iPhone 14 Pro in the benchmark: only marginally better than the iPhone 13 Pro?

The first benchmark results for the iPhone 14 Pro have already appeared. According to the test results, the new A16 chip seems to deliver only slightly better performance than its predecessor. However, it is unclear whether the results can be compared so easily.

As Macrumors reported, a user has already seen the first benchmark results of the iPhone 14 Pro Geekbench uploaded. The smartphone is currently listed there under the model ID “iPhone 15.3”. In the Geekbench 5 benchmark, the iPhone 14 Pro scored 1879 points in the single-core and 4664 points in the multi-core test. If you use this for comparison iPhone 13 Pro closer, the performance jumps seem to be marginal. The predecessor scored 1707 points in the single-core and 4659 points in the multi-core test.

So far, however, it is questionable how exactly these results can be interpreted.

Are the benchmarks even comparable?

On the one hand, it is not clear whether the benchmarks have expired under the same conditions. Although Geekbench 5.4.4 was used as the measurement software for both smartphones, iOS 16 was already installed on the iPhone 14 Pro. The benchmark of the iPhone 13 Pro should have taken place with a version iOS 15. Geekbench may not yet be optimized for iOS 16 or the new operating system consumes more resources, which could reduce benchmark performance.

And further: Isn’t the focus of the A16 chip primarily on higher performance?

On the other hand, not so much information about the new A16 chip is known yet. The biggest change compared to the A15 chip is the 4nm manufacturing process. The predecessor and also the Mac chips M1 and M2 are manufactured using the 5 nm process.

The number of CPU and GPU cores has remained the same. According to Apple, however, it should be a “new 6-core CPU” in the A16. This is also supported by the higher base clock rate in the iPhone 14 Pro. According to Geekbench, this is 3.46 GHz, with the iPhone 13 Pro it is 3.23 GHz.

It is possible that Apple did not focus on increasing performance when developing the A16 chip, but rather on increasing the efficiency of the chip. A slightly better performance with reduced energy consumption is also a great success.

Future benchmarks under the same conditions will have to show whether the iPhone 14 Pro is actually only marginally faster than its predecessor.