iPHONE 13
the A15 Bionic, the latest and fastest
mobile system on a chip to roll out
of Apple’s factories. That isn’t to
say that they will produce identical
performance, however, since the
13 and 13 mini have 4GB of RAM,
whereas the 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max
have 6GB.
Still, the iPhone 13 mini is
capable of outstanding processing
performance, and produced
elite numbers throughout our
benchmarking. In Geekbench 5’s CPU
test it scored an exceptional 1725
(single-core) and 4,622 (multi-core),
compared to 1594 and 4094 by the
iPhone 12 mini. That’s a year-on-year
increase of 8.2 per cent and 12.9 per
cent respectively.Geekbench 5 (single-core)
iPhone 13 Pro: 1,740
iPhone 13 mini: 1,725
iPhone 12 Pro: 1,595
iPhone 12 mini: 1,594
iPhone 11 Pro: 1,335Geekbench 5 (multi-core)
iPhone 13 Pro: 4,794
iPhone 13 mini: 4,622
iPhone 12 Pro: 4,032
iPhone 12 mini: 4,094
iPhone 11 Pro: 3,390
Sony Xperia 1 III: 3,658As ever, we have to warn that
this theoretical improvement will
be far less noticeable in real-world
use, for the simple reason that the
12 mini’s A14 chip is comfortably
fast enough to run anything on the
App Store. I found the 13 mini slick
and responsive throughout testing,
but I feel exactly the same about my
12 and 12 Pro samples, and you’ll
probably be in the same position if
you’re still using an 11-series iPhone.
Rather, this is a question of future-
proofing: the A15 and A14 are both
very fast now, but the A15 will still
be fast for roughly a year longer than
the A14 as app developers gradually
introduce more demanding elements
to take advantage of the more
powerful hardware.GRAPHICS
Another difference between the
standard and Pro handsets this year
is the number of GPU cores they’re
equipped with: the 13 and 13 mini
have four, while the 13 Pro and 13 Pro
Max have five, and the latter are the
ones to go for if you want the absolute
best possible graphics performance.
But again, the 13 mini gives a great
account of itself in testing.
In the most demanding Aztec
Ruins (High) section of the GFXBench