The Apple A15 SoC Performance Review: Faster & More Efficient
by Andrei Frumusanu on October 4, 2021 9:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Apple
- Smartphones
- Apple A15
Conclusion & End Remarks
Today’s investigation into the new A15 is just scratching the tip of the iceberg of what Apple has to offer in the new generation iPhone 13 series devices. As we’re still working on the full device review, we got a good glimpse of what the new silicon is able to achieve, and what to expect from the new devices in terms of performance.
On the CPU side of things, Apple’s initial vague presentation of the new A15 improvements could either have resulted in disappointment, or simply a more hidden shift towards power efficiency rather than pure performance. In our extensive testing, we’re elated to see that it was actually mostly an efficiency focus this year, with the new performance cores showcasing adequate performance improvements, while at the same time reducing power consumption, as well as significantly improving energy efficiency.
The efficiency cores of the A15 have also seen massive gains, this time around with Apple mostly investing them back into performance, with the new cores showcasing +23-28% absolute performance improvements, something that isn’t easily identified by popular benchmarking. This large performance increase further helps the SoC improve energy efficiency, and our initial battery life figures of the new 13 series showcase that the chip has a very large part into the vastly longer longevity of the new devices.
In the GPU side, Apple’s peak performance improvements are off the charts, with a combination of a new larger GPU, new architecture, and the larger system cache that helps both performance as well as efficiency.
Apple’s iPhone component design seems to be limiting the SoC from achieving even better results, especially the newer Pro models, however even with that being said and done, Apple remains far above the competition in terms of performance and efficiency.
Overall, while the A15 isn’t the brute force iteration we’ve become used to from Apple in recent years, it very much comes with substantial generational gains that allow it to be a notably better SoC than the A14. In the end, it seems like Apple’s SoC team has executed well after all.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
204 Comments
View All Comments
Calin - Tuesday, October 5, 2021 - link
There are plenty of Android phones with batteries around 5,000 mAh. However, I only remember one at 6,000 mAh and none higher than that.All in all, anything more than about 18-20 hours of actual battery life is excessive (considering the size and weight penalty versus actual time you could use it between recharges).
gund8912 - Monday, October 11, 2021 - link
I care about battery line not size of the battery.markiz - Monday, October 11, 2021 - link
They really don't. They have been at the bottom of any list for many years now, compared to other high end phones, and even more so compared to some cheaper phones.13 series does seem like a significant improvement though.
michael2k - Friday, October 15, 2021 - link
Very significant:https://www.anandtech.com/show/17004/apples-iphone...
akdj - Wednesday, February 16, 2022 - link
???I know I’m late to the party but whaaaa…?
As an owner of both, and since 2007 - it’s been a long time since I’ve seen/had/read about Android beating iPhone in any sort of battery or power longevity test… in real world usage.
And I believe there’s a limit to the size of battery allowed in a cell phone if you need or want to fly with it.
If I recall correctly it was, maybe still is 4,000mAh but I could be wrong
That said, the 11, 12, and now 13 Pro Max’s I’ve owned have eaten the S20, S21 Ultra and the Pix6 for lunch when it comes to measuring battery life.
I only mention these because I owned them simultaneously with each other and used them similarly so I speak from experience
That said, I don’t think it’s hard to believe a low powered cheap/burner Android phone has decent battery life. It probably forgoes a lot of radio power, cell bands and Wi-Fi options/radios. No NFC, LTE only with just local frequencies, maybe even 3g. A/B/G, maybe N Wi-Fi, small display and no always on. No storage for apps that eat your bandwidth and in turn your battery. Dim displays, tired SOCs, little RAM, little storage, and with the lack of power storage and memory comes the lack of desire to play games, buy decent apps, or even watch movies.
So sure, you might get a couple extra standby hours on a cheap Android but not a flagship option. I think my S21U had 12GB RAM! That’s insane and needs continued low voltage to maintain the info on your immediate random access memory!
The only options I’ve seen that truly do compete with the iPhone energy wise are either not available in America (only our problem), in some case Europe or are just not readily available in many western carriers.
And the flagships are usually neck and neck until the recent iPhone updates (since it seems the X/XS or 11 series) where they have just taken over with few exceptions that are hard if not impossible to find - even worse to get support.
Apple’s chip design is a massive achievement, and I believe one we’ve just begun to see the fruits of that labor. EG; M1/M1 Pr/M1 Max and soon to release M2’s architecture and the scaling used from the iPhone silicon to the Mac Pros.
Just the beginning… and if you want to game, all ya need now is an Xbox, leave the rest of the Wind-blows in the rear view (I’m playing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2021 on the series X and I have a desktop rig with a 3080. I notice almost no difference between them - Other than options for third party upgrades, liveries and high density airports - I believe will be here sooner than later on Xbox. As it, too, is running Windows at its core.
Why chase three and four thousand dollar gaming rigs when they offer a $500 box that every Tom Dick and Henry the developers will be targeting the next several years?
Makes little to no sense. Not even in productivity or code compilation.
Sure, Alder Lake unlocked and a 3090 ($2500-$3000 if you can find one, GPU only) can best the MacBook Pro M1 Max, but not by much (games aside, remember the Xbox) in the benchmarks or actual software that was tested for making and printing money - ala Photoshop, Premier and After Effects, Audition and FCP/Logic - massive spreadsheets or huge RAW file batch processing in Lightroom, not only does the M1 crush in the laptop realm but it’s a monster on the iPhone 12/13 and the 2021 iPad with M1! And you don’t need to worry, your battery will last all day
Ppietra - Monday, October 4, 2021 - link
You can see that S21U at 8.3W only achieves 120 fps, almost the same as the A15 at 3W.melgross - Monday, October 4, 2021 - link
You seem to be just making things up. Apple’s new phones are getting excellent battery life according to every review, with the 13 Pro Max being given the top rating for battery life.18,000mAh battery? What phone has that?
emn13 - Monday, October 4, 2021 - link
The largest battery I can find is the one: "doogee s88 pro" which is "just" 10000mAh.However, even if deil is exaggerating, there is a kernel of truth to the battery life complaints, and that's due to idle power draw, which apparently is not as great.
gsmarena (link unfortunately removed to satisfy the absurd anandtech spam detector) has a battery life estimator, based on a sliding scales of how much legacy calling/web browsing/video watching you do, but critically it includes the standby power draw, and apple devices are nowhere near the top. The best rated is still the 11 Pro Max, which beats the 13 and 13 pro by a considerable margin.
But even vs. more normally battery-endowed androids (which often still tend to have 4000mAh+ batteries) although the iphone fare OK, they're nothing special. The
Sony Xperia 10 III scores particularly well (probably because it's much slower), at 137h vs. the iphone 13's 89h.
But you can fiddle the sliders to your hearts content. The higher your active usage, the better apple does, but even the most extreme users will likely see longer battery life on the more efficiently tuned androids.
Course, there are also androids that do a lot worse, mind you; it's just that apples phenomenal efficiency under load doesn't translate trivially to battery life because the batteries are still quite small, and perhaps because standby draw isn't anything particularly great.
The Garden Variety - Monday, October 4, 2021 - link
There actually was an 18,000mAh phone. It was made by Energizer (yeah, that one) and called the Power Max P18K Pop. Announced in 2019, offered for sale only in Europe, dunno if it's still available. Some quick Googling would say no. Oh, and it was the size of a particularly beefy paperback book.FunBunny2 - Monday, October 4, 2021 - link
Oh, and it was the size of a particularly beefy paperback book.dredge up a lower brain stem memory, OK! there was a flashback scene in a late "X Files" where Mulder pulls one of the vewy, vewy early mobiiiile phones from his trench coat. you remember, the ones the size of a baseball bat?