Google just announced its new flagship Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, which have Apple's iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in its sights. New benchmarks show that Apple's iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE outperform Google's latest smartphones.
iOS and Android fans have new flagship smartphones from both Apple and Google to consider purchasing. The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus feature a similar design to that of its predecessors, iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus with a few tweaks and two new color options, Jet Black and Black.
Sales of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus have driven record sales at U.S. carriers and free iPhone 7 deals are surely helping push the new smartphones into consumer's hands. Google meanwhile is offering its new Pixel and Pixel XL exclusively through Verizon, in addition to selling the handsets unlocked through its online store for use on other U.S. carriers.
Unlike last year's Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, which featured completely different designs, Google has taken a page out of Apple's playbook by using the same design and specs in its new smartphones, with the main difference separating the Pixel and Pixel XL is screen size. The Pixel includes a 5-inch display, while as its name suggests, the Pixel XL features a larger 5.5-inch display.
AppleInsider is reporting that early benchmarks for the Pixel and Pixel XL show Google's new flagship smartphones received lower scores than Apple's iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. In fact, iPhone SE and iPhone 6s all finished with higher scores than Google's Pixel series.
The Pixel and Pixel XL were run through Geekbench 4 and scored around 4100 in multi-core performance and 1580 in single-core performance. Apple's iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus achieved around 5600 in multi-core performance and 3430 in single-core.
The site notes that last year's iPhone 6s Plus also outperformed Google's new Pixel and Pixel XL in benchmark scores with a multi-core score of 4106 and single-core score of 2508.
The results aren't that surprising, considering that Samsung's Galaxy Note 7, which packs in a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor and 4 GB of RAM got trounced by Apple's iPhone 6s in a speed test, even though the 6s uses a dual-core A9 processor and 2 GB of RAM. Google's Pixel and Pixel XL actually use a newer Snapdragon 821 processor and 4 GB of RAM compared to the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus' A10 Fusion chip and 2 GB of RAM (iPhone 7) and 3 GB of RAM (iPhone 7 Plus).
Of course, benchmarks don't necessarily represent day-to-day speed or user experience in opening apps and performing other tasks but are tools used to measure hardware performance, so take these scores with a grain of salt and judge for yourself which smartphone is right for you in real world use.
