Earlier this week, a phone that was thought to be the basic galaxy s23 appeared on Geekbench with an impressive set of reference numbers for a pre-launch phone he gave to the iPhone 14 a run for your money.
Now another device — SM-S918U (opens in a new tab) — has been featured on the benchmarking site, and is one that SamMobile (opens in a new tab) he thinks he is Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.
Since the internal components listed are identical, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset and 8 GB of RAM – the numbers are as close as you’d expect. The S23 Ultra achieves a single core score of 1521 and a multicore score of 4689.
But while these are a vast improvement on the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra (which achieved scores of 1,240 and 3,392, respectively), aren’t quite as impressive as the next virtually identical numbers on the base S23 for one simple reason: the competition for the Ultra variant is considerably stiffer.
it’s not professional
When we covered the S23’s scores, we noted that it dwarfed the iPhone 14’s multi-core performance (4,553), even if it lagged behind in the single-core metric (1,727). That’s important as the Samsung Galaxy S23 will likely be in the same ballpark as the entry-level iPhone 14 in terms of price when it hits stores.
The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, if past form is anything to go by, will go toe-to-toe with the iPhone 14 Pro, and which uses Apple’s fastest A16 chip. Our benchmarks gave the A16 scores of 1,891 single-core and 5,469 multi-core, leaving even these impressive S23 Ultra numbers in the dust.
The iPhone 14 Pro starts at $999, with the iPhone 14 ProMax it goes for $1,099. For the sake of comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra has an MSRP of $1,199. With prices climbing in global supply chains, it wouldn’t be surprising if the S23 Ultra added a few more bucks as well.
Of course, there’s more to a smartphone than its raw speed, and Samsung is likely to justify the cost with extras that Apple just can’t match, like S-Pen support and a rumored 200MP camera.
And truth be told, these benchmarks are more to brag about than any real, noticeable performance advantage in everyday use. Both will run the latest apps smoothly for years to come, and you won’t notice the difference unless you have the two side by side.
Still, if these benchmark numbers don’t improve with optimizations closer to release, it looks like the best android phones it will continue to lag Apple’s flagships in terms of raw speed for at least another generation.