Every year, on the other side of the summer and fall handsets refreshes, AnTuTu generates a fresh set of talking points on mobile performance when it releases its annual benchmarks of the most powerful smartphones.
This year is different for AnTuTu. It's the first year the software-based benchmarking tool ranked iOS handsets alongside Android phones. And the iPhones made waves in their debut.
The iPhone 6s Plus scored the highest on the benchmark with 132,620 points. Its closest competitor, Huawei's Mate 8, scored 92,746, around 30 percent lower than the 6s. The rest of the field, in order, included Meizu's Pro 5, Samsung's Galaxy Note 5, Samsung's Galaxy S6 Edge+, Apple's iPhone 6 Plus, OnePlus' OnePlus 2, LeTV's 1 Pro, Xiaomi's Mi Note Pro and Google's Nexus 6P.
AnTuTu didn't list the base models iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s in the ranking as there are negligible differences between them and the iPhone 6 Plus and the iPhone 6s Plus.
While there may be only minor differences in performance between the base and Plus models of the iPhone 6 series, the benchmarks express that boost Apple was talking about in moving from the 6 to the 6s. But there's about a 40 percent power difference between the iPhone 6 and 6s series.
"The A9 chip brings a new level of performance and efficiency to iPhone 6s," Apple says. "Not only a faster experience, but a better one. The A9 chip is capable of gaming console-class graphics performance that makes games and other apps much richer and more immersive."
The iPhone 6s series is about 70 percent faster in CPU operations than the iPhone 5 series, and about 90 percent speedier in GPU, according to Apple's benchmarks.
Apple's A9 processor also topped AnTuTu's benchmark test for chipsets last year.
While Apple may be happy with the computational performance of its latest batch of iPhones, the company appears to be down when it comes to the handsets' sales performance. Citing info from multiple parts suppliers, news outlet Nikkei of Japan reports that Apple has called for a 30 percent cut in the production of iPhone 6s and 6s Plus handsets.
The production cuts will give vendors more time to sell their current stock. The suppliers are expecting production to return to normal operations around the end of spring.
