Snapdragon 860 vs A15 Bionic

We compared the 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 860 (Adreno 640) with the newer 6-core Apple A15 Bionic (Apple A15 GPU) SoC. Here you will find the pros and cons of each chip, technical specs, and comprehensive tests in benchmarks, like AnTuTu and Geekbench.

Review

General comparison of performance, power consumption, and other indicators
CPU Performance
Single and multi-core processor tests
Gaming Performance
GPU performance in games and OpenCL/Vulkan
Battery life
Efficiency of battery consumption
DeviceFacts Score
Overall chip score

Key Differences

Main differences and advantages of each chip
Pros of Qualcomm Snapdragon 860
  • Has 2 more cores
Pros of Apple A15 Bionic
  • Higher GPU frequency (~2x)
  • Performs 65% better in floating-point computations
  • Shows significantly better (up to 72%) AnTuTu 11 score – 1413K vs 822K
  • Has a smaller size transistor (5 versus 7 nm)
  • 9% higher CPU clock speed (3230 vs 2960 MHz)
  • Better instruction set architecture

Benchmarks

Performance tests in popular benchmarks

AnTuTu 11

The AnTuTu Benchmark measures CPU, GPU, RAM, and I/O performance in different scenarios
A15 Bionic +72%
1413275
CPU 299294 410975
GPU 119740 370837
Memory 162141 164151
UX 241258 467312
Total score 822433 1413275
Samples [47 tests] [69 tests]
AnTuTu results from iOS and Android are not directly comparable! They won't affect DeviceFacts scores.

GeekBench 6

The GeekBench test shows raw single-threaded and multithreaded CPU performance
Single-Core Score
A15 Bionic +131%
2315
Multi-Core Score
A15 Bionic +117%
5753
Asset compression 122.6 MB/sec 208.1 MB/sec
HTML 5 Browser 70.8 pages/sec 122.9 pages/sec
PDF Renderer 85.4 Mpixels/sec 139.1 Mpixels/sec
Image detection 57.3 images/sec 125.1 images/sec
HDR 85.4 Mpixels/sec 179.4 Mpixels/sec
Background blur 8.45 images/sec 22.3 images/sec
Photo processing 22.8 images/sec 53.2 images/sec
Ray tracing 3.72 Mpixels/sec 6.26 Mpixels/sec
Samples 21 tests 37 tests
Compute Score (GPU)
A15 Bionic +583%
20400
Background blur 4.67 images/sec 35.4 images/sec
Face detection 2.01 images/sec 44.8 images/sec
Horizon detection 0.17 Gpixels/sec 0.62 Gpixels/sec
Edge detection 0.21 Gpixels/sec 0.82 Gpixels/sec
Gaussian blur 0.17 Gpixels/sec 0.84 Gpixels/sec
Feature matching 0.02 Gpixels/sec 0.3 Gpixels/sec
Stereo matching 9.94 Gpixels/sec 71.1 Gpixels/sec
Particle physics 512.2 FPS 2198.2 FPS
API OpenCL Metal
Samples 12 tests 19 tests
Compute results use different APIs (Metal vs Vulkan/OpenCL) and are not directly comparable!

3DMark

A cross-platform benchmark that assesses graphics performance in Vulkan (Metal)
3DMark Solar Bay
Score - 3765
Stability - 71%
Graphics test - 14 FPS
Section 1 - 19 FPS
Section 2 - 14 FPS
Section 3 - 9 FPS
3DMark Wild Life Extreme
A15 Bionic +192%
2854
Score 979 2854
Stability 91% 76%
Graphics test 5 FPS 17 FPS

PCMark 3.0

Benchmark for evaluating overall system performance in everyday workloads
PCMark 3.0
Web score 8774 -
Video editing score 6020 -
Data manipulation score 8724 -
Photo editing score 22475 -
Writing score 13390 -
Phones tested Less than 3 -

Gaming

Table of average FPS and graphics settings in mobile games
PUBG Mobile 58 FPS
[Ultra]
-
Call of Duty: Mobile 54 FPS
[Ultra]
-
Fortnite 26 FPS
[Low]
-
Shadowgun Legends 56 FPS
[Ultra]
-
World of Tanks Blitz 98 FPS
[Ultra]
-
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang 56 FPS
[Ultra]
-
Device Xiaomi Poco X3 Pro
1080 x 2400
-
We provide average results. FPS may differ, depending on game version, OS and other factors.

Recent User Tests

The latest benchmark tests that have been submitted by users
Qualcomm Snapdragon 860
DateBenchmarkResult
πŸ“˜ 2026-10-10 (Tanat)CPU Throttle94%
πŸ“˜ 2026-10-10 (Tanat)AnTuTu 11826051
πŸ“˜ 2026-10-04 -> BifothAnTuTu 12963448
πŸ“˜ 2026-10-04 (Bifoth)AnTuTu 12963448
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-15 (Mohammad Ali)AnTuTu 12932069
Apple A15 Bionic
DateBenchmarkResult
πŸ“˜ 2026-10-14 (Makkar)AnTuTu 111191717
πŸ“˜ 2026-10-12 -> HotPowerGeekbench 7 CPU2155 / 5548
πŸ“˜ 2026-10-07 (Hoz4ik)AnTuTu 111127460
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-25 -> op1Geekbench 6 CPU2168 / 4988
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-23 -> HotPowerAnTuTu 111184759

Specifications

Full list of technical specifications of Snapdragon 860 and A15 Bionic

CPU

Architecture 1x 2.96 GHz – Cortex-A76 (Kryo 485 Prime)
3x 2.42 GHz – Cortex-A76 (Kryo 485 Gold)
4x 1.8 GHz – Cortex-A55 (Kryo 485 Silver)
2x 3.23 GHz – Avalanche
4x 2.02 GHz – Blizzard
Cores 8 6
Frequency 2960 MHz 3230 MHz
Instruction set ARMv8.2-A ARMv8.5-A
L1 cache 512 KB 256 KB
L2 cache 1 MB 12 MB
L3 cache 2 MB -
Process 7 nanometers 5 nanometers
Transistor count 6.7 billion 15 billion
TDP (Sustained Power Limit) 6 W 6 W
Manufacturing TSMC TSMC

Graphics

GPU name Adreno 640 Apple A15 GPU
Architecture Adreno 600 Apple Bionic GPU
GPU frequency 675 MHz 1338 MHz
Pipelines 3 5
Shading units 256 128
Total shaders 768 640
FLOPS 1036.8 Gigaflops 1712.6 Gigaflops
Vulkan version 1.1 -
OpenCL version 2.0 -
DirectX version 12.1 -

AI Accelerator

Neural processor (NPU) Hexagon 690 Apple Neural Engine
NPU theoretical performance - 15.8 TOPS

Memory

Memory type LPDDR4X LPDDR4X
Memory frequency 2133 MHz 2133 MHz
Bus 4x 16 Bit 4x 16 Bit
Max bandwidth 34.13 Gb/s 34.1 Gb/s
Max size 16 GB 6 GB

Multimedia (ISP)

Storage type UFS 3.0, UFS 3.1 NVMe
Max display resolution 3840 x 2160 2732 x 2048
Max camera resolution 1x 192MP, 2x 22MP -
Video capture 4K at 120FPS 4K at 60FPS
Video playback 8K at 30FPS, 4K at 120FPS 4K at 60FPS
Video codecs - H.264
- H.265
- VP8
- VP9
- H.264
- H.265
- VP8
- VP9
- Motion JPEG
Audio codecs - AAC
- AIFF
- CAF
- MP3
- MP4
- WAV
- AAC
- AAX
- AAX+
- AC-3
- AIFF
- CAF
- E-AC-3
- MP3
- MP4
- WAV

Connectivity

Modem X24 LTE, X50 5G -
4G support LTE Cat. 20 LTE Cat. 24
5G support Yes Yes
Download speed Up to 5000 Mbps Up to 7500 Mbps
Upload speed Up to 1240 Mbps Up to 3000 Mbps
Wi-Fi 6 6
Bluetooth 5.1 5.0
Navigation GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS, SBAS GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS

Info

Announced April 2019 September 2021
Class Flagship Flagship
Model number SM8150-AC APL1W07
Official page Qualcomm Snapdragon 860 official site -
Successor - - Apple A19 Pro

Cast your vote

So, which SoC would you choose?
249 (48.7%)
262 (51.3%)
Total votes: 511

Comments

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