Oliver Haslam on December 19, 2020, 11:08 pm

iPhone 12’s A14 Chip Completely Outperforms The Latest Snapdragon 888

Apple’s iPhone chips have long been the best in the business and that’s continuing in the world of desktop computers as well. But Qualcomm has a new Snapdragon chip coming and the company has released benchmarks for the new chip.

Unfortunately for Qualcomm, the new Snapdragon 888 still lags behind Apple’s best chips. The best chips from 2019, that is.

The folk at Anandtech have been comparing the numbers shared by Qualcomm with other devices and, yes, Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro bests them. But more worryingly for Qualcomm and flagship Android fans, the iPhone 11 Pro beats the Snapdragon 888 handily, too. Anandtech’s charts do all the talking.

However, there is a ray of sunshine for Qualcomm with the news that its new chip might have more luck in terms of power usage.

While the Snapdragon 888 doesn’t look like it’ll match the peak performance scores of the A13 or A14 SoCs used in Apple’s iPhones, sustained performance will depend quite a bit on the power consumption of the chip. If this lands in at between 4 and 4.5W, then the majority of flagship Android phones in 2021 will likely be able to sustain this peak performance figure and allow Qualcomm to regain the mobile performance crown from Apple. Otherwise if the chip has to significantly throttle, then 888 will probably fall short of retaking the crown. But even if that’s the case, for Android users it shouldn’t matter too much: the generational leap over 2020 phones would still be immense, and by far one of the largest GPU performance leaps Qualcomm has been able to achieve to date.

While it’s true that the Snapdragon 888 isn’t able to compete with the best from Apple, it is at least faster than anything Qualcomm has offered up before – meaning those looking to pick up a phone running the chip can expect a speed boost over whatever they are coming from. So long as they aren’t coming from an iPhone, that is.