The A11 Bionic moniker may admittedly be nothing more than a marketing gimmick, but Apple’s next-gen processor is nothing short of a monster. In the days leading up to and following Apple’s iPhone media event, the iPhone 8 Geekbench 4 scores from Primate Labs’ Geekbench test were truly jarring. So while iOS and Android have arguably come close to reaching feature-parity in recent years, the overall system performance provided by Apple’s custom-designed A-x processors continues to leave Android handsets in the dust.
In fact, with Apple’s new flagship iPhone models running more than 50% faster than top of the line Android handsets in some tests, Primate Labs founder John Poole can’t help but wonder why we’re only seeing huge performance improvements emanating from Apple.
“The thing that I don’t fully understand is why performance has seemed to stagnate on the Android side,” Poole said in an interview with Tom’s Guide. “Where you don’t see these big leaps forward. I don’t understand what’s happening there.”
“At this point, you’ve got desktop-class performance in a handset. There’s no way of looking at it any other way,” Poole later added. “I wouldn’t have thought to use my first-generation iPhone to edit video. I would’ve thought you were crazy.”
Even though most iPhone users may not necessarily need to take advantage of all the processing power afforded by Apple’s next-gen processor, the larger point is that Apple is better positioned than its Android counterparts for the future of mobile computing.
Indeed, Apple’s decision to bring chip development in house has turned out to be one of Steve Jobs’ shrewdest decisions. As Apple chip guru Johnny Srouji said earlier this month, “This is something we started 10 years ago, designing our own silicon, because that’s the best way to truly customize something that’s uniquely optimized for Apple hardware and software.”
