Apple A20 Pro Silicon Shows 25 Percent Benchmark Jump in iPhone 18 Pro Testing

Synthetic benchmark runs on Apple's 2-nanometer processor score higher than competing Qualcomm and Google chips; independent testing has not been published.

By The Company WireSeptember 21, 2026 at 5:42 PM UTC3 min read

Apple — Apple A20 Pro Silicon Shows 25 Percent Benchmark Jump in iPhone 18 Pro Testing. Photo: Mashable Tech.

Apple's latest mobile processor, the A20 Pro, shows a roughly 25 percent performance gain over the previous generation in synthetic benchmark tests conducted by Mashable Tech (https://mashable.com/tech/apple-iphone-a20-pro-chip-benchmark-tests). Manufactured on a 2-nanometer process node, the system-on-chip powers the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, and is scheduled to run the upcoming foldable iPhone Duo arriving next month.

The processor architecture includes a six-core central processing unit featuring two super cores and four efficiency cores, a seven-core graphics processing unit with Neural Accelerators, and a dual 16-core Neural Engine for artificial intelligence workloads. The in-house chip design initiative was a key milestone overseen by John Ternus prior to his appointment as Apple chief executive officer.

In Geekbench 7 evaluations run on a freshly activated iPhone 18 Pro with no background tasks, the A20 Pro logged a 3,959 single-core score and a 10,854 multi-core score, alongside a GPU benchmark mark of 61,194.

Comparative testing on the Geekbench 6 platform highlighted Apple's performance margin across the flagship mobile landscape. The iPhone 18 Pro reached a 4,673 single-core mark and 12,483 multi-core score. In comparison, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy inside Samsung's Galaxy S26 Ultra posted 3,524 in single-core and 10,827 in multi-core testing.

Other competing flagship devices trailed further behind on Geekbench 6. Google's Pixel 11 Pro XL generated scores of 1,800 single-core and 5,000 multi-core, while Samsung's foldable Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra delivered 3,097 single-core and 10,277 multi-core marks. Samsung's prior-generation Galaxy S25 Ultra posted 2,800 single-core and 9,100 multi-core scores (with high runs reaching 10,049), and Apple's previous-generation iPhone 17 Pro Max scored 3,779 single-core and 9,778 multi-core.

While the synthetic diagnostics underline Apple's silicon lead, day-to-day performance differences will remain modest for consumers upgrading from recent handsets unless they run intensive local AI workloads. Attention next turns to whether the foldable form factor and thermal envelope of the iPhone Duo will affect the A20 Pro's sustained output.