Don’t Get Caught Up on the Number of Cores in Your Smartphone Processor

When it comes to the world of technology, companies are certainly no stranger to spec wars. They’re always working to outdo one another on paper, because actual numbers translate into quantifiable bragging rights. The problem is that supposed better specs don’t always translate to better performance and the number of cores that your smartphone processor has is no exception to this.

Perhaps a prime example of this is the Apple A9 processor found inside the current iPhone 6s. According to some benchmarks posted by a random Weibo user, that chip is outperforming processors set to make their debut in Android phones next year: the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 and the Samsung Exynos 8990. Both of those chips are expected to power variants of the Samsung Galaxy S7.

The thing is that the A9 processor is still just a dual core, while much of the latest architecture coming out from other companies are going quad-core or even octa-core. The A9 handily beats other chips in the single-core tests in Geekbench 3 where the number of cores doesn’t really matter. Is this a fair comparison? That’s up to you to decide.

Even so, you may have also noticed that the new iPad Pro is powered by the new A9X processor, which is also dual core. That’s one fewer core than the 3-core A8X that powers the iPad Air 2, but it’s actually faster and more powerful.

Specs are nice and all, but don’t get caught up in them. Just as the number of megapixels in your camera don’t determine image quality, the number of cores in your smartphone processor don’t necessarily reflect in better performance either.

Via BGR