Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Ultra and Galaxy S22+ outpace all other Android phones we’ve tested on performance benchmarks, but Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 CPU lacks the raw processing power of Apple’s A15 chip in the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
This isn’t a huge surprise. It’s the same result as we saw when testing Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 reference device in December—while Qualcomm is making incremental steps forward on power, Apple is jumping ahead in leaps and bounds.
CPU and GPU performance benchmarks are only a small part of the smartphone experience, but they’re still a meaningful data point. While Qualcomm and others offload as many tasks as possible to other parts of their systems-on-chips, raw CPU and GPU performance affects tasks from video editing to gaming frame rates.
There is definitely improvement from last year’s Snapdragon 888 to this year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. We saw a 13% rise in Geekbench single-core scores and a 9% rise in Geekbench multi-core scores. On the GFXBench graphics benchmark, we saw an improvement of 20% or more depending on circumstances.
The Qualcomm processor’s Geekbench scores beat the Google Tensor chip in the Pixel 6, but didn’t match up to Apple’s iPhone 13 Pro Max.
On Basemark Web, a comprehensive web benchmark, the Galaxy S22 series scored about 8% better than the Galaxy S21 Ultra. But the iPhone 13 Pro Max got double any Samsung model’s score, as we’ve seen in the past, because of the differences between Apple’s Safari browser and the Google Chrome browser on Android phones.
Galaxy S22 Heating Issues?
I’m a bit concerned about the thermal throttling I saw on the Galaxy S22 Ultra. While running benchmarks, the phone quickly became warm, and as soon as it became warm it returned much lower results. A Geekbench result of 1,232 became 802 with a warm phone, and a GFXBench result of 28fps became 19fps.
I ran an app called CPU Throttling Test to get a better grip on that situation. It said the phone throttles to 75% performance after 15 minutes, with an average performance of 248kGips (billion instructions per second). Comparing the S22 Ultra and S22+ with the S21 Ultra and S21, I found the newer phones definitely throttle harder, as shown in the image below.
It’s not clear to me whether this is a hardware or software issue. The Galaxy S21 FE uses the same chipset as the S21, for example, and the FE throttles considerably harder. It’s worth keeping an eye on whether firmware updates improve this issue.
We’re working on our full Galaxy S22 reviews now. Earlier this week, we looked at the S22’s new modem, which is noticeably better at holding on to weak cellular signals than last year’s model. Check back soon for more test results.
