AnTuTu’s monthly report on the world’s most powerful Android phones is out and (like a month ago) the top is dominated by the phone-based new Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. The benchmark team warns that this won’t be long now that the 8 Gen 2 is around the corner.
The team also points out that the gaming phone market remains small. However, their superior cooling hardware allows them to beat generalist flagships in raw performance.
The Asus ROG Phone 6 “ remains at the top, especially the 16/512 GB configuration. Note that this is the non-Pro model. It is followed by the iQOO 9T second and third is interesting – the Red Magic 7 (non-S, non-Pro) with the original Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which uses the . for stays Xiaomi 12S Ultra (which does have the 8+ chip).
Top-performing Dimensity 9000-based model (and only non-Snapdragon phone on the list) remains the foundation vivo X80. Note that AnTuTu averages multiple results and takes things like RAM and storage speed into account, so it’s not always a case of “newer chipset = faster”.
This list also only includes phones that are available internationally, so some competitors that haven’t left China yet aren’t on it (there’s a separate list for the Chinese market). This explains why the Red Magic 7S has not supplanted its predecessor. The Red Magic 7 is one of the few phones that manages to curb the thermal limitation of Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 thanks to its active cooling fan (also present on the 7S, of course).
While MediaTek is not much represented in the flagship Top 10, the “sub flagship list” (i.e. the market between flagships and mid-rangers) is led by the Dimensity 8100, which is in the Top 3: Realme GT Neo 3, Poco X4 GT and Redmi K50i.
That said, the good old Snapdragon 870 fills most of the spots below #4, no wonder it has remained popular with premium models. Also worth noting is that the Dimensity 8100-Max variant (in the OnePlus 10R), which topped last month, has dropped to 4th.
Finally, the Top 10 fastest mid-rangers – this is awash with Snapdragon 778G devices, as the chip powers eight models. The top handset, the Nothing Phone (1)uses the 778G+ instead, so the domination is almost total.
There is only one exception, the Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite 5G in 5th place with the Snapdragon 780G. The 780G is very similar to the 778G, but they are built on the Samsung 5LPE node and TSMC’s N6 respectively.
The new Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 has yet to make an impact in this category, the Dimensity 8000 is also absent.