Apple iPhone X review

Apple A11 Bionic performance

It can't be a new generation of iPhones 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 X.

The A11 Bionic chip features two high-powered 2.39GHz 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 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.

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

Apple has been acing the Geekbench test with the new A11 chip, and the iPhone X is no exception. While a single Hurricane core (iPhone 7) 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 X
  4256
• Apple iPhone 8
  4234
• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  4232
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  3503
• Apple iPhone 7
  3459
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  1991
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  1987
• Nokia 8
  1925
• Huawei Mate 10 Pro
  1902
• LG V30
  1901
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  1862
• Sony Xperia XZ1
  1840

You bet all processor cores are working together on the iPhone X make for an out of this world score.

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone X
  10215
• Apple iPhone 8
  10214
• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  10037
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  6784
• Huawei Mate 10 Pro
  6783
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  6656
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  6590
• Nokia 8
  6568
• Sony Xperia XZ1
  6541
• LG V30
  6365
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  5956
• Apple iPhone 7
  5831

Apple's first attempt at designing a GPU of its own has proved a great 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 Plus
  85
• Apple iPhone 8
  85
• Apple iPhone X
  81
• Huawei Mate 10 Pro
  65
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  63
• Apple iPhone 7
  61
• LG V30
  60
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  60
• Nokia 8
  57
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  51
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  50
• Sony Xperia XZ1
  49
• Apple iPhone SE
  39.6
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  39.5
• Apple iPhone 6s
  39.5

Running onscreen graphic benchmark reaches the v-sync limit and because of this, all new iPhones 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 X
  59
• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  59
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  56
• Huawei Mate 10 Pro
  55
• Apple iPhone 6s
  53.6
• Sony Xperia XZ1
  48
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  42
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  38.6
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  37
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  36
• LG V30
  35
• Nokia 8
  33

Then there is the ES 3.1/Metal benchmark where the higher resolution finally takes its toll and push the iPhone X to score below the most current iPhones, but still, on top of any other Android, we've tested to date.

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
• Apple iPhone X
  1385
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  1268
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  1189
• Huawei Mate 10 Pro
  1183
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  916
• Apple iPhone SE
  882
• Apple iPhone 6s
  879
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  875
• LG V30
  860
• Nokia 8
  855
• Sony Xperia XZ1
  853

Finally, we ran the compound AnTuTu and BaseMark OS 2.0 benchmarks. The iPhone X was beaten only by the iPhone 8 generation on AnTuTu because they ran at a lower resolution, while the X aced the BaseMark test.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 8
  202645
• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  188766
• Apple iPhone X
  185147
• Huawei Mate 10 Pro
  178510
• Nokia 8
  175872
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  175153
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  174987
• Apple iPhone 7
  174532
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  174435
• LG V30
  174330
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  172425
• Sony Xperia XZ1
  144462
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  137420
• Apple iPhone 6s
  129990
• Apple iPhone SE
  123961

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone X
  4708
• Apple iPhone 8
  3934
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  3796
• Apple iPhone 8 Plus
  3601
• Nokia 8
  3503
• Huawei Mate 10 Pro
  3425
• Samsung Galaxy Note8 (SD 835)
  3424
• Apple iPhone 7
  3416
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  3376
• Samsung Galaxy Note8
  3333
• Sony Xperia XZ1
  2986
• LG V30
  2705
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
  2261
• Apple iPhone 6s
  2195
• Apple iPhone SE
  2163

Moving to its 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 - butter-smooth performance everywhere - system, apps, games, multi-tasking. Everything runs hiccup-free on the iPhone X, and the phone manages to stay mostly cool in spite of the glass design.