We Already Know How Much Faster the IPhone 17 Is
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The iPhone 17 series is no longer just a rumor. At yesterday’s ” Awe Dropping ” event, Apple unveiled four new iPhones: the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max.
All four models use the new A19 chipset, though different models have different versions: the iPhone 17 uses the base A19, while the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max use the A19 Pro. The iPhone Air has an A19 Pro, but it’s a “ depended ” chip. There’s a long explanation of what that means, but the short version is that the Air uses a weaker version of the A19 Pro, so it’s not as powerful as the version found in the Pro.
While Apple often touts the power of its newest iPhones, the company never really breaks it down, especially during its big launches. The company likes to compare new iPhones to any older models, for example, by claiming that the A19 chip in the iPhone 17 is 1.5 times faster than the A15 Bionic in the iPhone 13. However, Apple doesn’t usually publish exact numbers for direct performance comparisons. For that, we turn to benchmarks.
Benchmarks offer a standardized way to test a chip’s central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) and compare their performance to other chips. Geekbench is a popular benchmarking tool that tests several different parameters: performance of tasks that require a single CPU core; performance of tasks that require multi-core resources; and a “Metal” test that measures GPU performance.
When you run a benchmark through Geekbench, the results are published to the site’s database. This means that once a new device is announced, it will be some time before it appears there. As GSMArena reports , it appears that some benchmarks have already been run on the A19 and A19 Pro. These tests give us a preview of the new chips’ performance and how much Apple has improved them over previous generations — at least on paper.
Since the phones and iOS 26 itself aren’t officially out yet, take these numbers with a grain of salt. Here are the preliminary results.
iPhone 17
The A19 chip, which is newly installed in the iPhone 17, scored 3,608 in the single-core test and 8,810 in the multi-core test. This is 8% higher than the iPhone 16 ’s single-core score (3,317) and 7% higher than the iPhone 16’s multi-core score (8,198). The A19 GPU scored 37,014 in the Metal test, which is more than 33% higher than the iPhone 16’s score (27,702). The test results show that the iPhone 17 has 8GB of RAM.
iPhone Air
The iPhone Air is powered by an A19 chip with a six-core CPU and five-core GPU — one core less than the iPhone 17 Pro, as that’s the chip selected for testing. GSMArena reports that it scored 3,674 in the single-core test and 8,824 in the multi-core test. That’s not much more than the standard A19, though the results show that Apple has packed four gigabytes more RAM into the Air than the iPhone 17.
As for the GPU, the Air scored 37,743 in the Metal test, which is just under 2% higher than the A19. While you’ll likely notice some performance gains if you’re using an iPhone 16 or even 16 Pro (more on that below), the Air isn’t going to beat the 17 by much, even with its A19 Pro.
iPhone 17 Pro
While the A19 Pro chip in the iPhone Air seems to be only slightly better than the A19 in the iPhone 17, the 17 Pro is starting to show some of the edge, at least in the GPU department. The A19 Pro in the iPhone 17 Pro scored 3,523 in the single-core test and 9,028 in the multi-core test. That’s a lower single-core score and only slightly higher multi-core, which is certainly interesting. In theory, the less powerful A19 and A19 Pro chips could perform slightly better in single-core tasks, while the Pro could slightly outperform them in multi-core tasks.
Things get interesting when it comes to the A19 Pro’s GPU, however: The chip scored 44,342 in Metal, which is 17% higher than the iPhone Air and nearly 20% better than the iPhone 17. That’s not all that surprising, considering the Pro has six graphics cores to the Air’s five. Compare that to the iPhone 16 Pro’s scores of 3,447 in single-core, 8,576 in multi-core, and 32,673 in Metal. That’s just a 2% increase in single-core and 5% in multi-core, but more than 35% in Metal. Not a bad boost.
iPhone 17 Pro Max
If you want the best performance from an iPhone, the Pro Max is usually the best choice. It looks like the 17 Pro Max is no exception: According to preliminary Geekbench results, the A19 Pro chip in the 17 Pro Max scored 3,781 in single-core, 9,679 in multi-core, and 45,657 in Metal. These are, of course, the highest scores of any 17-series iPhone. The single-core score isn’t much better than other phones, and the difference in multi-core is small, too: the most significant difference between the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro Max is just under 9%.
Still, the Metal score is quite impressive. It’s less than 3% better than the 17 Pro, but almost 21% better than the Air, and more than 23% better than the iPhone 17. We see an improvement over the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which scored 3,430 in single-core, 8,502 in multi-core, and 32,665 in Metal. That’s 10% better in single-core, almost 14% better in multi-core, and almost 40% better in Metal. There’s no denying that the 17 Pro Max is the better phone in terms of graphics potential.
You can search for any iPhone model in the Geekbench database and compare its results with the early iPhone 17 results presented here. Obviously, the older the model, the bigger the gain will be. By the way, comparing the iPhone 17 to the iPhone 13 shows a performance gain of 71% in single-core and 79% in multi-core tests – this is not quite the 150% that Apple claims. Perhaps there is something missing in the early results, or Apple uses a different internal metric. We’ll see when testers test the released iPhones with the public build of iOS 26.