Apple iPhone 8 review

Apple A11 Bionic performance on the iPhone 8

Each new iPhone generation comes with a brand-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 2GB of RAM inside the Apple iPhone 8.

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 a high-end 10nm manufacturing process, as opposed to the 16nm A10. It makes it smaller, more powerful, more efficient and yet cooler. 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.

And with all the technicalities out of the way - it's time we run some benchmarks.

The first test we ran is GeekBench, as usual. A single Hurricane core (iPhone 7 series) is still impossible to beat, but 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 S8
  1991
• OnePlus 5
  1932
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  1929
• Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact
  1826
• LG G6
  1767
• Oppo R11
  1596

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 processor 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
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  6719
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  6656
• OnePlus 5
  6604
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  5956
• Apple iPhone 7
  5831
• Oppo R11
  5777
• Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact
  5596
• LG G6
  4175

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
• Apple iPhone 7
  61
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  60
• OnePlus 5
  60
• Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact
  60
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  59
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  50
• LG G6
  41
• Apple iPhone 6s
  39.5
• Meizu Pro 7 Plus
  34
• Huawei P10
  29
• Oppo R11
  22

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

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 8
  60
• Apple iPhone 7
  60
• Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact
  60
• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  59
• OnePlus 5
  56
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  56
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  56
• Apple iPhone 6s
  53.6
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  36
• Huawei P10
  35
• LG G6
  24
• Meizu Pro 7 Plus
  23
• Oppo R11
  22

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 S8
  1189
• Apple iPhone 6s
  879
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  861
• Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact
  855
• OnePlus 5
  796
• Huawei P10
  716
• LG G6
  541
• Meizu Pro 7 Plus
  517
• Apple iPhone 6
  370
• Oppo R11
  345

Finally, we ran the compound AnTuTu, and BaseMark OS II benchmarks and the iPhone 8 came on top of all devices we've tested so far. It's taking a full advantage of the lower-res screen and powerful chipset, obviously.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 8
  202645
• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  188766
• OnePlus 5
  180331
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  177326
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  174987
• Apple iPhone 7
  174532
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  174435
• Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact
  157075
• LG G6
  143639
• Apple iPhone 6s
  129990
• Meizu Pro 7 Plus
  128498
• Huawei P10
  126629
• Oppo R11
  118677

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 8
  3934
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  3796
• OnePlus 5
  3601
• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  3601
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  3547
• Apple iPhone 7
  3416
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  3376
• Huawei P10
  2910
• Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact
  2818
• Oppo R11
  2386
• Meizu Pro 7 Plus
  2380
• Apple iPhone 6s
  2195
• LG G6
  2126
• Apple iPhone 6
  1429

Apple once again introduced 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 graphics unit, and is not a battery monster.

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 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 - buttery-smooth performance everywhere - system, apps, games, multi-tasking. Everything runs hiccup-free on the iPhone 8.

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, just like 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.