Apple iPhone 7 Plus Packs 3GB RAM, A10 Fusion Bests iPad Pro's A9X In Geekbench
Apple iPhone 7 mania is already upon us. Apple’s next generation iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus were announced on Wednesday, and preorders for the phones kicked off this morning. As we found out earlier this week, both models are powered by a brand new, quad-core Apple A10 Fusion processor. While we’ll likely find out more details on the processor when the first reviews land next week, we’re already beginning to get a little insight into the A10 variant powering the iPhone 7 Plus.
According to Geekbench numbers, which showcase the iPhone 7 Plus running iOS 10.0.1 (Golden Master), the 5.5-inch smartphone has 3GB of RAM onboard (the iPhone 7 still reportedly contains 2GB RAM). Compared to the previous generation iPhone 6s Plus, this is an increase of 1GB. Compared to Android flagships, which come with 4GB or even 6GB of RAM, 3GB might seem paltry. However, benchmarks show time and time again that Apple’s SoCs are among the fastest in the industry and simply do more with less resources.
On paper, Apple’s quad-core processor sounds a bit like ARM’s big.LITTLE arrangement, with two low-power cores for efficiency and two high-performance cores for some extra grunt in demanding applications. Apple says that the advances it has made with the A10 allow the processor to be twice as fast as the A8 in the iPhone 6 Plus and 40 percent faster than the A9 in the iPhone 6s Plus. In addition, its brand new GPU offers twice the performance of its predecessor.
All of these advancements translate into a single-core Geekbench score of 3233, while its multi-core score comes in at 5363. For comparison, the beefy A9X processor in the iPad Pro — also paired with 3GB of RAM — puts up scores of 3009 and 4881 respectively. Likewise, these numbers far outpace those of the iPhone 6s Plus, which delivers 2407 and 4046 respectively.
The scores put the iPhone 7 Plus at about 33 percent faster than its immediate predecessor, which is just under what Apple has stated in the most optimum conditions. The Geekbench listing shows the iPhone 7 Plus running at 2.23GHz. For comparison, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro’s A9X and the iPhone 6s Plus’ A9 run at 2.2GHz and 1.8GHz respectively.
The Apple iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus include new camera systems (the former gains optical image stabilization, while the latter now has dual 12MP sensors), water and dust resistance, a haptic feedback home button, stereo speakers, and of course have abandoned the 3.5mm headphone jack.
