iPhone 18 Pro Performance & Battery TESTED: The A20 Pro Is Ridiculous

We just wrapped lab testing on the new iPhone 18 Pro and the iPhone 18 Pro Max. While the battery endurance showed solid year-over-year gains from the iPhone 17 Pro series, the real takeaway from our data is the raw performance of Apple's A20 Pro chip. As the world's first two nanometer smartphone processor, the A20 Pro brings substantial gains in graphics and sustained thermal performance, widening the gap between the iPhone and Android flagships like the S26 Ultra. Today, we're breaking down those benchmark figures, comparing them against the competition, and looking at how this performance sets the stage for the iPhone Duo dropping next month. Let's get into it. For anyone new to the channel, at Tom's Guide, we put every flagship smartphone through the exact same controlled lab test so everything is completely apples to apples. Our battery test sets the phone display precisely to 150 nits of brightness over a 5G connection, continuously surfing a series of webpages until the battery dies. Then, we run standard stress tests like Geekbench and 3DMark to measure peak CPU, graphics, and thermal efficiency. Now, usually, chip specs get buried in numbers that can feel a little in the weeds for an average phone user, but the A20 Pro inside the iPhone 18 Pro series represents a massive architectural jump worth digging into. Not only did Apple fit more transistors on the chip, it also completely redesigned the inside of the iPhone 18 Pro. Instead of stacking the memory right on top of the brain, they laid it side by side and expanded the internal vapor chamber cooling system by three times. Imagine upgrading your car's engine while simultaneously installing a race car radiator to keep it cold. That's essentially what's happening under the hood of this iPhone. So how does that translate to actual lab numbers? The results are staggering, especially when you pit the iPhone 18 Pro against its biggest Android competitor, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. On Geekbench 6, which tests overall system speed, the iPhone 18 Pro scored over 4,700 in single-core performance. That is roughly 25% faster than last year's iPhone 17 Pro, and it comfortably beats the Galaxy S26 Ultra by 25% in single-core and 10% in multi-core processing. Where things get really wild is in graphics performance. The A20 Pro features a new seven-core GPU, up from six cores, last year. The iPhone 18 Pro Max turned in 67.9 frames per second on 3DMark's Solar Bay test. That's a 45% leap over the iPhone 17 Pro Max and 37% faster than Samsung's top flagship. When playing high-end titles like Ungodly, frame rates stayed locked smoothly even during chaotic combat scenes with tons of visual effects on screen. Now, iPhones in the past have struggled with thermal throttling, or where the phone gets super hot during long gaming sessions and forcibly slows down to cool itself off. That new vapor chamber in the iPhone 18 Pro makes a noticeable improvement here. In a 20-loop stress test, the iPhone 18 Pro Max maintained an impressive 79.4% stability score. That is a 25% improvement over the 17 Pro Max and over 47% more stable than the Galaxy S26 Ultra under sustained heavy loads. At this point, you're probably wondering, what does all this performance mean for battery life? In all honesty, not that much. The iPhone 18 Pro Max averaged 18 hours and 27 minutes on our proprietary web browsing test, still making it the longest-lasting iPhone we've ever tested, even if it's not much more than a 30-minute gain year over year. That said, the standard iPhone 18 Pro logged 16.17, nearly a full hour longer than the 17 Pro. The Pro Max easily outlasts the Galaxy S26 Ultra's 16 hours and 40 minutes. While it doesn't reach the OnePlus 15's massive 25-hour result with its silicon carbon battery, it's a stellar showing for Apple. Charging speed also got a boost. Both iPhone 18 Pro models now support 60-watt wire charging. In our lab, the smaller iPhone 18 Pro reached 53% in just 15 minutes and 80% in half an hour. The Pro Max hit 44% in 15 minutes and 77% in 30 minutes. But here's the thing, I know a lot of you probably don't care nearly as much about another traditional iPhone update when Apple's first foldable is right around the corner. An iPhone Duo is powered by this same chip, but foldable devices inherently present huge engineering challenges. Running a huge 7.6-inch display drains battery quickly. Side-by-side app multitasking constrains both CPU and RAM bandwidth. Ultra-thin form factors make heat management much harder. That said, seeing the A20 Pro deliver a 45% graphics jump, 50% more memory bandwidth, and near 80% thermal stability in our lab gives me huge confidence for the Duo. This chip should have the raw horsepower and thermal headroom to drive dual-screen workflows, heavy AI processing via the 16-core neural engine, and intense multitasking without turning the device into an oven or taking battery life in a couple of hours. But there's only one way to find out for sure. Hit that subscribe button so you can see our iPhone Duo review benchmark testing when it launches. Bringing it back to the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max real quick, they may look similar on the outside, but underneath, the A20 Pro chip sets a new standard for smartphone performance and efficiency. But what do you think of these benchmark numbers? Are you picking up an iPhone 18 Pro or holding out for the iPhone Duo next month? Let us know in the comments. For Tom's Guide, this is Mark Spoonhauer.