Qualcomm's new system-on-chip, the Snapdragon 888, is poised to close Apple's pace-setting A14 Bionic processor in many major benchmarks. And that could chip away at the significant advantage that the iPhone has boasted over Android competitors in recent years.

Qualcomm's results show that the Snapdragon 888's numbers still fall short of those we recorded when we tested the latest iPhone 12 models this fall. However, the gap is the narrowest it has been in some time.

The coronavirus outbreak has changed Qualcomm's usual deployment plans for its new mobile processing platform. Usually at this time of year, chipmakers invite a number of technology publications (including Tom's Guide) to test their latest chipsets on reference devices provided by Qualcomm. However, since this is not possible in today's world of social distancing and home-standby orders, Qualcomm has decided to provide its own testing with the Snapdragon 888.

According to the chipmaker, the benchmark tests were conducted on a device with a 6.65-inch FHD screen with a 120 Hz refresh rate. The device had 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage; one core of the CPU was clocked at 2.84 GHz, while the other three cores ran at 2.42 GHz.

Qualcomm has confirmed that handset manufacturers including LG, Motorola, and OnePlus have committed to using the Snapdragon 888, but declined to name specifically which phones will feature its processing platform The company declined to name specific phones that will feature the company's processing platform. The first phone to feature Qualcomm's new chipset in the U.S. will generally be the latest Samsung Galaxy S model, and since the Samsung Galaxy S21 is rumored to debut in mid-January, we may find out sooner rather than later what the Snapdragon 888 will offer is likely.

Of course, we already have some idea of what to expect from a device powered by the Snapdragon 888, thanks to the information Qualcomm provided when it announced its new system-on-chip earlier this month. According to Qualcomm, the Kryo 680 CPU in the Snapdragon 888 will improve performance by up to 25% over the current Snapdragon 865. It is also capable of a maximum frequency of up to 2.84 GHz, so the main core in the reference device used for benchmarking is pushed to the max.

As for graphics, Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 888 will render graphics up to 35% faster thanks to the Adreno 660 GPU. In addition, this GPU can provide more power for devices with larger thermal envelopes and for sustained use cases in flagship phones.

This is Qualcomm's first mobile processing platform built using a 5-nanometer process, which should increase both power and efficiency; Apple's A14 Bionic in the iPhone 12 lineup is also a 5nm chip.

According to figures released by Qualcomm, running Geekbench 5, we can certainly see significant improvements with the Snapdragon 888. In this benchmark, which tests overall performance, a reference device powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 recorded a single-core score of 1,135 and a multi-core result of 3,794.

This single-core performance is a 40% improvement over the 811 score recorded by the Galaxy S20 Plus with the Snapdragon 865 chipset. The Galaxy S20 Ultra with the slightly more powerful Snapdragon 865 Plus had a result of 985. In multi-core tests, the Snapdragon 888 was 23% and 15% faster than the Galaxy S20 Plus and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, respectively.

In Geekbench 5, the A14 chip performed better than the Snapdragon 888, but not significantly, at least in the multi-core test. When we tested the iPhone 12 earlier this fall, we found a result of 3,859. This is slightly less than 2% better than Qualcomm's recently released results. In the single-core results, the iPhone 12 scored 1,593, a slightly larger difference.

On the graphics side, the Snapdragon 888-powered device scored 169 fps in GFXBench's Manhattan 3.0 1080p off-screen test; when the same test was run on the Galaxy S20 Plus, the score was up 32% to up 32% to 128 fps. Still, the A14 should continue to reign supreme, as our iPhone 12 mini scored 195.7 fps.

Qualcomm also provided graphics figures from GFXBench's Aztec Ruins Vulkan off-screen test at 1080p, where the Snapdragon 888 chipset beat the Galaxy S20 Plus and its Snapdragon 865 process outperforming the Galaxy S20 Plus and its Snapdragon 865 process by 86 fps vs. 54 fps.

Qualcomm's numbers stand in stark contrast to some of the early leaked benchmarks of the Galaxy S21. However, we always suspected that these benchmark leaks were a bit off, as the device may have an early version of the processor that has not yet been optimized for top performance. Clearly, Qualcomm's figures confirm that this was the case.

These new Qualcomm benchmarks give us a better idea of what to expect when the Snapdragon 888 starts appearing in phones like the Galaxy S21, but they are not the last word on the matter. Much will depend on how the handset makers themselves implement the system-on-chip and how they balance performance and power consumption.

In other words, we won't know for sure if the iPhone 12 will be a performance contender until the first Snapdragon 888-based phones start coming out. According to Qualcomm, these devices will be available during the first three months of 2021. And the Galaxy S21's rumored release date is just around the corner.