If you want the fastest phone, it would be hard to choose between the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and the Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max. The two run head-to-head in every benchmark Olympics, and each can claim victory in some event or other.
My question is, why do you need the fastest phone? I review all of the best phones for weeks at a time, and I can promise every flagship phone you’ll find is already fast enough – and maybe even too fast.
Smartphone speed relies on many components, but the most important is the application processor – the CPU. That’s the Apple A18 Pro in the best iPhone and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite (ahem, for Galaxy) in the fastest Androids.
Samsung makes its own chips, but they aren’t as fast as Qualcomm’s best platform, which is why Samsung phones use somebody else’s CPU. Actually, Samsung Semiconductor makes the chips, and they might as well be a whole different company from Samsung Mobile Experience, the phone division.
What about Google? Google designs its own chips, similar to Apple, and then has them produced by a foundry company like Samsung or TSMC. In fact, Google and Samsung Semiconductor worked so closely in the past that Google’s Pixel chips were accused of being repackaged Samsung Exynos products, with all the baggage that implies.
The upshot is that Google’s Tensor chips have never won a benchmark contest. Google has never announced ‘the world’s fastest phone,’ only the ‘fastest Pixel.’ But here’s the truth – it doesn’t matter. Google’s best Pixel phones have never suffered because of slower performance.
Google phones haven’t been the fastest for a long time
I’ve been using Pixel phones for years – since before they were Pixel phones. I had the first Google Nexus One phone, and that may have been the last time Google raced for the speed trophy.
The Nexus One came with the first 1GHz mobile processor I’d ever seen, the Qualcomm Snapdragon S1. It enabled amazing features like live wallpapers: colorful pixels chasing around a grid behind the app icons. Live wallpapers are still available on most phones today, but they’ve fallen out of fashion because they are still a processing and battery hog.
The Pixel 9 Pro is the fourth fastest phone on my list of the Best Android phones. The Galaxy S25 Ultra and S25 Plus are both faster, and so is the OnePlus 13. But my SIM card lived in my Pixel 9 Pro for more time than any other Android phone. It’s a great phone, even though it isn’t the best at most things. It’s just great, with features that I find invaluable, and it works reliably well.
I have never noticed a performance lag on any Pixel in recent years. I reviewed the Pixel 7 Pro, the Pixel 8 Pro, and the Pixel 9 Pro, and I kept every one of those phones in my pocket long after the review ended because they were such a delight to use.
I can use literally any phone one can buy in the US. If performance truly mattered, I would choose a faster phone.
I chose the Pixel because it’s best at making calls and typing messages. My Pixel 9 Pro is the best phone for managing notifications and screening out Spam calls. It has solid cameras and the best-in-class photo editing that I need (with or without AI).
Leaks are dumb, but benchmarks leaks are the dumbest
That’s what makes this time of year so frustrating. Google has announced its upcoming Made By Google event: the annual Pixel parade. It’s even teased the Pixel 10 family with new colors coming. The leaks are dripping out fast, like always, and they come with the same complaints as last year.
Every year, somebody leaks Pixel benchmarks for the upcoming phones. Every Pixel phone this year will likely use the rumored Google Tensor G5 chipset, like every Pixel in 2024 used the Tensor G4 platform – from the Pixel 9a to the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. That means a benchmark test for any Pixel 10 model might give us a hint about the performance of the whole Pixel 10 family.
Pixel benchmark leaks are never good news if you care about owning the fastest phone. So every year, I read the technorati complaining that Pixel phones won’t keep up with the next iPhone (or frankly any iPhone from the last 2 years), and it’s going to be killed by Samsung’s best. Ugh, spare me, please!
Google could make a faster Pixel, but why?
I don’t know why Google chooses a slower chipset for its Pixel phones. I can guess, but it doesn’t really matter. Is Google saving money? Are the phones saving power? Is the chip really more focused on AI edge computing than raw processing? It doesn’t matter. Pixel phones are fast enough.
In fact, Pixel phones can do everything Google says they can do, unlike some faster phone makers. I’m still waiting for the promised AI features from Apple and Samsung, but I don’t remember Google overpromising Gemini’s ability to make career decisions for me (Siri) or turn out the lights when it detects I’m asleep (Bixby).
I wonder if my iPhone 16 Pro is too fast. Why does it need all that power? I don’t play AAA games on my phone because they don’t really exist. I’m not a music producer or a video editor, and I only record video in 4K Pro-Raw once when I first buy the phone – until I see how big the video files get.
Why is my Galaxy S25 Ultra this fast? There’s still a delay when I use most AI features, as the phone communicates with various AI clouds. But Android has even fewer high-powered apps than iOS.
I can play Call of Duty at the highest settings with phones that are much slower than this Galaxy, and the real benefit of Qualcomm’s latest platform is its efficiency – every Snapdragon 8 Elite phone has demonstrated incredible battery life compared to other Android phones.
If you’re worried about Pixel 10 or Pixel 10 Pro Fold performance because of some benchmark results you saw leaked online, I don’t wanna hear about it. That’s not what Pixel is about, and I’m sure the Pixel 10 will look great, even without the benchmark crown.