- We all know that the iPhone 12 is fast.
However, how fast is it really?
To find out, we have a series of tests to run
against the iPhone 11 Pro, the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra,
as well as the little Google Pixel 5.
To start out with, we're gonna start out with
the good old classic of Geekbench 5,
one of my favorite tests to really give you
a good sense of the overall system performance
of each of these devices.
So we'll start out on the iPhone 12 Pro,
and we'll get started on the 11 Pro,
on the Note 20, as well as on the Pixel 5.
Now, going into this, I absolutely expected
the iPhones to do very well here.
Traditionally the iPhone 11 Pro has been
the most powerful smartphone that you can buy right now.
And the 12 Pro promises to be somewhere in the
15 to 20% better range.
Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's
going to be a massive step forward.
It's one thing to have a higher geek bench score,
and it's a very different thing to actually see
that performance in real world use.
For example, the Google Pixel 5, by far the least
powerful phone here, does have something
that the iPhones lack, which is a high refresh rate display.
I'll just say, as someone who's been daling
that Pixel 5 for a little while,
the smoothness that you get from the display
can oftentimes make it feel more responsive
than a phone that, while it, yes, has a lot more power
on the inside, doesn't have that fluidity on the screen.
But of course when it comes to benchmarking
and using a phone, there's a lot more to it
than just the smoothness of the scroll.
For example, if you are rendering video
or playing a game or something,
that is where these benchmarks can make
a much bigger difference compared to the just,
ah, this feels fast.
All right, 1605 single core, 4033 multicore.
That is, well, better than the iPhone 11 Pro.
So it's not a huge margin so we have a couple
hundred more, just a little bit less than 300
on single core, about 500 less on multi core.
But that is still a reasonable improvement.
And you also have to keep in mind that specifically
with that iPhone 12 Pro, the A14 chip inside
is the basis for all of the new Mac chips.
So what you see with the performance on this iPhone
is probably not going to be wildly different
than the kind of performance that you see
in a full fledge Mac that we will be getting fairly shortly,
which is impressive in some ways.
Although that's fast.
Let's see how the Note comes in.
And we get 980 single core, 3246 multi core.
So it does get closer on the multi core
and that is because both of these Android phones
actually have eight core processors,
whereas the iPhones have six cores.
The Pixel 5, look, it's the little guy, right?
So it is powered by a Snapdragon 765G processor,
a mid range, but a very confident chip.
It can't quite compete.
But that's fine because there's a whole lot more to it
than just pure benchmarks and pure CPU.
I'm not saying that because I feel bad for the Pixel
right now.
He's like less than half of any of the others.
Next up we have a benchmark which is a little bit more
tailored toward the actual web performance
of these devices, which is JetStream two.
So the way this works is not wildly different
than Geekbench so it runs a series of different tests
and then gives you a final score.
But this will give you a much better sense for
how performant these devices are
when it comes to things like webpages,
which when you look at apps,
are pretty much everywhere these days.
This internet thing, it's got a future.
It's funny looking at these phones
and just how massive the Note 20 really is.
I feel like I'm over big phones in 2020.
I want the small boys, I want the little chunkesis,
I want the medium chunkis.
Okay, we have a score: 182.6 on the 12 Pro.
And we have 156.7 on the iPhone.
All right, I mean, that is roughly consistent
with the difference we saw in Geekbench.
And our score is 73.
Wow, so the Note 20 is less than half the score
of the 11 Pro, much less the 12 Pro.
I mean, there's clearly a lot more than just
the pure hardware going on here.
I do think the difference between Safari and Chrome
is one of the big differences that we're seeing.
So these two are certainly much closer,
then there's the gap between the Android and the iPhones.
So this isn't particularly close.
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So the test that I most wanna see is the graphics test,
specifically when it comes to gaming.
So we have 3DMark Wildlife.
Essentially this is a one minute benchmark
that does its best to emulate what it would be like
to running a very very high end game on your device.
And immediately the iPhones are doing really well.
Surprise, surprise.
Now, this is a short demo, it's only one minute long,
and it is meant to emulate what it is like
to play a very very intensive game
but short bursty segments.
So you're not gonna see that sort of 20 minute
stress test which we're about to do.
This is more so the best case scenario for these phones,
almost kind of taking the cooling out of the equation.
'Cause pretty much any phone can run warm
for at least a minute.
And we have some scores.
We have 39 FPS on the iPhone and wow,
we burned three percent of battery in one minute.
Wait a minute, hold on, hold on, hold on.
The 11 Pro beat the 12 Pro?
I don't know if I believe that.
So we burned three percent of battery on both of these,
and the frame rate was way more inconsistent on the 11 Pro
so it was 21 to 60 versus 31 to 47.
Interesting.
So we definitely need to run this again.
I don't know if I necessarily trust that the 11 Pro
is faster, but it's very clear that the pixel graphics
are way way behind.
Six FPS compared to 25 compared to 39 and 42.
Let's run this one more time and see.
That's very interesting.
The 11 Pro is still consistently staying
a little bit above it.
God, the pixel's so slagged.
Wow, the 11 Pro beat out the 12 again.
Are you trying to tell me right now
that the 12 Pro does not perform as well in graphic tasks
compared to the 11?
That's really surprising.
So generally speaking, when it comes to graphics,
there are a couple things to watch.
First of all, it was the overall frames per second,
so higher is better, smoother.
But the downside to that is that that's just an average.
So what you can see here is that while the average
on the 12 Pro is lower, it stays very consistent.
It went from 32 to 42 but it stays very close to 40
the entire time.
The 11 Pro is way more sort of peaky.
So yes, it does go up higher.
Also there are a lot of points where it can go lower
than that 40 FPS line.
Okay, you know what we need to do.
We need to do the stress test.
So there's another portion of this test
which will allow us to take a closer look at
what these phones will do under sustained loads.
So this is just a one minute benchmark,
but the full stress test is 20 minutes.
That I think will help us determine
whether or not the 11 Pro is just sort of peaking
and it's going to hit some kind of thermal barrier,
or if the 12 Pro is legitimately slower in games
than the 11 Pro.
Oh, this just got spicy, my friends!
So while these benchmarks are running,
I have a Seek Thermal camera which will give us
a little bit of a better idea of how warm they're getting
and specifically where the warm spots are.
So first of all, wow, there's a major difference.
The 11 Pro is very warm, that's looking at, what,
43 degrees, but it's spread out across
a huge part of the phone.
Whereas with the 12, what you can actually see
is where the MagSafe, the coil is,
is slightly cooler.
Interesting.
Now we look at the Samsung, I mean, it's not even close,
it's nowhere near as warm.
We're looking at 35 degrees or so.
And the Pixel is like ice cold.
That's very interesting because actually in sort of
real world use, I've noticed that out of all these phones,
the Pixel seems to be a little bit warmer
when you're doing things like running the camera,
or doing anything that's mildly intensive.
I always find that the Pixel is a little bit more
warm to the touch, but part of that could be because
this is an aluminum phone,
whereas the other three all have glass backs.
Now, all of these phones have thrawling mechanisms.
So essentially as the temperature,
either of the processor or of the actual exterior
of the phone gets too hot, it will pull the power down.
First of all, to save your battery life,
but also just to keep the phone from being
physically too warm.
I'm sure at this point, all of them with the potential
exception of the Pixel, maybe the Note 20
are sort of lowering their performance as the test goes on.
But that being said, I mean,
that's a pretty major difference.
I have no idea what's gonna happen when we flip
these phones over when the test is done.
I have no idea.
This really puts it into perspective.
The Pixel is ice cold by comparison.
The Note is pretty warm.
If I actually touch it, that's pretty toasty,
that's a little bit warmer than I'd like to actually use.
But the 12 and the 11 both are really really hot.
I think there's a clear difference though
between totally fine, pretty warm, very warm,
extremely warm.
Now I guess all that's left to do is to see exactly
what the scores are to see if all that heat
means that the 12 Pro can outperform the 11 Pro,
or whether the new phone is just slightly cooler
and less powerful?
Let's see what we've got.
So they should be almost done.
12 Pro, 20ish FPS, so yeah, we're definitely seeing
that these phones have thermal throttled.
Although you know what, look at that.
The 11 Pro I can see just side by side looks to be
the same, if not slightly faster.
Oh, that's really close.
All right, so, oh yeah, you can see right there.
Look, it definitely kind of lowered over time.
So stability 71% on the 12 versus 64.
But the scores were very similar,
but I think the 12 Pro, that's a tough one.
That's certainly not a major improvement at all.
At all.
The first thing I wanna take a look at is the
stability number.
So that is the difference between the best and the worst
case scenario.
So you can see here that we basically have
very consistent performance on the Note up until
about the 12 minute line and then it started to come down.
The Pixel, though, is almost a dead even line.
You can see that, it is a 94% stability
versus 81 on the Note.
On the iPhone, it is significantly worse.
71% and 64%.
But that being said, the iPhones,
even at their worst case where they're losing
a lot of performance, 4600 is still much better
than even the best case score on the Note 20.
So the best loop is definitely on the 11, right?
If you're looking at the raw performance,
the 11 is best.
However, if you look at the way that the performance
kinda dropped and came back,
short of a couple of low numbers on the 12 for some reason,
it seemed like it held a little bit more consistent,
whereas the 11 definitely dropped a touch more.
So regardless, the iPhones, surprise, surprise,
are more powerful than any Android phone out right now.
That is not a huge contest.
I mean, the fact is the iPhone team has been
absolutely killing it on the spec side of things
for many years.
But it is not quite as clear cut going from
the 11 to the 12 as you might expect.
Yeah, on the CPU side, the 12 is the undisputed king.
When it comes to graphics, it's a bit of a toss up.
I still think I would probably take a phone
which is close to that same level of performance
but runs a little bit cooler and doesn't burn up
quite so much battery,
but that's a little bit of a toss up there.
So curious, which phone do you think won the speed test?
Let me know in the comments below.
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for lots more content like this.
Until next time, I'm gonna go enjoy the cool Pixel
and let the toasty boys do their own thing.