iPhone SE outperforms Samsung S20 Ultra and Pixel 4 in performance

Based on new benchmarks from an iPhone SE review, this mobile phone outperforms all Android flagship phones in various CPU and GPU performance comparisons.

Due to its smaller screen that requires lower resolution compared to all other iconic iPhone 11 models, the iPhone SE even beats them at GPU-intensive benchmarks.

iPhone SE outperforms Samsung S20 Ultra and Pixel 4 in performance

Powered by an A13 Bionic processor, the iPhone SE is in a little machine. Despite smaller size and lower price, it has the same processor as the iPhone 11, with the same clock speeds and the number of cores.

According to an AnandTech , the A13 Bionic SoC has the following specifications:

Thermaltake

  • 2 × Lightning Performance @ 2.66GHz 8MB L2
  • 4 × Thunder Efficiency @ 1.73GHz 4MB L2

The iPhone SE also works with an Apple GPU with 4 cores. However, the RAM used in the device is 3GB, which is 1 GB less than the iPhone 11. iOS devices do not need 12 GB of RAM to work well as Android’s flagships, so iPhone SE has more than enough RAM to outperform Android’s offerings.

AnandTech put the phone to the test against other iPhone models and flagship smartphones from Samsung, Huawei, ASUS, Sony, LG, Google and OnePlus. iPhone SE ranked first in almost all benchmarks compared to Android phones and even outperformed iPhone 11 in one.

The first benchmarks measured Javascript performance, and the iPhone SE was right behind iPhone 11 mobile phones in Speedometer 2.0. However, it outperformed the iPhone 11 in JetStream 2. Compared to the next Android competitor in these benchmarks, the iPhone SE was twice as fast as the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, which runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865.

In WebXPRT 3, which is another browser-based web performance benchmark, the iPhone SE beat the iPhone 11. That can be connected with mobile phones having larger batteries that can help with energy efficiency, compared to the smallest SE battery.

iPhone SE outperforms Samsung S20 Ultra

On Basemark GPU 1.2, the Samsung S20 Galaxy Ultra, a $ 1,400 mobile phone, pitted itself against the iPhone SE in sustained performance, yet the latter comfortably outperformed it at peak performance. In other GFXBench benchmarks, the iPhone SE was well ahead of Android’s offerings, even beating the iPhone 11 in off-screen Vulkan / Metal numbers, in sustained performance. Check out detailed GPU benchmarks here.

These benchmarks did not include the Geekbench numbers, which are often wrongly criticised for being favourable to iOS devices in terms of performance measurement. Of course, benchmarks only tell one side of the story.

However, this performance data shows that Android mobile phones are not the only thing their manufacturers believe if a $ 400 phone can outperform their $ 1,400 smartphone. In any case, this should compel customers to Android to request better performance on low to mid-range Android smartphones.

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