[ad_1]
It was repeatedly considered the most radical upgrade to the iPhone 12 range, but new leaks suggest that Apple has made a shocking design decision with the core of its new iPhones.
Apple iPhone 12 Pro concept render
Drawing attention, the iPhone 12 Pro Max has been stained on the popular AnTuTu benchmarking platform and reveals some of the smallest performance improvements in iPhone history. Also, while initial tech evaluations suggested that the range’s groundbreaking A14 chipset might be faster than a MacBook Pro, the reasons for its shortfall appear to be self-inflicted.
By breaking down the scores, we learned that the iPhone 12 Pro Max has CPU performance only 16% faster than last year’s iPhone 11 line, while graphics performance is basically flat with a speed boost. 4%. More positively, memory speeds are up 22%, but the big picture is that these numbers were not expected from the world’s first five-nanometer chip. As recently as last month, A14 CPU and GPU gains were estimated at up to 40% and 50% respectively.
What happened? In a word, battery life. Confusing all the logic this year, Apple has downgraded the batteries across the entire iPhone 12 lineup, even though they are the first iPhones to incorporate (notoriously power-hungry) 5G modems. This move also led Apple to abandon another popular but exhausting feature for this generation: the 120Hz ‘ProMotion’ displays. And now it appears that the A14 chip has been optimized for efficiency, not speed to cover these battery cost savings.
IPhone 12 Pro Max benchmarks show minimal performance updates over its predecessor
In Apple’s defense, this disappointment was flagged. The company officially unveiled the A14 chip when announcing the new iPad Air and (somewhat selectively) decided to compare its performance to the aging A12, rather than the A13. However, these numbers could be extrapolated, confirming that the iPad Air 2020 would only have around 17% and 8% CPU and GPU improvements over the A13. These numbers vary within a margin of error for AnTuTu scores.
Once again, the reason for the modest gains appears to be battery life, as Apple reduced the battery capacity of the new iPad Air by 8% compared to its predecessor. But with the iPhone 12’s batteries getting 10% smaller than equivalent iPhone 11 models, Apple may have further limited its GPU performance.
Given that we already know that Apple is also removing the included charger and EarPods from the iPhone 12 range, staying with the same large notch and increasing prices, expectation levels are surprisingly low for the new models. That said, its edgy designs look great, there are attractive new screen sizes, and its wireless charging is getting a mysterious magnetic update.
That said, in my opinion, considering all these compromises, smart money is looking forward to the launch of Apple’s cheapest iPhone 12 Pro early next year.
___
Follow Gordon on Facebook
More about Forbes
Mysterious magnets found inside Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro
Apple iOS Version 14: Should I Update?
[ad_2]
