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The rivalry between Samsung and Apple is fierce, and now that the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro are out, it just got even more intense.
Apple has spent a lot of time hying up its A14 Bionic chip, but just how powerful is it? Judging from one new test, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is way behind.
- iPhone 12 Pro review: The biggest leap between iPhone generations in years
- iPhone 12 vs iPhone 12 Pro: What's different?
- Just in: Apple Watch deal takes $50 off new Apple Watch SE
The folks over at PhoneBuff put the iPhone 12 Pro up against the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, the latest ultra-premium Samsung phone to hit the market. The goal: to see how the iPhone 12’s A14 Bionic and 6GB of RAM fares against the Note 20 Ultra’s Snapdragon 865 Plus and 12GB of RAM. And the iPhone 12 Pro came out on top.
As you can see in the video, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra gets an early lead, but falls behind thanks to the iPhone 12 Pro managing to power through a video rendering challenge faster than any other phone PhoneBuff has seen before. While the Note 20 Ultra is able to regain some time later on, the iPhone managed to blitz through the mobile gaming section to create a lead Samsung wasn’t able to close.
The first “lap” of opening apps took the iPhone 1 minute and 41 seconds, while the Samsung took 1 minute and 55. The second lap, which aimed to test the phone’s background running capabilities, didn’t fair much better for the Samsung. The Note 20 Ultra came in at 46 seconds compared to the iPhone 12 Pro’s 42 seconds.
So in total the iPhone 12 Pro was able to beat the reigning champ with a total time of 2 minutes and 24 seconds. That's a full 17 seconds faster than the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra’s 2 minutes and 42 seconds.
PhoneBuff pins the win on the iPhone 12 series having more RAM than the iPhone 11, packing in 6GB instead of the previous 4GB. With that upgrade the phone was able to keep more apps and processes running in the background, which meant it could hold its lead over the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra more effectively.
Of course this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's paid attention to iPhone 12 benchmarks, because the A14 Bionic has proven to be more powerful than any chip an Android phone has to offer. When Apple said the A14 delivers a 50% jump in graphics and performance over the A13 Bionic, it wasn't kidding.
In other words, if you’re on the fence about which phone to buy, remember that the iPhone 12 seems to be the faster handset. Though how it will perform against the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S21 remains to be seen.
