iPhone 7 Benchmarks: Apple’s new A10 chip to be as powerful as the iPad Pro?

With less than two months to go until Apple debuts the iPhone 7, we’ve already got a pretty good idea of what to expect from the upcoming handset.
From a new black colour scheme, to the demise of the headphone jack, the sheer volume of leaks has revealed all manner of detail about the next iPhone iteration.
And now it seems we’ve got some benchmark results to add to the cavalcade of leaks and rumours – at least according to TechTastic.
With Apple reportedly readying a new A10 soc, many have been eagerly awaiting some performance specs, and today’s ‘leak’ seems to confirm the new phone will be faster than its predecessor, the iPhone 6S. But, as it turns out, not by much.
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If the Geekbench results, spotted in a Weibo post, are to believed, the iPhone 7 managed a single-core score of 3,000.
That’s about 18% higher than the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus which, with their A9 chips, usually manage around 2,500 in the same test (the 6S Plus came in with a score of 2,465 in our single-core Geekbench test).
As the report points out, early comparisons between the A8 and A9 yielded a similarly slight advantage for the newer chip, so things could change between now and the iPhone 7’s final release.
Indeed, the A9 ended up being around 43% faster than its predecessor, as opposed to the 18% improvement these latest results suggest for the A10.
What’s more, the Geekbench scores seem to indicate the A10 is very slightly less powerful than the A9X soc that powers the iPad Pro and 9.7-inch iPad Pro, which managed a score of 3,010.
Related: iPhone 7 images, pictures and concepts: What will the new iPhone look like?
The iPhone 6S’s benchmark scores aren’t far off the purported iPhone 7 stats
Interestingly, the Weibo post claims the new chip will also be dual-core, instead of the hexa-core processor many were expecting.
It’s been two years since Apple introduced a major upgrade to its iPhone lineup, and many were expecting the iPhone 7 to be another big overhaul.
But as the release came closer, it became apparent that the company was likely saving major changes for next year’s iPhone 8.
All of which seems to tie in with the less than impressive performance boost today’s Geekbench results suggest, although things could change a lot by the time the phone arrives in September.
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