Kirin 9030 Pro vs A16 Bionic

We compared the 9-core HiSilicon Kirin 9030 Pro (Maleoon 935) with the older 6-core Apple A16 Bionic (Apple A16 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
NanoReview Score
Overall chip score

Key Differences

Main differences and advantages of each chip
Pros of HiSilicon Kirin 9030 Pro
  • Performs 60% better in floating-point computations
  • Has 3 more cores
  • Supports 50% higher memory bandwidth (76.8 against 51.2 GB/s)
  • Shows better (up to 6%) AnTuTu 11 score – 1725K vs 1626K
Pros of Apple A16 Bionic
  • Higher GPU frequency (~50%)
  • 26% higher CPU clock speed (3460 vs 2750 MHz)
  • Has a smaller size transistor (4 versus 5 nm)
  • 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
1725229
1626008
CPU 515961 432740
GPU 484107 490354
Memory 431535 216774
UX 293626 486140
Total score 1725229 1626008
Samples Less than 3 [36 tests]
AnTuTu results from iOS and Android are not directly comparable! They won't affect NanoReview scores.

GeekBench 6

The GeekBench test shows raw single-threaded and multithreaded CPU performance
Single-Core Score
A16 Bionic +93%
2631
Multi-Core Score
A16 Bionic +28%
6602
Asset compression 197.7 MB/sec 234.4 MB/sec
HTML 5 Browser 169.1 pages/sec 155.2 pages/sec
PDF Renderer 168.6 Mpixels/sec 157.5 Mpixels/sec
Image detection 115.1 images/sec 149.7 images/sec
HDR 166.1 Mpixels/sec 202.6 Mpixels/sec
Background blur 19.3 images/sec 25.9 images/sec
Photo processing 60.4 images/sec 76.8 images/sec
Ray tracing 6.14 Mpixels/sec 6.74 Mpixels/sec
Samples Less than 3 24 tests
Compute Score (GPU)
A16 Bionic +184%
22851
Background blur 10.6 images/sec 39.5 images/sec
Face detection 5.64 images/sec 50.9 images/sec
Horizon detection 0.33 Gpixels/sec 0.73 Gpixels/sec
Edge detection 0.44 Gpixels/sec 1.05 Gpixels/sec
Gaussian blur 0.71 Gpixels/sec 1.22 Gpixels/sec
Feature matching 0.05 Gpixels/sec 0.29 Gpixels/sec
Stereo matching 36.9 Gpixels/sec 70.4 Gpixels/sec
Particle physics 608.9 FPS 2162.5 FPS
API Vulkan Metal
Samples Less than 3 12 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 - 4266
Stability - 74%
Graphics test - 16 FPS
Section 1 - 20 FPS
Section 2 - 16 FPS
Section 3 - 12 FPS
3DMark Wild Life Extreme
Score - 3335
Stability - 71%
Graphics test - 19 FPS

Recent User Tests

The latest benchmark tests that have been submitted by users
HiSilicon Kirin 9030 Pro
No benchmark results yet
Apple A16 Bionic
DateBenchmarkResult
πŸ“˜ 2026-09-14 (ZUSEPRO)AnTuTu1603687
πŸ“˜ 2026-08-31 (LORDroid)AnTuTu1445126
πŸ“˜ 2026-08-16 (Ronaldo)AnTuTu1626008
πŸ“˜ 2026-08-15 (Julian Ludwig)GeekBench GPU24336
πŸ“˜ 2026-08-15 (Julian Ludwig)GeekBench CPU2615 / 6477

Specifications

Full list of technical specifications of Kirin 9030 Pro and A16 Bionic

CPU

Architecture 1x 2.75 GHz – Taishan v124 Big
4x 2.27 GHz – Taishan v124 Mid
4x 1.72 GHz – Taishan v124 Little
2x 3.46 GHz – Everest
4x 2.02 GHz – Sawtooth
Cores 9 6
Frequency 2750 MHz 3460 MHz
Instruction set ARMv8-A ARMv8.6-A
L1 cache - 256 KB
L2 cache 2 MB 16 MB
L3 cache 12 MB -
Process 5 nanometers 4 nanometers
Transistor count - 16 billion
TDP (Sustained Power Limit) - 8 W
Manufacturing SMIC TSMC

Graphics

GPU name Maleoon 935 Apple A16 GPU
Architecture Maleoon Apple Bionic GPU
GPU frequency 933 MHz 1398 MHz
Pipelines 6 5
Shading units 256 128
Total shaders 1536 640
FLOPS 2866.1 Gigaflops 1789.4 Gigaflops
Vulkan version 1.3 -
OpenCL version 3.0 -
DirectX version 12 -

AI Accelerator

Neural processor (NPU) Da Vinci Apple Neural Engine
NPU theoretical performance - 17 TOPS

Memory

Memory type LPDDR5X LPDDR5
Memory frequency 4800 MHz 3200 MHz
Bus 4x 16 Bit 4x 16 Bit
Max bandwidth 76.8 Gb/s 51.2 Gb/s
Max size 16 GB 6 GB

Multimedia (ISP)

Storage type UFS 4.0, UFS 4.1 NVMe
Max display resolution 3840 x 2160 2796 x 1290
Max camera resolution - 1x 48MP
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
- 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 Balong 6000 -
4G support LTE Cat. 24 LTE Cat. 24
5G support Yes Yes
Download speed Up to 7500 Mbps Up to 7500 Mbps
Upload speed Up to 3500 Mbps Up to 3500 Mbps
Wi-Fi 7 6
Bluetooth 6.0 5.3
Navigation GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS, NAVIC GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS

Info

Announced November 2025 September 2022
Class Flagship Flagship
Model number - APL1W10
Successor - - Apple A19 Pro

Cast your vote

So, which SoC would you choose?
11 (52.4%)
10 (47.6%)
Total votes: 21

Comments

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