Xiaomi Claims Massive Performance Improvements Over Apple’s A16 Bionic in Latest Teaser
Xiaomi 13 series featuring the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC is just around the corner
As recent leaks suggest, the Xiaomi 13 series launch is just around the corner. Like most upcoming flagship devices, even these are rumored to feature the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC. And in true Xiaomi fashion, the company has already started dropping vague performance hints.
According to a recent teaser shared by Xiaomi (via Alvin), the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip on the 13 series devices features a 37% improvement in CPU performance and a 42% improvement in GPU performance when compared to Apple’s A16 Bionic chip. If these figures are taken at face value, this would end Apple’s longstanding dominance on the most powerful smartphone SoC, at least until the A17 Bionic comes around. But again, given these results are from Xiaomi’s own labs, these figures should be taken with a heavy dose of skepticism.
According to Xiaomi, Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has:
• 37% improvement in CPU performance, comparable to Apple A16 chip.
• 42% improvement in GPU performance, surpassing Apple A16 chip. pic.twitter.com/1E1GfmCSEE— Alvin (@sondesix) November 29, 2022
We already have a good idea of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC’s performance, given benchmark figures from a reference handset were released last week. Contrary to Xiaomi’s claims, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 still falls behind the A16 Bionic in GeekBench 5, with a single-core score of 1489 and a multi-core score of 5178.
Although on the GPU front, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 manages to outperform by A16 Bionic in quite a few benchmarks. For example, just in 3DMark Wildlife the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 leads the A16 Bionic by about 30%, with a score of 13596.
It is hard to put any of the numbers in context, given Xiaomi did not specify the benchmarks used for the test, or even the testing conditions. But given what we have seen so far on existing Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 phones, these figures are either cherry picked, or worse, downright misleading.
Why would Xiaomi do this? Well, their flagship phones directly compete against Apple’s devices in China, which is also the company’s primary market. And we see this almost every year, where Xiaomi would specially refer to the iPhones in various comparisons, also using it as a marketing theme.
The objective was confirmed by Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun at the event. As quoted by GizChina, Jun confirmed that Xiaomi has the determination to put its new flagship phones right in comparison with the iPhone 13. While some may have smirked at the comparison, Jun is confident that the new Xiaomi phones have what it takes to take Apple head-on in the segment.
