Benchmarks for the Galaxy S23 Ultra show that Samsung’s new flagship handset offers substantially slower performance than the top-of-the-line iPhone 14 Pro.
This continues a long string of high-end Androids that can not match the performance of the latest iPhone.
iPhone beats Samsung again
Apple designs its own processors, then outsources production to TSMC. The combination results in chips significantly better than anything rivals can make.
The Galaxy S23 Ultra demonstrates this once again. The first reviews of the handset are out, and Cnet reports that its Geekbench 5 multi-core benchmark score was 4,954. PCmag‘s review unit scored 5,078 on the same test.
The iPhone 14 Pro scored 5,384 on the multi-core test, showing that it’s between 6% and 9% faster.
Galaxy S23 Ultra performance is less rotten
The Galaxy S23 Ultra benchmark score shows Android is catching up. Or Samsung is, any way. The iPhone 14 Pro is a whopping 60% faster than last year’s Galaxy S22 Ultra.
The difference is a processor Qualcomm tweaked just for Samsung to create the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy. This reportedly offers faster clock speeds on the CPU and GPU than the standard version. And Qualcomm borrowed a page from Apple’s playbook: the chip was made by TSMC.
iPhone has blown away Androids in performance tests for years. Qualcomm is finally able to make processors that allow top-tier Androids to come somewhere close to performance parity with iPhone. Unless Apple can give its upcoming A17 another huge speed boost, of course.
Update: This article was updated on Feb. 9 with Galaxy S23 Ultra benchmarks from more reliable sources. These don’t change the basic fact that Samsung’s new flagship is slower than Apple’s.
