iPhone 12 Pro benchmarks show big leap in performance over iPhone 11 Pro

Apple iPhone 12 Pacific Blue Press Shot
Apple iPhone 12 Pacific Blue Press Shot (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • Benchmarks for Apple's iPhone 12 are beginning to surface.
  • They show big performance gains on the iPhone 11.
  • That's in spite of a few expected erratic results.

Benchmarks for Apple's iPhone 12 Pro have started to surface on Geekbench, revealing a big jump in performance on last year's model.

The results, as noted by MacRumors seem to reveal that the iPhone 12 Pro is benchmarking at around 20-25% higher than the iPhone 11 Pro, and is scoring in a range similar to the new iPad Air 4, which features the same A14 chip. From the report:

One result for the iPhone 12 Pro lists a single-core score of 1,597 and a multi-core score of 4,152, which is 26 percent faster than the iPhone 11 Pro's average single-core and multi-core scores of 1,327 and 3,289 respectively. Likewise, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is around 20-25 percent faster than the iPhone 11 Pro Max, although there are only two results so far.

There are some erratic results, however, including plenty of scores much lower than Apple's previous-generation iPhones. Citing Geekbench's John Poole, MR notes that this is quite a common occurrence with devices just out of the box and that devices performing tests can be hampered by setup, app restoring, and the rest. With that in mind, just how much faster the iPhone 12 is compared to previous models will likely become more evident as more benchmarks appear in the database. For example, no iPhone 12 models are listed in Geekbench's charts as there are not yet five unique results in the database.

Apple's A14 chip is the first-ever built on the 5nm process, meaning it packs more power despite being the same size as previous models. This makes it 50 faster in both CPU and GPU performance compared to the fastest competing smartphone chips.

Stephen Warwick
News Editor

Stephen Warwick has written about Apple for five years at iMore and previously elsewhere. He covers all of iMore's latest breaking news regarding all of Apple's products and services, both hardware and software. Stephen has interviewed industry experts in a range of fields including finance, litigation, security, and more. He also specializes in curating and reviewing audio hardware and has experience beyond journalism in sound engineering, production, and design.

Before becoming a writer Stephen studied Ancient History at University and also worked at Apple for more than two years. Stephen is also a host on the iMore show, a weekly podcast recorded live that discusses the latest in breaking Apple news, as well as featuring fun trivia about all things Apple. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwarwick9