The newly-released iPhone 7 is one of the most powerful smartphones released this year, but did you also know that it's actually a lot more powerful than other notable computers? Truth be told, it's more powerful than both the MacBook Air and the 2013 MacBook Pro.
This evaluation comes from John Gruber, who notes that the iPhone 7 pretty much leaves every other smartphone in the dust with regards to performance, achieving a single-core score of 3,450 on Geekbench, which is around twice the score as the second-best device, the Samsung Galaxy S7.
The iPhone 7 is more powerful than the Mac
It's only recently that we have even been able to compare smartphones and PCs. Beforehand, there wasn't an immediate comparison between Geekbench's scores for desktop and mobile devices, yet Geekbench has made a recent effort to bring two scoring systems with each other to make for easier comparison.
The Catch
Still, there are a couple of things to keep in mind when it comes to benchmarks. It should be noted that benchmark scores are indicators of a phone's perceived performance, but they don't always line up with real-world results. In fact, manufacturers can sometimes optimize how a phone runs to achieve higher benchmark scores while leaving real-world performance behind. The other thing to keep in mind is that Geekbench measures things like CPU speed, but the amount of RAM and SSD speed will help make the MacBook perform a lot faster.
The iPhone 7 dominates all smartphones (as of the moment)
Still, that doesn't take away from the fact that the iPhone 7 is truly the most powerful smartphone ever, and whether the iPhone 7 is more powerful than MacBooks or not, it's still noteworthy. Other smartphone producers will probably be playing catch up for at least the next few months or so. It will be interesting to see how Android handsets compare to the iPhone 7 once the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 begins shipping on devices.
