iPhone 12 early benchmarks are here — but it's not all good news

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The iPhone 12 scored lower than the iPhone 11 in GPU tests

(Image credit: Apple)

Early benchmarks of the A14 Bionic in the iPhone 12 show mixed performance results and raise questions about the GPU. 

Benchmarking service AnTuTu released its first results for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro, giving us an idea of how much faster the A14 Bionic is compared to its predecessor and competing Snapdragon chips.

AnTuTu shows a roughly 20% CPU improvement for the A14 Bionic in the iPhone 12 over the A13 Bionic in the iPhone 11. The delta in scores between the A14 and A13 is comparable to what we're seeing in Geekbench 5 benchmarks.

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(Image credit: AnTuTu)

As you can see in the images above, the iPhone 12 scored a bit lower than the iPhone 12 Pro when you compare total scores. This likely comes down to a spec Apple didn't share during its presentation: the iPhone 12 Pro has 6GB of RAM while the iPhone 12 has only 4GB. 

What's more surprising are the GPU scores, which are actually lower than those from the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro. According to AnTuTu's benchmarks, the iPhone 12 score a 201,085 whereas the iPhone 11 landed at 205,671. Similarly, the iPhone 12 Pro was even further behind at 196,812 compared to the iPhone 11 Pro's 215,338. Android phones running the latest Snapdragon 865 also scored higher on the GPU test, with the OnePlus 8 landing at 219,044.

Apple promised up to a 50% performance delta between the A14 Bionic and rival chips. These benchmarks don't support those claims, but remember, we're still early in the game. We hope to get an iPhone 12 in for review in the coming days. When we do, we'll run our own benchmarks and compare the new iPhone 12 models to the top phones on the market.

Phillip Tracy
Phillip Tracy

Phillip Tracy is the assistant managing editor at Laptop Mag where he reviews laptops, phones and other gadgets while covering the latest industry news. After graduating with a journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin, Phillip became a tech reporter at the Daily Dot. There, he wrote reviews for a range of gadgets and covered everything from social media trends to cybersecurity. Prior to that, he wrote for RCR Wireless News covering 5G and IoT. When he's not tinkering with devices, you can find Phillip playing video games, reading, traveling or watching soccer.