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- iPhone chip performance has improved 385x since 2007 launch, according to benchmarks
- A17 and A18 chips in iPhone 16 models continue Apple’s efficient performance trend
- Next-gen iPhone could push CPU performance past 500x original iPhone processor
A new investigation from PC Watch has compared the performance of Apple’s smartphone chips over time, and found the iPhone CPU has improved by 384.9x since the original model launched in 2007.
The analysis used Geekbench data to track performance across generations, estimating an average annual improvement rate of around 40%.
Based on that trajectory, the next-generation iPhone 17 Pro, expected later in 2025, could push that figure past the 500x mark.
More performance-focused
The original iPhone, which Steve Jobs launched back in 2007, was powered by a ARM11-based SoC from Samsung. That chip had a rated frequency of 620MHz but it actually ran at just 412MHz.
For the iPhone 3GS, released two years later, Apple went for a Cortex-A8 core Samsung CPU (APL0298C05) marking the beginnings of more performance-focused chip design.
In 2013, Apple launched the iPhone 5s, which was the first smartphone to ship with a 64-bit processor, the Apple A7 (Cyclone). The move nudged Apple ahead of the rest of the mobile industry at the time.
Apple’s design philosophy has long focused on balancing power with efficiency. While Android chipmakers embraced eight- and ten-core designs, Apple has stuck with six-core layouts since 2017, typically featuring two high-performance cores and four efficiency cores.
Despite that, Apple consistently ranks at or near the top in both single-threaded and multi-core performance.
2024’s iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro continued that approach. The standard models use the A17 Bionic chip, built on a 3nm process, and scored over 8100 on PC Watch‘s Geekbench 6 testing. The Pro models use the A18 Bionic, which achieved scores above 8500 and feature core clocks exceeding 4GHz.
For comparison, the iPhone 13 Pro Max from 2021 scored about 5700 in the same benchmark. That translates to a 50% improvement over three years.
The performance increases achieved by the various generations of iPhone from 2007 onwards is clearly huge, but there are caveats to the methodology used for testing. It’s important to note that the numbers include estimated conversions for the older iPhones which predate modern benchmarks.