Home > Smartphone processors comparison > Kirin 9000 vs A14 Bionic – what's better?

Kirin 9000 vs A14 Bionic

Kirin 9000
VS
A14 Bionic
Kirin 9000
A14 Bionic

We compared the 8-core HiSilicon Kirin 9000 (Mali-G78 MP24) with the older 6-core Apple A14 Bionic (Apple A14 GPU) SoC. Here you will find the pros and cons of each chip, technical specs, and comprehensive tests in benchmarks, like AnTuTu and Geekbench.

  1. Review
  2. Differences
  3. Benchmarks
  4. AnTuTu v11
  5. GeekBench 6
  6. Gaming
  7. Specs
  8. Comments (32)

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
NanoReview Score
Overall chip score

Key Differences

Main differences and advantages of each chip
Pros of HiSilicon Kirin 9000
  • Performs 78% better in floating-point computations
  • Has 2 more cores
  • Supports 29% higher memory bandwidth (44 against 34.1 GB/s)
Pros of Apple A14 Bionic
  • Higher GPU frequency (~68%)
  • Shows better (up to 23%) AnTuTu 11 score – 1326K vs 1079K
  • Better instruction set architecture

Benchmarks

Performance tests in popular benchmarks
SoC:
Kirin 9000
vs
A14 Bionic

AnTuTu 11

The AnTuTu Benchmark measures CPU, GPU, RAM, and I/O performance in different scenarios
Kirin 9000
1079281
A14 Bionic +23%
1326975
CPU 370173 364692
GPU 275434 311592
Memory 158011 180518
UX 275663 470169
Total score 1079281 1326975
Samples Less than 3 [55 tests]
AnTuTu results from iOS and Android are not directly comparable! They won't affect NanoReview scores.
Submit your AnTuTu result

GeekBench 6

The GeekBench test shows raw single-threaded and multithreaded CPU performance
Single-Core Score
Kirin 9000
1262
A14 Bionic +66%
2095
Multi-Core Score
Kirin 9000
3507
A14 Bionic +51%
5297
Asset compression 146.1 MB/sec 182.6 MB/sec
HTML 5 Browser 90.8 pages/sec 110.6 pages/sec
PDF Renderer 113.9 Mpixels/sec 123.2 Mpixels/sec
Image detection 71.8 images/sec 104.9 images/sec
HDR 98.9 Mpixels/sec 164.1 Mpixels/sec
Background blur 11.8 images/sec 19.1 images/sec
Photo processing 29.7 images/sec 50.8 images/sec
Ray tracing 4.01 Mpixels/sec 5.36 Mpixels/sec
Samples 71 tests 22 tests
Compute Score (GPU)
Kirin 9000
7580
A14 Bionic +122%
16822
Background blur 11.8 images/sec 27.6 images/sec
Face detection 6.39 images/sec 35.2 images/sec
Horizon detection 0.24 Gpixels/sec 0.54 Gpixels/sec
Edge detection 0.52 Gpixels/sec 0.79 Gpixels/sec
Gaussian blur 0.38 Gpixels/sec 0.83 Gpixels/sec
Feature matching 0.11 Gpixels/sec 0.24 Gpixels/sec
Stereo matching 28.2 Gpixels/sec 50.5 Gpixels/sec
Particle physics 1164.8 FPS 1772.1 FPS
API Vulkan Metal
Samples - 17 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 - 2767
Stability - 85%
Graphics test - 11 FPS
Section 1 - 13 FPS
Section 2 - 10 FPS
Section 3 - 8 FPS
3DMark Wild Life Extreme
Kirin 9000
2062
A14 Bionic +8%
2229
Score 2062 2229
Stability 90% 86%
Graphics test 12 FPS 13 FPS

PCMark 3.0

Benchmark for evaluating overall system performance in everyday workloads
PCMark 3.0
Web score 5096 -
Video editing score 6152 -
Data manipulation score 6691 -
Photo editing score 16500 -
Writing score 8573 -

Gaming

Table of average FPS and graphics settings in mobile games
PUBG Mobile 81 FPS
[Ultra]		 -
Call of Duty: Mobile 44 FPS
[Ultra]		 -
Fortnite 29 FPS
[Low]		 -
World of Tanks Blitz 51 FPS
[Ultra]		 -
Genshin Impact 58 FPS
[Ultra]		 -
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang 60 FPS
[Ultra]		 -
Device Huawei Mate 40 Pro
1344 x 3140		 -
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
HiSilicon Kirin 9000
No benchmark results yet
Add
Apple A14 Bionic
DateBenchmarkResult
📘 2026-09-26 (kudryash)AnTuTu 111196958
📘 2026-08-04 (Stelle)AnTuTu 111288870
📘 2026-06-30 (Kirious)AnTuTu 111251875
📘 2026-06-30 (Kirious)AnTuTu 111251875
📘 2026-06-29 (Kirillkryt)AnTuTu 111284629
Add View all (77)

Specifications

Full list of technical specifications of Kirin 9000 and A14 Bionic

CPU

Architecture 1x 3.13 GHz – Cortex-A77
3x 2.54 GHz – Cortex-A77
4x 2.05 GHz – Cortex-A55		 2x 3.1 GHz – Firestorm
4x 1.8 GHz – Icestorm
Cores 8 6
Frequency 3130 MHz 3100 MHz
Instruction set ARMv8.2-A ARMv8.5-A
L1 cache - 128 KB
L2 cache - 8 MB
Process 5 nanometers 5 nanometers
Transistor count 15.3 billion 11.8 billion
TDP (Sustained Power Limit) 6 W 6 W
Manufacturing TSMC TSMC

Graphics

GPU name Mali-G78 MP24 Apple A14 GPU
Architecture Valhall 2nd gen Apple Bionic GPU
GPU frequency 759 MHz 1278 MHz
Pipelines 24 4
Shading units 32 64
Total shaders 768 256
FLOPS 1165.8 Gigaflops 654.3 Gigaflops
Vulkan version 1.3 -
OpenCL version 2.0 -

AI Accelerator

Neural processor (NPU) AI accelerator Apple Neural Engine
NPU theoretical performance - 11 TOPS

Memory

Memory type LPDDR5 LPDDR4X
Memory frequency 2750 MHz 2133 MHz
Bus 4x 16 Bit 4x 16 Bit
Max bandwidth 44 Gb/s 34.1 Gb/s
Max size 16 GB 6 GB

Multimedia (ISP)

Storage type UFS 3.1 NVMe
Max display resolution 3840 x 2160 2732 x 2048
Video capture 4K at 60FPS 4K at 60FPS
Video playback 4K at 60FPS 4K at 60FPS
Video codecs - H.264
- H.265
- VP9		 - H.264
- H.265
- 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 Balong 5000 -
4G support LTE Cat. 24 LTE Cat. 18
5G support Yes Yes
Download speed Up to 4600 Mbps Up to 7500 Mbps
Upload speed Up to 2500 Mbps Up to 2500 Mbps
Wi-Fi 6 6
Bluetooth 5.2 5.0
Navigation GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, NAVIC GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo

Info

Announced October 2020 September 2020
Class Flagship Flagship
Model number - APL1W01
Official page HiSilicon Kirin 9000 official site -
Successor - HiSilicon Kirin 9000S - Apple A19 Pro

Cast your vote

So, which SoC would you choose?
4243 (73.9%)
1497 (26.1%)
Total votes: 5740

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Comments

Please give your opinion on the comparison of A14 Bionic and Kirin 9000, or ask any questions
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Avatar
User February 20, 2021 at 10:59 PM
Everyone voting here for kirin is so biased. You guys who say kirin is better when so much info points the opposite direction. You guys yave an interesting way to see data
+68 Reply
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YesAppleFanHello June 8, 2021 at 11:46 PM
Are you sure about that one? Because they're almost tied chief
+1 Reply
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Josh June 10, 2021 at 05:02 PM
YesAppleFanHello, The way I see Apple won it even though Kirin is newer
0 Reply
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Good user September 15, 2021 at 08:24 AM
Actually in peak performance A14 shows as the winner But the twist comes here 9000 is the most stable flagship chipset for mobile 888/A14/2100 tends to throttle when heated up and doesn't recover when prolonged used on heating (especially 2100) But 9000 is different 9000 doesn't give the same powerfull performance as 888 or A14(very small margin) But even when it heats up it still produces the same output results While 888/A14/2100 tends to produce lower performance 9000 tends to produce the same stable performance for way longer than all Source-cpu throttle test; cpu test; benchmarks; over usage of cpu test ;(youtube and sites)
+11 Reply
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Hjbc83 December 11, 2020 at 01:10 AM
The Kirin 9000 is the best processor. Nothing compares to it.
+152 Reply
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Yeah December 31, 2020 at 11:24 AM
True that, Huawei is like the best it's just a shame this Google thing has clouded people's judgement.
+106 Reply
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ElectroDia January 8, 2021 at 02:44 PM
Yeah, Its googles partial fault that the a14 is in some cases still better, cause the many performance that goes alone to android (and of course to EMUI) too
+6 Reply
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brosky November 17, 2020 at 07:40 PM
apple fanboys wont understand that using 8 cores with higher average clock rate allows the phone to keep apps open to start instantly when you reopen it. it also allows incredible amounts of background applications.
+55 Reply
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levi November 21, 2020 at 06:33 AM
8 cores won’t necessarily mean it’s better. A14 is shows better battery saving and gaming performance, so it’s basically up to us consumers if we want processing of this kind of stuff or just speed with a higher clock rate (which is not an actual problem in 2020). And you don’t need to be an Apple fanboy to know it
+10 Reply
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DK... January 9, 2021 at 04:41 AM
levi, Its because it runs on iOS and not android a14 would fail if runs on android. It's shows better performance BC apple has optimized the software to get it's maximum use
+6 Reply
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Bro February 21, 2021 at 02:15 AM
More cores doesn’t mean that it’s better. It’s quality: the iPhone 12 Pro Max has for example 6 gb of ram while the Samsung S21 ultra has 12. But they both work really well. This means that while Apple has less ram it’s better than Samsung’s ones. Also the chip Apple always is the best. Including the new MacBooks M1 with its incredible potency.
+5 Reply
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Ssss July 19, 2021 at 10:08 PM
Bro, Play genshin impact in any iPhone 12 series around 1hour lol your average frame rate possibly be around 45fps in full HD resolution, even sd865 keeps 50+fps
+2 Reply
Avatar
Sis September 15, 2021 at 08:37 AM
Bro, "more core doesn't mean more performance" False and true , main performance are dependent on the single core while more cores will give more multi performance iPhone use lesser ram cause they are on a complete different software Android is unoptimized compared to IOS "This means that while apple has less ram it's better than Samsung's ones" No thats completely wrong ,phone Ram are pretty useless after certain point(both for IOS and Android) mobile apps doesn't consume much ram (eg pubgm consume average of 500-790mb ram) Even 6GB RAM with A14 will perform same as 8GB ram with A14 "Also apple chips always the best" No Performance stability is better in Kirin 9000 Better power consumption is better in Snapdragon 888 Currently 888 GPU is better but 2200 with AMD GPU is stated to be better than even A15 "The new MacBook m1" Are you comparing laptop here or chipset?
0 Reply
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Sans September 15, 2021 at 08:38 AM
Bro, New MacBook with M1 cpu Can't wait to play FORTNITE in 30FPS AT LOWEST SETTINGS XD
0 Reply
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ALL-IN November 6, 2020 at 06:31 PM
Huawei is using SFS 1.0 flash storage in Kirin 9000 devices. It is a memory they have developed and is significantly faster than UFS 3.1.
+83 Reply
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bruh January 17, 2021 at 05:46 AM
APPLE USES NVMe LMAO
0 Reply
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Billy February 11, 2021 at 06:52 PM
Yes, almost twice as fast.
0 Reply
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akenku November 2, 2020 at 02:44 PM
for me its hard to compare them, because they are not running the same OS. if there is a chance to run android on the A14, im pretty sure A14 wont handle android so well compared to kirin9000 or SD865.
+22 Reply
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mshibo November 6, 2020 at 02:05 AM
Actually, you've got a point where you mention how amazingly iOS is compatible with iPhones to that point where you understand that even with less hardware, you get better performance. For the whole 5 years! Unlike Android.
+4 Reply
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brosky November 17, 2020 at 07:34 PM
mshibo, actually, many android devices still have amazing performance, but yes, apple's light os and therefore weaker cpu has allowed them to get away with low specs and low ram. but android seems to be improving alot.
+8 Reply
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Apple November 1, 2020 at 10:58 AM
A14 is faster. Antutu even says you cant use antutu to test between ios and android. Only geekbench is made the same for ios and Android. A14 is still the most powerful chip out
+28 Reply
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brosky November 17, 2020 at 07:37 PM
its not the most powerful, in fact it has less cores and its efficiency cores are slower. its also not faster because its fast cores are slightly lower clock rate. the only reason it preforms well is because of apple's light operating system. apple also doesn't keep their applications running like Samsung for example, because apple doesn't have much ram.
+63 Reply
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Gshgs November 29, 2020 at 07:10 AM
But mate 40 pro & pro plus will perform faster & better than iPhone 12 pro max with their own harmony os.
+137 Reply
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Bruh December 5, 2020 at 08:48 PM
brosky, Did u even check the test comparisons? Lmao even when the outcomes clesrly show a14 is faster, you still deny it?
+3 Reply
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Yeah December 31, 2020 at 11:27 AM
And as a matter of fact Geekbench I'd said you be more Apple bias, not saying it is but that's what people say
+1 Reply
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Apple February 21, 2021 at 02:19 AM
brosky, If it has less cores doesn’t mean that it’s slower. Apple’s chips are more efficient as you see that it’s battery is smaller than others and it can compete with huawei’s battery life which has 4500 mah on their mate 40 pro while Apple only has about 3700 in his iPhone 12 pro Max
+6 Reply
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Apple February 21, 2021 at 02:20 AM
Gshgs, It is said that harmonyos is just a copy of Android because one people tried the beta version and discovered that the programmer has the initials of Android. It’s just a copy
+1 Reply
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God Of Technology October 25, 2020 at 02:53 AM
A14 is better in single core score. And that's the reason why it's better than any other mobile processor in the world right now.
+32 Reply
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brosky November 17, 2020 at 07:38 PM
that doesn't make it better. it cant keep applications open and even if it could it doesn't have enough ram.
+58 Reply
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anonymous November 21, 2020 at 09:48 AM
brosky, telling u, actually speed test from tech youtubers have shown that with 6 gb of ram, apple could open all apps comparef with 8 gb of ram in huawei
+8 Reply
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Gary November 25, 2020 at 10:14 PM
brosky, The iphone 12 has enough ram, it keeps all apps open, ehat are you talking about
+1 Reply
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Yeah December 31, 2020 at 11:32 AM
Gary , When you upload an Instagram story and you leave the app (without the story having finished uploading) and you do something else and go back to Instagram 5 mins or more later, THE STORY STILL HASN'T UPLOADED!!!!!
+1 Reply
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