Enough with the big cat references but, somewhere along the quest for ravishing AI calculations, Apple lost the crown of the fastest CPU and GPU gun in the Wild Silicon West. This, however, might have been a deliberate strategy on the part of Apple, as today’s mobile chipsets are way too powerful for anything an app or a game may throw at them.
Until recently, Apple was willing to pull ahead of the Qualcomms and MediaTeks of this world, riding on a steady supply of the highest quality wafers hence clock frequencies, as well as customized GPU designs. Now that everyone is a TSMC foundry client vying for the latest production node, this has become harder or uneconomical for it to pull off, and it gets beat quite often.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra vs iPhone 16 Pro benchmarks
Performance at twice the price
Typically, Qualcomm makes a custom Snapdragon processor version for Samsung that is clocked higher than for its other customers, and is tailored to its needs that are now revolving around artificial intelligence calculations.
The reference board of that same chipset has appeared in benchmark databases clocked at 4.32 GHz for the peak processing cores, and 3.53 GHz for the midrange cores. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 also leaked out running on a US-bound Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, but clocked at 4.19 GHz peak and 2.9 GHz midrange core speeds.
Carrying the model number SM-S938B, however, a European Galaxy S25 Ultra model has been listed on Geekbench with record clock speeds of 4.47 GHz for the performance cores, and the jaw-dropping 3.53 GHz for the midrange cores.
Galaxy S25 Ultra benchmark scores. | Image source – Geekbench
If those results hold water in the end, the Galaxy S25 Ultra will be fast, much faster than even the iPhone 16 Pro Max whose Apple A18 Pro chipset broke the 4 GHz barrier for the first time on an iPhone, and yet is clocked lower than the Snapdragon for Galaxy on the S25 Ultra.
For comparison, the single-core score of the iPhone 16 Pro Max returns 3331 points in our Geekbench 6 test runs, which beats the leaked S25 Ultra single-core number, but Samsung’s upcoming flagship one-ups the iPhone in the multicore score.
Qualcomm and Samsung are most likely still tweaking the exclusive features that the tailored Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 for Galaxy will offer, though. These are engineering prototypes, and they are still finding where is the sweet point in the power draw and performance tradeoff, so the Apple A18 Pro chip may still meet its match in the single-core realm, too.
MediaTek Dimensity 9400 vs Apple A18 Pro gaming
A new mobile gaming king
Apple’s A18 chipset has met another match that not only debuts the highest multicore score, but also excels in gaming benchmarks. MediaTek just announced its most powerful chipset to date, the Dimensity 9400.
Built on TSMC’s second-gen 3nm process, just like the Snapdragon for Galaxy S25 or the Apple A18 Pro, the chipset sports an Immortalis-G925 GPU with 40% faster peak and ray tracing performance than its previous edition.
To save you the suspense, Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro got schooled in the gaming performance under sustained pressure department by the Find X8 Pro thanks to the Dimensity chipset. The flagship Oppo phone maintained an average frame rate above 60 FPS at all times, while the iPhone 16 Pro dipped deep and often to only average 47 FPS on Genshin Impact.
The Apple A18 series chipset costs less than $100. | Image credit – TD Cowen
These are also edging Apple’s mobile chip out in multicore benchmark speeds, too, and about the last bastion of performance advantage for iPhones now lays in their peak single-core scores that are an all but improbable scenario in day-to-day operations.