Snapdragon 8150 Benchmark Leak Shows Qualcomm Mobile Monster That Could Slay Apple
The chip wars are heating up and there is evidence to suggest that Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 8150 processor is allegedly quite the fire breathing part. Leaked benchmarks purportedly showing how the Snapdragon 8150 performs in AnTuTu, a benchmark we use ourselves in our smartphone reviews, indicate it will give Apple and its mighty Bionic A12 chip a run for its money. If the benchmarks are real, of course.
No small feat, Apple bills the Bionic A12 found in the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max as "the smartest, most powerful chip in a smartphone," and with good reason—it's a capable slice of silicon. AnTuTu's official benchmark database shows the iPhone XS leading the pack with an overall score of 352,405. In comparison, the fastest Android phone in AnTuTu's database is Huawei's Mate 20 Pro, with a score of 309,628.
Scores allegedly from a Snapdragon 8150 (Source: Weibo)
Over at Weibo, a super popular microblogging site in China, a user posted an image that supposedly shows the AnTuTu benchmark results of a Snapdragon 8150. We obviously can't attest to its legitimacy—it would not be difficult to doctor an image and present it as real—but what it shows is the upcoming part leapfrogging the competition with a score of 362,292.
Here's how the leaked score stacks up with our own collection of benchmarks:
I'm in the process of reviewing ASUS's ROG Phone with a specially binned Snapdragon 845 processor clocked at 2.96GHz, and I've included those benchmarks in the comparison as well. The leaked Snapdragon 8150 is still way ahead. We haven't tested any iPhone devices, hence why their scores are not included, but the leaked result is faster than the iPhone XS Max, iPhone XS, and iPhone XR in AuTuTu's own database, along with every other iOS device to date.
The user who leaked the benchmark claims the Snapdragon 8150 sports a 1+3+4 core configuration, meaning a single high performance core, three general purpose cores, and four low performance cores. That's a deviation from past rumors, which peg a 2+2+4 core design. We're not sure what to make of that, except for the popularity of tri-cluster designs going forward—Samsung's recently announced Exynos 9820, for example, features a pair of fourth generation custom cores for "ultimate processing power," two ARM Cortex-A75 cores for "optimal performance," and four Cortex-A55 cores for "greater efficiency."
How this all plays out remains to be seen. The Snapdragon 8150 is being built on a 7-nanometer manufacturing process, and we would certainly expect a performance jump over the existing Snapdragon 845, along with better power efficiency. It should arrive in Android devices in early 2019, at which time we'll be able to test it for ourselves to see if the leaked benches are legitimate.
