Apple iPhone 7 Plus review: Hail to the king, baby!

Performance

Apple has equipped the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus with a new-generation A10 Fusion chip. It has a quad-core CPU, a first for the iPhones, with two high-performance cores running at 2.34GHz and two power-saving ones. The high-performance ones run about 40% faster than the A9 chip and two times faster than the A8.

The other two are more power-efficient cores and require only 20% of the power needed for the high-performance cores. Those are not available to anything but the OS itself. No benchmark or game can use those; in fact, the benchmarks can't detect them at all - they show the CPU as dual-core. So, as far as the processing performance is concerned - all benchmarks use the two high-performance A10 cores ticking at 2.34GHz.

There's a new GPU inside as well. It's a six-core one and is 50% faster than the A9's GPU and draws just 66% of the power.

Finally, the iPhone 7 Plus uses 3GB of RAM, while the smaller iPhone 7 comes with 2GB.

The iPhone 7 Plus, just like the iPhone 7, happens to pack the most powerful mobile processor core in the world to date - the one inside Apple A10 Fusion. It runs on 2.34GHz, which is among the highest clocks we've seen, but it also offers the best performance right now. The new A10 core offers double the processing power of the Snapdragon 820's Kryo (OnePlus 3) and Cortex-A72 (Honor 8), and 40% increase over the Twister CPU core inside the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.

GeekBench 4 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 7
  3488
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  3473
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  2509
• Apple iPhone 6s
  2380
• Huawei Honor 8
  1720
• OnePlus 3
  1719
• Galaxy S7 edge (S820)
  1696
• LG V20
  1590
• Sony Xperia XZ
  1578
• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  1471
• Apple iPhone 6
  1465

But how about two of those? Well, the dual-core A10 processor is more powerful than any other dual, quad, hexa, octa, or deca-core processor on the market. It's 40% better than the quad-core Kryo (S820, OnePlus 3) and the dual-core Twister inside the iPhone 6s generation, and just a hair on top of the latest Kirin chipset inside the Honor 8 (4x A72 + 4x A53).

GeekBench 4 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  5664
• Apple iPhone 7
  5654
• Huawei Honor 8
  5447
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  4234
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (Snapdragon)
  4128
• OnePlus 3
  4045
• Apple iPhone 6s
  4001
• LG V20
  3890
• Sony Xperia XZ
  3868
• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  2465
• Apple iPhone 6
  2459

Running the BaseMark OS II 2.0 compound benchmark outed some peculiar results. The 32GB iPhone 7 Plus we had for review has class leading performance but according to the benchmark, it didn't came even close to the 128GB iPhone 7 we reviewed previously. The culprit - its memory score was rather poor (memory as in storage not RAM).

This discrepancy led us to test other iPhone 7 Plus models. Indeed, depending on the on-board storage, the three iPhone 7 Plus models scored vastly differently on Basemark OS II with the memory breakdown score being the sole reason for those differences. The 32GB flavor scores 851 in Memory, the 128GB achieves 1319 points, and the 256GB puts up a score of 3052.

Our further investigation into the issue with other benchmarks revealed that it's particularly the poor write speeds on the 32GB model that are to blame.

This could be either because of technology limitation - such are the SSD speeds - the more storage the more channels and thus better speeds. Or Apple could also be using different vendors for its storage chips so the difference in storage speed could be due to the chip maker and not the difference in size.

We did a blog post on the subject and you can learn more about the issue here.

In practice it would be really hard to spot the difference in performance between the three models in real life. They are equally fast and there is no lag whatsoever. However, there is a noticeable performance difference in tasks like copying or saving large files (refer above to our blogpost on the subject).

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 7 Plus (256GB)
  3751
• Apple iPhone 7 (128GB)
  3416
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus (128GB)
  3099
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus (32GB)
  2768
• OnePlus 3
  2365
• Galaxy S7 edge (S820)
  2352
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  2261
• Apple iPhone 6s
  2195
• Apple iPhone SE
  2163
• Sony Xperia XZ
  2151
• Huawei P9 Plus
  2099
• Huawei Honor 8
  2099
• Huawei P9
  2068
• Galaxy S7 edge (Exynos)
  2050

Running AnTuTu put the 32GB iPhone 7 Plus on par with the 128GB iPhone 7, which means AnTuTu is putting a much lesser weight on its storage test. And you should do the same, too.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 7
  174532
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  173110
• OnePlus 3
  141764
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  137420
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (Snapdragon)
  132849
• Apple iPhone 6s
  129990
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge
  129229
• Sony Xperia XZ
  124266
• Apple iPhone SE
  123961
• Huawei P9
  98069
• Huawei P9 Plus
  97392
• Huawei Honor 8
  94892

The exact GPU model is yet to be confirmed, but we know it's a six-core unit (just like the PowerVR GT7600 six-core GPU inside the iPhone 6s). Apple promises a 50% performance bump, so let's see.

The 1080p offscreen tests which help us determine the raw performance put the A10 GPU on top of any other GPU we've tested so far. The GFX 3.0 test gives the A10 GPU about 20% more power over the Adreno 530 in the OnePlus 3 and 30% over the latest Mali-T880MP12 inside the Exynos-powered Galaxy Note7. It is also 50% better than the PowerVR GT7600 inside the iPhone 6s Plus, as promised.

The GPU inside the iPhone 7 Plus scored a whisker lesser results than the one inside the iPhone 7, which might be due to a fraction lower clock possibly to prevent overheating.

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 7
  61
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  60
• Galaxy S7 edge (Snapdragon)
  49
• Galaxy Note7 (Snapdragon)
  49
• Lenovo Moto Z Force Droid
  48
• HTC 10
  47
• LG G5
  47
• OnePlus 3
  46
• Samsung Galaxy Note7 (Exynos)
  40
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge
  40
• Apple iPhone 6s
  39.5
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  39.5
• Sony Xperia XZ
  37
• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  18.6
• Huawei P9 Plus
  18
• Huawei Honor 8
  18
• Apple iPhone 6
  17.7

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 7
  43
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  39
• Lenovo Moto Z Force Droid
  32
• Galaxy Note7 (Snapdragon)
  32
• Galaxy S7 edge (Snapdragon)
  32
• OnePlus 3
  31
• HTC 10
  31
• Sony Xperia XZ
  31
• LG G5
  30
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge
  29
• Samsung Galaxy Note7 (Exynos)
  28
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  27.9
• Huawei P9 Plus
  10
• Huawei Honor 8
  10

The iPhone 7 Plus runs on a 1080p resolution, which gives it an advantage over the flagship competition running at 1440p. The sub-1080p iPhone 7 on the other hand reaches the 60fps refresh-rate cap on both tests.

The iPhone 7 Plus GPU still managed to beat the entire competition by a large margin, so you can rest assured the A10's GPU is indeed the best smartphone graphics processor to date.

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 7
  60
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  56
• Apple iPhone 6s
  53.6
• OnePlus 3
  45
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  38.6
• Sony Xperia XZ
  37
• Lenovo Moto Z Force Droid
  32
• Apple iPhone 6
  29.2
• Samsung Galaxy Note7 (Snapdragon)
  29
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (Snapdragon)
  29
• LG G5
  28
• HTC 10
  28
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge
  27
• Samsung Galaxy Note7 (Exynos)
  27
• Huawei P9 Plus
  19
• Huawei Honor 8
  19

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 7
  60
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  42
• Sony Xperia XZ
  32
• OnePlus 3
  30
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  27.9
• Lenovo Moto Z Force Droid
  18
• Samsung Galaxy Note7 (Snapdragon)
  16
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (Snapdragon)
  16
• LG G5
  15
• Samsung Galaxy Note7 (Exynos)
  15
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge
  15
• HTC 10
  15
• Huawei P9 Plus
  11
• Huawei Honor 8
  11

BaseMark ES 3.1 is a super-heavy GPU benchmark that only flagships can finish without crashing or taking an hour or two. The iPhone 7 Plus GPU outed a similar result as the iPhone 7 and not only topped that rest by a mile, but it also received another gold medal by BaseMark for being one of the best devices in their database so far!

Basemark ES 3.1 / Metal

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 7
  1547
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  1517
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  916
• Apple iPhone 6s
  879
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge
  733
• Samsung Galaxy Note7 (Exynos)
  727
• Lenovo Moto Z Force Droid
  645
• Samsung Galaxy Note7 (Snapdragon)
  629
• OnePlus 3
  625
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (Snapdragon)
  624
• LG G5
  587
• Sony Xperia XZ
  577
• Huawei Honor 8
  345
• Huawei P9 Plus
  214

There is no doubt Apple has designed the most powerful chipset to date - the A10 Fusion and thus the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are the fastest smartphones on the planet today. The A10 Fusion processor and its accessible two cores beat any other mobile ARM processor and so does the GPU.

Unlike the iPhone 7, the 7 Plus model does not run cool - it heats around the edge fast and a lot, though no overheating occurs. We suspect the GPU might be running on a slightly lower clock to prevent exactly that and it could explain the minor difference between the raw GPU performance of the iPhone 7.

Anyway - the iPhone 7 Plus is a beast and we'd expected nothing less from Apple. The company continues to smash the competition with thoughtful design instead of insane processing cores amount and many have already realized this is the right way to do things nowadays.

So much power has its price - the heat around the frame. It doesn't throttle the performance to cool down though, so you'll have nothing to worry about. Just enjoy the most powerful smartphone in the world the way it was meant to - care-free.