Apple iPhone 8 Plus review

Apple A11 Bionic performance

It can't be a new iPhone without a new Apple chip and this year the custom silicon is called A11 Bionic. Apple has moved from a quad-core processor up to a six-core one with a first-ever Apple-designed GPU (previous chipsets used GPUs by PowerVR). There are 3GB of RAM inside the Apple iPhone 8 Plus.

The A11 Bionic chip features two high-powered 2.1GHz Monsoon cores that are 25% more powerful than the 2.34GHz Hurricane ones in the A10 Fusion. The four Mistral cores are power efficient and are 75% faster than the two low-power Zephyr cores in the A10 Fusion. All those six cores can run simultaneously.

The GPU is the first Apple-made one and is comprised of 3 cores, promising 30% faster performance when compared to the GPU inside the A10 Fusion.

The new A11 chip uses high-end 10nm manufacturing process, as opposed to the 16nm A10. It makes it smaller, more powerful, more efficient and yet cooler. According to analysis the A11 chip has 4.3 billion transistors, while the latest Snapdragon 835 has 3.1 billion and Kirin 970 we are about to see soon in the Mate10 has 5.5 billion.

The A11 Bionic also packs a dual-core Neural Engine - a purpose-built neural processor. It should provide hardware acceleration for AI machine learning. Machine learning allows the system to improve its performance in complex tasks over time without specific additional programming.

Relying on machine learning the iPhone gets enhanced and speeds up complex tasks such as face and image recognition multiple times. Face and image recognition might be a bigger deal on the iPhone X but it should have uses on the 8 as well. During its June WWDC developer conference, Apple introduced Core ML, a framework for building artificial intelligence algorithms into apps for Apple products.

Now that we got all the technicalities out of the way - it's time we run some benchmarks.

The first test we ran is GeekBench, as usual, and if anyone had any doubts that Apple will smash the competition for yet another year - sorry to disappoint you but it did it again. While a single Hurricane core is still impossible to beat, the new Monsoon core just blows away all other competitors by a mile. Single-core operations are of utmost importance for the performance of any mobile OS and Apple has been the ruler of this domain for quite some time.

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 8
  4234
• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  4232
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  3503
• Apple iPhone 7
  3459
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  1987
• Nokia 8
  1925
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force
  1915
• LG V30 (non-final)
  1904
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  1862
• Sony Xperia XZ1
  1840

We are not sure if the multi-core Geekbench test uses all six cores or just the powerful two ones as it often does on Android. But two or even six - the A11 processor is the fastest mobile chipset on the planet, outperforming the competitors by a massive margin.

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 8
  10214
• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  10037
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  6784
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force
  6629
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  6590
• Nokia 8
  6568
• Sony Xperia XZ1
  6541
• LG V30 (non-final)
  6151
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  5956
• Apple iPhone 7
  5831

Moving on to the GPU, the Apple's first attempt to design its own piece was an absolute success. The raw performance of the 3-core A11 GPU is 40% more powerful than the top-of-the-line Adreno 540 GPU by Qualcomm. It's also 40% faster than the Apple A10's PowerVR 7XT Series implementation.

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 8
  85
• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  85
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  63
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force
  61
• Apple iPhone 7
  61
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  60
• Nokia 8
  57
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  51
• Sony Xperia XZ1
  49
• Apple iPhone SE
  39.6
• Apple iPhone 6s
  39.5
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  39.5
• Meizu Pro 7 Plus
  34
• Huawei Mate 9
  30
• Huawei P10 Plus
  28
• Apple iPhone 6 Plus
  18.6

Running onscreen graphic benchmark reaches the v-sync limit and because of this, both iPhone 8 cap at 60fps while potentially being able of even more.

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 7
  60
• Apple iPhone 8
  60
• Apple iPhone SE
  59.2
• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  59
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  56
• Apple iPhone 6s
  53.6
• Sony Xperia XZ1
  48
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  42
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force
  40
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  38.6
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  37
• Nokia 8
  33
• Huawei Mate 9
  28
• Meizu Pro 7 Plus
  23
• Huawei P10 Plus
  19

Then there is the ES 3.1/Metal benchmark where not only the iPhone 7 series is still impossible to match, but the iPhone 8 generation sets a new record.

Basemark ES 3.1 / Metal

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 8
  1690
• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  1644
• Apple iPhone 7
  1547
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  1517
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  1268
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  916
• Apple iPhone SE
  882
• Apple iPhone 6s
  879
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  875
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force
  867
• Nokia 8
  855
• Sony Xperia XZ1
  853
• Huawei Mate 9
  794
• Meizu Pro 7 Plus
  517

Finally, we ran the compound AnTuTu benchmark and the iPhone 8 Plus is beaten only by its smaller iPhone 8 companion, taking a full advantage of the lower-res screen. While the performance gap between the Snapdragon 835-powered smartphones isn't as impressive, it's still a significant one.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 8
  202645
• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  188766
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force
  178674
• Nokia 8
  175872
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  175153
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  174987
• Apple iPhone 7
  174532
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  172425
• Sony Xperia XZ1
  144462
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  137420
• Apple iPhone 6s
  129990
• Meizu Pro 7 Plus
  128498
• Huawei P10 Plus
  126252
• Apple iPhone SE
  123961
• Huawei Mate 9
  122826

We expected Apple to deliver a powerful and yet very efficient chip and the newest A11 design delivers on all fronts. It has the fastest mobile processor by a mile, the fastest mobile graphic unit, and yet manages to stay away from the core-count race very successfully.

Moving to its own hardware design was probably one of the smartest decisions Apple has made after the iPhone itself and it has paid off throughout the last few years with a great success. The prowess of the A11 is undeniable and our battery test confirms it's very power efficient.

In real life, our experience just confirms what the synthetic benchmarks suggested - butter-smooth performance everywhere - system, apps, games, multi-tasking. Everything runs hiccup-free on the iPhone 8 Plus.

Finally, as far as the heating and throttling are concerned, the new glass design isn't the best for thermal conduction and Apple had to rely mostly on the metal frame. That's the reason for this particular spot around the lock key where the iPhone 8 Plus warms and under peak loads this 10mm spot may even become inconveniently hot. But that's it. Then we kept running benchmarks one after another and saw minor throttling (less than 10%), which won't affect the user experience at all.