All 4 of our iPhone reviews are at 13, as are our benchmark results from testing. Apple promises gains with the new A15 Bionic chip, and while it's an iterative upgrade over last year's A14 Bionic in most respects, it smashes the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 that powers some of the best Android phones.

From synthetic benchmarks to real-world testing, the iPhone 13 series (especially the Pro models) has further outpaced the best chips used by Apple's competitors. In some cases, the gap is incredibly wide. Qualcomm is doing the job with its next-generation 800 series Snapdragon and the Tensor chip that Google is working on to power the Pixel 6.

Apple has even stated that the A15 Bionic GPU in the Pro model will be 50% faster than competing products. (Currently, the best rival graphics engine is the Adreno 660 in the Snapdragon 888.) Our tests proved that in many cases; the performance improvement of the A15 over the iPhone 12 is middling, but Apple upgraded the chipset's neural engine this year. This allows for new cinematic modes and photographic styles that make great use of AI.

Measuring a phone's performance goes beyond raw numbers, and the iPhone 13 certainly delivers in that regard. So let's take a look at how the iPhone 13 compares to what's already out there in the Pro, standard, and mini models.

Geekbench 5 measures overall CPU performance and breaks it down into single-core and multi-core results.

Geekbench 5 scores are arbitrary in a vacuum, but even if you get slightly different scores each time you run the test, it helps you gauge your device's performance against other devices.

As you can see, the iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13, and iPhone 13 mini models significantly outperform the Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 765G. iPhone 13 Pro and the two most powerful we've ever tested Android phones, the OnePlus 9 Pro and the Asus ROG Phone 5, by more than 1,000 points. Not to mention that the new iPhone is well ahead of Samsung's best Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21 Ultra, and Galaxy Z Fold 3 offerings.

And let's skip that delta between the iPhone 13 and the Pixel 5. Let's hope the Pixel 6 helps Google catch up a bit.

Many people play games on their phones, and the iPhone leads the pack. The following benchmarks use 3DMark's Wild Life Unlimited test to calculate scores and average frames per second. This test is intended to provide a realistic impression of the phone's gaming performance.

The A15 Bionic pushes the limits of mobile gaming, as the following results show.

As with Geekbench, Wild Life Unlimited scores are meaningless on their own and should only be used for comparison with other devices. The key metric, however, is the average FPS, which is a real-world benchmark.

The iPhone 13 Pro with a 5-core GPU outperforms even its iPhone 13 sibling with a quad-core GPU. But let's see how far ahead the A15 Bionic is compared to the Snapdragon 888 phone, which did not keep up with the A14 Bionic last year.

The iPhone 13 Pro doubled the Snapdragon 888's highest frame rate in our tests. the Wild Life Unlimited benchmark is pretty tough for a phone. (Our tests did not include the new Wild Life Extreme Unlimited, which we recently started using.) Therefore, we are a bit surprised to see the iPhone 13 Pro performing so well.

Another real-world application for measuring cell phone performance is our Adobe Premiere Rush test. It is tasked with transcoding a 4K video file to 1080p. Results are displayed in minutes:seconds.

Year-over-year, there is no functional difference between the iPhone 13 and iPhone 12. However, Apple's lead over Qualcomm is alive and well, performing transcoding in half the time required by most Snapdragon 888-powered phones.

Transcoding is a CPU-intensive task, so it makes sense that Apple's phone would lead in this particular benchmark. Apple states that the iPhone 13 can perform a complete video workflow from shooting to rendering. iPhone 13 can also natively record in the ProRes format used by many professionals.

The poor Pixel 5 required three times the time that other Android phones require.

Another year has passed, and Apple has further solidified its lead over Qualcomm. iPhone 13 series is not only the most powerful line of phones you can buy, with excellent battery life (except the below average mini) and great cameras. If having the best performance is your top priority, look to the iPhone 13 or iPhone 13 Pro/Pro Max. These models were released on September 24.

Let's hope Qualcomm's next high-end Snapdragon or Google's Tensor will close the gap with what Apple has created.