Samsung’s Upcoming Galaxy Note 10 Will Still Be Slower Than Last Year’s iPhone

Samsung is likely just about a week away from officially debuting its new Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy Note 10+ flagships.

A plethora of details about the Note 10 lineup has already been leaked, including the fact that it’ll sport a hole-punch camera design, a triple-lens rear camera, and up to 12GB of RAM. But aside from those specs, it wasn’t clear how fast the Note 10 would be.

Now, thanks to a fairly accurate smartphone leaker, we may have an answer. In short, the Note 10 devices will be speedy for Androids — but they still won’t be able to beat last year’s iPhone.

Good, But Not iPhone Good

On Monday, Twitter user Sudhanshu Ambhore shared alleged Geekbench benchmark test scores for one of the upcoming devices in the Galaxy Note 10 lineup.

Based on the listing, it appears that the device packs an Exynos 9825 SoC and 12GB of RAM. That indicates that it could be the Note 10+, since past rumors suggest that the larger Note 10’s base tier would include 12GB of memory.

But what about the benchmarks? Well, the device in the listing scored a single-core score of 4,532 and a multi-core score of 10,431. That’s actually really impressive for an Android device — in fact, it’s one of the highest scores achieved by an Android smartphone to date.

But compare them to the latest iPhone and things go downhill for the Note 10. The iPhone XS Max, for example, achieved a single-core score of 4,798 and a multi-core score of 11,216.

To be fair to the Galaxy Note 10, these scores may not represent the device’s final performance when they hit the market. Many times, phone makers wait until the last minute to fully optimize their handsets and the software that they run.

But, as we’ll get to below, there’s a pretty good chance that the benchmark stats are accurate.

Apple’s Performance

The iPhone XS, XS Max and XR were the fastest smartphones on the market when they debuted last year. That’s a title they’ve managed to hold onto, just about a full year later. Of course, for Apple fans, this probably isn’t news.

Apple’s devices routinely outperform their Android counterparts for a variety of reasons. For one, Apple’s A-series chips are seriously impressive. And because Apple maintains tight control over both the software and hardware of its iPhones, it’s able to optimize both to work seamlessly together.

Again, the Galaxy Note 10 couldn’t beat last year’s Apple flagship in terms of benchmark performance. Apple is going to release a new iPhone with a new processor this year.

If history is any indication, it’s again going to be the fastest smartphone on the market. And it may just stay that way until this time next year.