test and real-life speed tests that follow the phone’s release will thoroughly detail the phone’s performance.

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.