We already know that the big mobile battle of the year is going to be the iPhone 8 versus the Galaxy S8. You can have a subjective argument about which device has the best design or sharpest camera, but one thing that’s harder to debate is the power of the processors inside.
Benchmarking apps like Geekbench can stress and test a processor and assign a score based on the results, and that’s apparently what one tipster has already managed to do for the iPhone 8. The news, unsurprisingly, is not good for Samsung.
A screenshot of an alleged Geekbench score has been posted by Slashleaks, and before we get to digesting it, a disclaimer: faking one screenshot is the work of about 10 minutes in Photoshop, and therefore this screenshot should be taken with several dumpsters of salt.
But since the iPhone 8 launch is still months away, let’s set about digesting this leak at face value. The screenshot shows a Geekbench 4 test of a device running iOS 11, with an Apple A11 processor running at 2.74GHz. That all sounds decidedly plausible, and would be in line with what an iPhone 8 would show.
The score is, also as you’d expect, rather impressive. The alleged iPhone 8 scored 4537 single-core and 8975 multi-core. Compared to known scores for the Snapdragon 835 in the Galaxy S8, that’s a huge improvement. The 835 scored 2059 and 6461 on the Geekbench 4 test, way under the alleged A11 processor.
For comparison, the A10 chip in the iPhone 7 scores 3505 and 5919 respectively in the Geekbench 4 test. That’s arguably a better comparison, as it’s the same (alleged) test running on the same operating system, using a similar chip architecture. A jump from 3505 to 4537 single-core performance sounds about right for the improvement between the A10 and A11 chip.
Assuming that the benchmark is genuine, it would seem that the iPhone 8 will have the same modest-but-significant improvement in performance vs the iPhone 7 that we’ve come to expect. The standout features on the iPhone 8 aren’t expected to tax the core CPU, though. Instead, a no-bezel screen, no home button, an OLED display and a dual-camera setup are expected to be the big-ticket items.
