Qualcomm needs to watch out for Apple’s A18 Pro chipset

Apple will launch their new iPhone 16 models later this year. They will most likely be powered by the company’s new A18 Pro (or whatever name they designate it) chipset. Now thanks to leaked benchmarks posted on the Chinese forums, it seems that Qualcomm will want to pay attention.

According to these leaked benchmarks, the A18 Pro has managed to achieve a single-core score of 2,822 on Geekbench 6. It also managed a multi-core score of 8,571. The post does note that these figures are based on test data and not the final results. Apparently it is based on the current engineering test stage, so the final version that will make its way onto the iPhone 16 series could be different, hopefully in a better way.

For context, earlier this month there were leaked benchmarks of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. It suggested that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is actually on par with the A18 Pro. The Qualcomm chipset scored 3,300 on single-core tests, but that was because it was apparently overclocked and that the final version could be closer to 2,800.

This puts it on par with Apple’s chipset, but we’re not sure how it will look on the multi-core front. The A18 Pro is expected to be built on TSMC’s new 3nm N3E process. The A17 Pro, on the other hand, was built on the older 3nm process. This should result in some improvements. Whether or not it will be noticeable on a day-to-day basis remains to be seen.