Snapdragon 625 vs A12 Bionic

We compared the 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 (Adreno 506) with the newer 6-core Apple A12 Bionic (Apple A12 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 Qualcomm Snapdragon 625
  • Has 2 more cores
Pros of Apple A12 Bionic
  • Performs 9.2x better in floating-point computations
  • Supports 357% higher memory bandwidth (34.1 against 7.46 GB/s)
  • Shows significantly better (up to 4.1x) AnTuTu 11 score – 895K vs 218K
  • Has a smaller size transistor (7 versus 14 nm)
  • Higher GPU frequency (~73%)
  • 25% higher CPU clock speed (2490 vs 2000 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
A12 Bionic +309%
895627
CPU 93844 309104
GPU 14096 144993
Memory 46390 139578
UX 64549 301952
Total score 218879 895627
Samples Less than 3 Less than 3
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
A12 Bionic +597%
1318
Multi-Core Score
A12 Bionic +264%
3134
Asset compression 62.9 MB/sec 116.8 MB/sec
HTML 5 Browser 27.2 pages/sec 59.4 pages/sec
PDF Renderer 27.4 Mpixels/sec 71.7 Mpixels/sec
Image detection 9.55 images/sec 23.7 images/sec
HDR 26.5 Mpixels/sec 98.7 Mpixels/sec
Background blur 1.19 images/sec 11.2 images/sec
Photo processing 6.81 images/sec 36.1 images/sec
Ray tracing 1.67 Mpixels/sec 3.49 Mpixels/sec
Samples 3 tests 5 tests
Compute Score (GPU)
Background blur - 16.1 images/sec
Face detection - 19.2 images/sec
Horizon detection - 0.26 Gpixels/sec
Edge detection - 0.39 Gpixels/sec
Gaussian blur - 0.73 Gpixels/sec
Feature matching - 0.12 Gpixels/sec
Stereo matching - 24.1 Gpixels/sec
Particle physics - 608.2 FPS
API - Metal
Samples - Less than 3
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 Wild Life Extreme
Score - 1482
Stability - 65%
Graphics test - 8 FPS

PCMark 3.0

Benchmark for evaluating overall system performance in everyday workloads
PCMark 3.0
Web score 4980 -
Video editing score 5558 -
Data manipulation score 3713 -
Photo editing score 7746 -
Writing score 4130 -

Recent User Tests

The latest benchmark tests that have been submitted by users
Qualcomm Snapdragon 625
No benchmark results yet
Apple A12 Bionic
DateBenchmarkResult
📘 2026-09-16 -> op1Geekbench 6 CPU1344 / 4757
📘 2026-07-31 (Дима)AnTuTu 11644981
📘 2026-06-27 -> USAball386Geekbench 6 GPU7868
📘 2026-06-27 -> USAball386Geekbench 6 CPU1306 / 2770
📘 2026-05-12 -> GiahuyAnTuTu 11756483

Specifications

Full list of technical specifications of Snapdragon 625 and A12 Bionic

CPU

Architecture 8x 2 GHz – Cortex-A53 2x 2.49 GHz – Vortex
4x 1.6 GHz – Tempest
Cores 8 6
Frequency 2000 MHz 2490 MHz
Instruction set ARMv8-A ARMv8.3-A
L1 cache - 128 KB
L2 cache - 8 MB
Process 14 nanometers 7 nanometers
Transistor count 2 billion 6.9 billion
TDP (Sustained Power Limit) 5 W 6 W
Manufacturing Samsung TSMC

Graphics

GPU name Adreno 506 Apple A12 GPU
Architecture Adreno 500 Apple Bionic GPU
GPU frequency 650 MHz 1125 MHz
Pipelines 1 4
Shading units 48 64
Total shaders 48 256
FLOPS 62.4 Gigaflops 576 Gigaflops
Vulkan version 1.0 -
OpenCL version 2.0 -
DirectX version 11 -

AI Accelerator

Neural processor (NPU) Hexagon 546 Neural Engine

Memory

Memory type LPDDR3 LPDDR4X
Memory frequency 933 MHz 2133 MHz
Bus 1x 32 Bit 4x 16 Bit
Max bandwidth 7.46 Gb/s 34.1 Gb/s
Max size 8 GB 4 GB

Multimedia (ISP)

Storage type eMMC 5.1 NVMe
Max display resolution 1900 x 1200 2688 x 1242
Max camera resolution 1x 24MP, 2x 13MP 1x 32MP, 2x 12MP
Video capture 4K at 30FPS 4K at 60FPS
Video playback 4K at 30FPS 4K at 60FPS
Video codecs - H.264
- H.265
- H.264
- H.265
- Motion JPEG
Audio codecs - AIFF
- CAF
- MP3
- MP4
- WAV
- AAC
- AAC‑LC
- AAX и AAX+
- Apple Lossless
- HE‑AAC
- HE‑AAC v2
- Linear PCM
- MP3

Connectivity

Modem X9 Intel XMM 7560
4G support LTE Cat. 7 LTE Cat. 18
5G support No No
Download speed Up to 300 Mbps Up to 1000 Mbps
Upload speed Up to 150 Mbps Up to 350 Mbps
Wi-Fi 5 5
Bluetooth 4.2 5.0
Navigation GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS, SBAS GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo

Info

Announced February 2016 September 2018
Class Mid range Flagship
Model number MSM8953 APL1W81
Official page Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 official site -
Successor - - Apple A19 Pro

Cast your vote

So, which SoC would you choose?
9 (25%)
27 (75%)
Total votes: 36

Comments

Please give your opinion on the comparison of A12 Bionic and Snapdragon 625, or ask any questions
🌐 Register your profile and become part of NanoReview community!