YouTuber TechTablets has uploaded a video where he shows a iPhone 12 Pro running 3DMark Wild Life Stress Test. This stress test executes the Wild Life test that renders gaming scenes for one minute in a loop of twenty. So the device is under stress for twenty minutes, as if you would play a game. After that the results are shown, for the best loop score, lowest loop score and every other loop can also be seen if needed. Higher values are better.
Here are these values for iPhone 12 Pro.
Best loop score: 6621
Lowest loop score: 5042
Stability: 76.2 %
And here are the values from my test with my iPhone 11 Pro.
Best loop score: 7251
Lowest loop score: 5934
Stability: 81.8 %
So the 11 Pro is 8.69 % better when starting the benchmark and during thermal throttling the 11 Pro is around 15.03 % better in performance then the iPhone 12 Pro.
As shown the new iPhone 12 Pro has lower values then the one year old predecessor. Apple says that “A14 Bionic rockets past every other smartphone chip.” That’s maybe true for short tasks. But it looks like it does not fit for long term performance that is e.g. needed for gaming.
Apple says “A14 Bionic The only thing even close was our last chip.”, in long term performance it looks like the A13 Bionic is even better.
Apple says “Up to 50% faster CPU and GPU than any other smartphone chip”, for short loads this is maybe true, but it seems not for long loads like gaming.
Of course are the stress test values higher than for many other smartphones that are not from Apple, but as a user that wants to upgrade from a iPhone 11 Pro to a 12 Pro this is not practical at all. Especially for gamers.
I also found users in the Apple forum and on Reddit claiming that the new iPhone 12 gets hotter then every other iPhone before and that some gamers have lags and shutters in the games they are playing on their new iPhone 12. And they play the same games they played with their old iPhones that had not these problems.
So the question is, is this a bug in the iOS software? Will it be fixed? Or is it a hardware problem that can not be resolved? Is this a measure error? Can someone else reproduce these values? What will happen in a warm summer?
The support of the 3DMark Wild Life app told me that the app is already compatible and optimized for the iPhone 12 device family.
I already sent feedback to Apple concerning this performance problem.
I wanted to buy a 12 Pro Max on 6th of November but after finding all this crazy stuff on the internet I need to clarify this issue first. I play a lot with my iPhone and do not want to downgrade my performance by buying the newest iPhone for around 1334.45 Euro.
I also found battery test videos where you can see that the new iPhone 12 devices only have 3h gaming time compared to 7.5/6.5h for the iPhone 11 devices. It looks like the new Phone does not a good job on gaming. Maybe some games needs to be optimised or the operating system. If not it looks like the hardware design is not the best.
Of course if you don’t game that much or just game some causual games it should fit for you. But as a heavy 3D gamer, playing CODM, Genshin Impact or any newer heavy 3D game, it is a shame.
Update 1
An update of the 3DMark Wild Life app has arrived v1.0.215 with this in the release notes: “Improved compatibility with the latest devices and upcoming iOS updates.”. So maybe there was a problem with the old app version. I did a new Stress Test with my iPhone 11 Pro. Here are the results.
Best loop score: 7531
Lowest loop score: 6051
Stability: 80.4 %
Video: https://youtu.be/B3gd_kCc4LY
So the values are better as before. Now i’m waiting for result of the iPhone 12 Pro.
Update 2
Currently i only found values for the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
iPhone 12 Pro Max results:
Best loop score: 6654
Lowest loop score: 6109
Stability: 91.8 %
So the 11 Pro is 11.65 % better when starting the benchmark and during thermal throttling the 12 Pro Max is around 0.95 % better in performance then the iPhone 11 Pro. But the Max has a bigger body, so maybe it has more room to better distribute the heat. A better comparison would be the Pro. I look forward to see some results for it.
Another iPhone 12 Pro Max results:
Best loop score: 6591
Lowest loop score: 5637
Stability: 85.5 %
So the 11 Pro is 12.48 % better when starting the benchmark and during thermal throttling the 11 Pro is around 6.84 % better in performance then the iPhone 12 Pro Max. But the Max has a bigger body, so maybe it has more room to better distribute the heat. A better comparison would be the Pro. I look forward to see some results for it.
7531 (11 Pro) vs 6591 (12 Pro Max). 12.48 % difference. How can this be? Apple claims that the 12 has up to 50 % faster GPU. But this is 12.48 % lower! What is going on? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
