The iPhone 16 Situation is CRAZY

Summary

The video evaluates the gaming performance of the iPhone 16 Pro against previous iPhone models and the Galaxy S24 Ultra. While initial benchmarks show the Galaxy S24 Ultra excelling in graphics, the iPhone 16 Pro delivers superior sustained performance during extended gaming sessions. Apple's new chip proves to be highly efficient, throttling less compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, even without advanced cooling systems. Surprisingly, using external coolers on the iPhone shows no performance gains. The video concludes that the iPhone 16 Pro is a strong contender in mobile gaming, outperforming expectations.

Takeaways

• 🔥 The iPhone 16 Pro boasts 20% better sustained performance than its predecessor, making it efficient even during intense usage.
• 📊 Geekbench and 3DMark benchmarks show that the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro outperform older iPhones, especially in single-core performance, while the Galaxy S24 Ultra shines in graphics performance.
• 🎮 Apple is heavily invested in mobile gaming, generating $15-20 billion annually, putting it in the same league as Nintendo and Microsoft.
• 🕹️ Gaming is a crucial focus for Apple, with iPhones needing to handle high-performance games like Call of Duty Mobile and Genshin Impact without overheating.
• ❄️ Surprisingly, adding external coolers to iPhones doesn't enhance gaming performance. In some cases, it actually reduces it.
• ⏱️ In sustained performance tests, the iPhone 16 Pro maintains better performance after 20 minutes of intense gaming compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra.
• 📉 The iPhone 16 Pro drops only 12% in performance after a 20-minute stress test, indicating high efficiency compared to older models and competitors.
• ⚙️ Despite the Galaxy S24 Ultra initially outperforming in graphics, the iPhone 16 Pro outlasts it in sustained gaming performance due to better thermal efficiency.
• 🆒 Vapor chambers and active cooling on Android phones help maintain performance, but the iPhone 16 Pro doesn't need them to achieve similar results.
• ✅ Overall, the iPhone 16 Pro proves to be an excellent gaming phone, showcasing both efficiency and high sustained performance under load.

Q & A

Does the iPhone 16 Pro overheat during sustained use?

The iPhone 16 Pro does get warm during sustained gaming or heavy use, but it performs significantly better in terms of sustained performance compared to previous models and even the Galaxy S24 Ultra. It throttles less and maintains higher efficiency.

How does the iPhone 16 Pro compare to the Galaxy S24 Ultra in terms of gaming performance?

Initially, the Galaxy S24 Ultra outperforms the iPhone 16 Pro in graphics benchmarks like Solar Bay. However, during sustained performance tests, the iPhone 16 Pro performs 20% better than the Galaxy S24 Ultra due to less throttling.

What kind of benchmarks were used to test the performance of the iPhone 16 Pro?

The benchmarks used include Geekbench for regular use performance, 3DMark for gaming performance, and a stress test for sustained performance under heavy loads, such as gaming for 20 minutes.

What is the significance of Apple’s claim that the iPhone 16 Pro offers 20% better sustained performance?

Apple’s claim is validated by tests, which show that the iPhone 16 Pro is 21% better in sustained performance compared to the iPhone 15 Pro, especially in gaming scenarios where other devices like the Galaxy S24 Ultra throttle more.

How does the regular iPhone 16 compare to the iPhone 16 Pro in terms of performance?

The regular iPhone 16 is slightly behind the iPhone 16 Pro in terms of outright performance. However, during sustained loads, it only loses 12% of its performance, making it fairly efficient for its category.

Why is gaming performance such a big deal for Apple?

Gaming is a major revenue stream for Apple, with gaming services like Apple Arcade generating between $15-20 billion annually. iPhones need to handle high-performance gaming due to the growing demand for mobile games with console-level graphics.

What challenges do mobile phones face during sustained gaming sessions?

Mobile phones face the challenge of overheating and throttling under sustained load, especially during intensive games that push the GPU, CPU, and memory. Proper cooling solutions like vapor chambers are important for minimizing performance drops.

Do external coolers help boost the iPhone 16 Pro’s gaming performance?

Surprisingly, external coolers, such as the Redmagic 5 Pro cooler, do not boost gaming performance on the iPhone 16 Pro. In some cases, using a cooler can even result in worse performance, likely due to temperature sensors limiting the phone’s performance.

How does the iPhone 16 Pro handle high-demand games like Call of Duty Mobile?

The iPhone 16 Pro performs well in high-demand games like Call of Duty Mobile, even on max graphics settings. It doesn’t get significantly warm or throttle, making it a strong contender for mobile gaming.

What does the iPhone 16 Pro’s performance reveal about Apple’s chip efficiency?

The tests reveal that the iPhone 16 Pro’s chip is incredibly efficient, providing more performance per watt compared to other smartphones like the Galaxy S24 Ultra. This allows it to maintain better performance during sustained gaming without overheating.

Outlines

00:00

📱 Does the iPhone 16 Overheat?

The video begins by addressing whether the iPhone 16 Pro experiences overheating. It highlights Apple's claim that the iPhone 16 Pro has 20% better sustained performance than previous models. The host compares the iPhone 16 lineup against earlier iPhone models and the Galaxy S24 Ultra, focusing on performance benchmarks like Geekbench and 3DMark. While the iPhone 16 Pro excels in single-core performance, the Galaxy S24 Ultra has a lead in graphics performance. Gaming, a significant part of Apple's business, is emphasized, and the benchmark results hint at the iPhone’s gaming efficiency.

05:02

🎮 Mobile Gaming: A Billion-Dollar Industry

This section explores Apple's gaming presence, which generates between $15-20 billion annually. The narrative challenges the perception of mobile gaming as casual, discussing the increasing graphical demands of modern mobile games like Genshin Impact and Call of Duty Mobile. It delves into the growing capabilities of the iPhone as a gaming device, comparing it to dedicated gaming phones like the Redmagic 9S Pro. The iPhone's ability to handle sustained gaming performance, especially without overheating, is emphasized as critical to its success in the gaming market.

10:03

🧊 Do Coolers Improve Gaming Performance on iPhones?

The script shifts focus to cooling accessories like the Redmagic 5 Pro cooler, which uses refrigerated cooling to keep phones cool during gaming. The results show that while such coolers significantly help Android phones, they either offer no performance improvement or even worsen performance on iPhones. This finding leads to an exploration of why the iPhone 16 Pro performs efficiently, despite lacking aggressive cooling mechanisms. The iPhone’s sustained performance remains superior to competitors like the Galaxy S24 Ultra, even during stress tests.

🔥 The iPhone 16 Pro: Surprising Gaming Performance

The final segment highlights how the iPhone 16 Pro performs under sustained load, such as during extended gaming sessions. Despite initial skepticism, tests reveal that the iPhone 16 Pro throttles far less than the Galaxy S24 Ultra and maintains high performance levels after 20 minutes of gaming. Apple's efficient chip design is credited for this, and the video concludes that the iPhone 16 Pro is a strong gaming device, exceeding expectations in terms of performance and efficiency.

Keywords

💡iPhone 16 Pro

The iPhone 16 Pro is Apple's latest high-performance smartphone, which is highlighted in the video for its improved gaming capabilities and sustained performance. Compared to its predecessors, the iPhone 16 Pro boasts a 20% improvement in sustained performance, making it more efficient during demanding tasks such as gaming. This model is central to the video’s exploration of gaming performance and overheating issues.

💡Sustained performance

Sustained performance refers to how well a device maintains high levels of performance over extended periods without throttling or overheating. In the video, the iPhone 16 Pro is praised for its ability to maintain better performance over time, particularly in gaming scenarios where the device is subjected to heavy workloads. Apple's claim of 20% better sustained performance is tested and confirmed in the video.

💡Throttling

Throttling is when a device reduces its performance to prevent overheating or conserve battery life. The video discusses how the iPhone 16 Pro experiences less throttling during extended gaming sessions compared to competitors like the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Throttling is a critical factor in determining whether a phone can maintain high performance during intensive tasks such as gaming.

💡Geekbench

Geekbench is a popular benchmarking tool used to measure the CPU performance of devices. In the video, the presenter uses Geekbench to compare various iPhone models and the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The iPhone 16 and 16 Pro show the best single-core performance in these tests, demonstrating their superiority in regular smartphone tasks.

💡3DMark

3DMark is a benchmarking tool focused on evaluating the graphical performance of devices. In the video, it is used to assess gaming performance, with the Galaxy S24 Ultra initially outperforming the iPhone 16 Pro in graphics-heavy tasks. However, when pushed under sustained load, the iPhone 16 Pro shows better overall performance, suggesting it handles long-term gaming more efficiently.

💡Gaming performance

Gaming performance refers to how well a smartphone handles resource-intensive games, especially in terms of graphics and processing power. The video emphasizes that the iPhone 16 Pro is a surprisingly strong gaming device, with less throttling and higher sustained performance than expected. Apple's focus on gaming, including promoting games like 'Death Stranding' on the iPhone, is a key point.

💡Vapor chamber cooling

Vapor chamber cooling is a technology used in some smartphones to dissipate heat and prevent overheating during heavy use. The video mentions that despite the Galaxy S24 Ultra having a vapor chamber cooling system, it still throttles more than the iPhone 16 Pro during sustained gaming. This comparison highlights Apple's efficiency without such advanced cooling systems.

💡Apple Arcade

Apple Arcade is Apple's subscription-based gaming service that offers premium mobile games without ads. The video references Apple Arcade to underscore Apple's significant role in the gaming industry, which generates billions in revenue. Apple’s investment in gaming services like Arcade complements the hardware improvements in devices like the iPhone 16 Pro, reinforcing Apple's growing influence in mobile gaming.

💡Mobile gaming market

The mobile gaming market refers to the global industry of gaming on smartphones and tablets. The video discusses how Apple, through devices like the iPhone 16 Pro, is positioning itself as a major player in this market, competing with companies like Nintendo and Microsoft. It highlights the growing demand for high-performance mobile gaming experiences, which the iPhone 16 Pro is designed to support.

💡External cooling accessory

An external cooling accessory is a device used to prevent smartphones from overheating by actively cooling them. The video discusses using an external cooler on the iPhone 16 Pro, but finds that it provides no performance benefit. In some cases, it even worsens performance, which contrasts with Android devices like the Redmagic that benefit from such accessories.

Highlights

The iPhone 16 Pro claims to have 20% better sustained performance than the 15 Pro.

When tested side by side, the iPhone 16 Pro wins in single-core performance against the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra excels in graphics performance, outperforming the iPhone 16 in the 3DMark Solar Bay benchmark.

Mobile gaming is a significant business for Apple, with estimated revenues between $15 and $20 billion annually from gaming.

High-end mobile games, such as Genshin Impact and Call of Duty Mobile, push mobile graphics close to console levels.

The iPhone 16 and 16 Pro exhibit excellent efficiency, dropping only 12% in performance after a 20-minute stress test.

Unlike dedicated gaming phones like Redmagic, iPhones do not benefit from using external coolers; in some cases, they perform worse.

The iPhone 16 Pro demonstrates higher sustained performance during extended gaming sessions compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Despite the S24 Ultra's vapor chamber cooling system, the iPhone 16 Pro throttles less and remains efficient during prolonged gaming.

Apple's iPhone 16 Pro is positioned as a strong contender for gaming performance, with better sustained performance over time.

The iPhone 16 Pro can maintain high performance in extended gaming without overheating, unlike some Android devices.

In a 20-minute stress test, the iPhone 16 Pro outperformed the iPhone 15 Pro by 21%, slightly exceeding Apple's claimed 20% improvement.

Gaming demands a different performance benchmark compared to typical smartphone tasks, requiring sustained performance.

The cooler did not enhance performance on the iPhone 16 Pro; instead, performance dropped, showing iPhones may not benefit from cooling accessories.

Apple's efficient chip design in the iPhone 16 Pro allows for high performance without significant throttling or overheating.

Transcripts

- Does the new iPhone 16 overheat?

Now, during the Apple announcement, they said

that the iPhone 16 Pro has 20% better sustained performance.

Now, when you put this side by side

with the last several generations of iPhone,

as well as the greatest Android phone

you can possibly buy...

- [Alex] Hey, wait a minute,

what's that Z Flip doing there?

- We're comparing against the Z Flip, right?

- [Alex] No, you said greatest. Get it outta there.

- I mean, when you compare it against the Galaxy S24 Ultra,

the pinnacle of the Android lineup,

we're gonna find out a couple of things here.

Does the iPhone overheat?

What kind of performance does it have?

And there's something very unusual going on

that we found in our testing.

We're getting into the weeds today, my friends,

and something ain't right.

So to start with, let's just do a very simple run

of benchmarks starting with Geekbench.

So right here I have an iPhone 13, 13 Pro, 14, 14 Pro,

15, 15 Pro, 16, 16 Pro, and of course a Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Now we have already run these benchmarks

a couple times off camera,

so we're gonna average all of the scores,

but essentially what you should see, first and foremost,

with Geekbench is a little bit of an idea

of regular use on these phones and how that compares.

So at first glance, this seems all pretty straightforward.

Besides AirDrop wanting to enable.

So both the 16 and the 16 Pro easily win out here,

especially when it comes to single core.

The S24 falls a little bit behind on that,

but multi-core is quite strong.

A little more of a relevant benchmark is 3DMark.

So this is going to be a real test,

of what the game performance is theoretically,

on each of these phones. And I'm running Solar Bay,

which is a moderately powerful benchmark.

It's not the most powerful one in the 3DMark suite,

but it is the only benchmark

that will run on all of these devices.

Now at first glance, it seems pretty clear

that the Galaxy S24 actually has a major lead

when it comes to graphics performance.

And while the 15 Pro and 16, 16 Pro

are all sort of in the ballpark,

when you step down to a 15 or older,

you're losing a lot of performance when it comes to gaming.

Now this is very valuable data,

but I'll be honest with you, a 60 second 3DMark test

only tells you part of the story.

Gaming is a really, really big deal for Apple

and it's easy to underestimate.

iPhone games might be frowned upon as casual,

but it is a huge business.

Apple, of course, has their own gaming service

with Apple Arcade,

which despite keeping a surprisingly low profile,

it is essentially Apple's version of Xbox Game Pass

with premium games that have no ads.

Now, talking about Apple Arcade

might seem like a little bit of a tangent,

but stick with me for just a second,

because what puts this in context

is the sheer scale of Apple in the gaming industry.

With estimated revenues, just from gaming mind you,

of between 15 and $20 billion a year thanks to Arcade

and a whole bunch of Candy Crush tokens,

Apple is in the same ballpark

as giants such as Nintendo and Microsoft.

Let that settle in for a second, right?

The numbers just don't lie.

An enormous percentage of the world's population

plays mobile games with stats that I've seen suggesting

that upwards of 80% of smartphone users

game at least occasionally.

Now, it is easy, as I kind of just did,

to dismiss mobile gaming

as just Candy Crush and Clash of Clans.

But like the market is so much more than that nowadays.

And the iPhone, if it's going to be successful,

it kind of needs to be a great gaming phone.

For context, it has been five years

since the launch of Call of Duty Mobile,

and newer games such as Genshin Impact, Pokemon Unite,

Honkai Star Rail, ZZZ,

they're pushing mobile graphics to levels

that aren't that far removed from consoles.

And we're talking about games

that take advantage of techniques like Ray Tracing, TAA.

They have high quality graphics,

and some of these titles can even run at high frame rates

such as 120 FPS.

Now, I recently took a look at the Redmagic 9S Pro,

and while it's a device with some flaws,

it does make a bit of a statement

about the mobile gaming market.

It is designed for gamers.

It's got triggers, it's got an active cooler.

And while obviously I think someone who's buying a Redmagic

is not the same person who's buying an iPhone,

it brings me back to why.

I think it is crucial for the iPhone

to deliver gaming performance without overheating.

You watch an Apple keynote, they love to showcase examples

of high profile games like Death Stranding

and Assassin's Creed Mirage and Resident Evil

all running on the iPhone 16.

But it's important to understand

that the demands of the game are totally different

from typical workloads.

Usually, a smartphone will briefly boost

its processor clock speed to quickly render a webpage

or handle a scroll through Instagram,

then immediately race down to idle to conserve battery.

These bursty workloads rarely cause the phone

to heat up enough to throttle during normal use,

which is why benchmarks like Geekbench

are great to demo normal performance on a device.

Gaming, however, is a completely different story.

Games place a sustained, often near 100% load,

not just on the GPU, but also they heavily tax the CPU,

the memory and storage.

This is exactly why companies like Samsung

make such a big deal about

their vapor chamber cooling systems,

and why dedicated gaming phones like the ROG Phone

incorporate either actual fans in the phone

or as an external accessory.

Something much like this.

So this is a Redmagic 5 Pro cooler.

Now, while this is a little bit of a higher end option,

the pitch is really good.

If you're going to be gaming with your phone,

phones tend to get hot,

and what this is is not only just a fan,

it's an actual refrigerated cooler.

So this cooling pad is below zero,

which means that when you snap it on your phone,

this particular one has MagSafe,

it keeps your phone icy cold, or at least that's the pitch.

But something weird happens

when you connect this to an iPhone.

Boy oh boy, after running a bunch of benchmarks,

there's a lot of really interesting stuff.

So first of all, I ran Call of Duty Mobile

for about five to ten minutes on each of these devices.

Surprise, surprise, even on the max graphic settings,

none of the phones get all that warm to the point

where you're gonna be significantly throttling.

I think a more interesting test

is something like the 3DMark Steel Nomad test.

So this is absolutely maxing these phones out.

These phones are running at like 10 to 12 FPS.

Now, I use this as a benchmark for a couple of reasons.

One of which is it is a good representative

of the kind of games that will be coming, right?

Any of these phones will be able to play every single game

in the Play Store or the App Store today.

What they will not be able to do necessarily

is play Genshin 2 in 2027 or Minecraft 2 in 2050. (laughs)

So with Steel Nomad, we ran a stress test.

So this is about sustained performance,

not about a one-minute test

where the phones don't even get warm.

This is the sustained test,

and the results are really interesting.

First and foremost, the iPhone 16 Pro wins. Hands down.

Not only is it the best

when it comes to outright performance,

when it's nice and cool, but even when it warms up,

it has significantly more performance

than any of the other phones.

And I gotta say, Apple claims it is gonna be 20% better

in sustained performance than the 15 Pro.

Guess what, in this score, it is 21% better.

Something else that's interesting is

that the regular iPhone 16 is actually not too far off,

even though in outright performance is a little bit behind,

but once you actually start to throttle,

it only dropped 12% of its performance

after 20 minutes of a stress test.

Now, what I think that means is that these phones

are very efficient, the new 16 and the 16 Pro.

What you're getting here is more performance per watt,

because every single smartphone is going to throttle.

Like that is the way it works

when you throw a 100% load at it.

The thermal solution can only dissipate so much heat.

And what we're seeing is that these iPhone 16's

are very efficient.

And what's really interesting is that the Galaxy S24 Ultra,

even with its massive heat sink, drops a ton of performance

when you are doing sustained 100% load gaming.

Now, of course, will that be different

with the Galaxy S25 Ultra in a few months?

Almost definitely.

But I can only test what I've got right here today.

I did not expect without a vapor chamber

and all the kind of fancy stuff,

the 16 Pro to be such a big improvement.

But there's one last thing I wanna talk to you about, right?

We know how the phones perform in a ideal benchmark

when they're nice and cool,

we know how the phones perform

when they're getting hammered with 100% load

and they're completely sort of scalding hot in your hand.

But what about when you attach a cooler?

I'm curious because some of the results we saw

with this on older iPhones made absolutely no sense.

Yeah, it's the same thing with the iPhone 16 Pro.

This cooler does not give you more performance.

Yes, the phone itself is cold, ice cold to the touch,

but whether it's the battery gets too cool,

whether it's some clever Apple sensors like,

"Hey, I don't like this temperature," whatever,

you do not see real gaming performance.

In fact, you actually see,

especially on some of the older iPhones,

worst performance with a cooler

compared to no cooler at all.

So I guess that's the first takeaway from this video.

If you use an Android phone, these things are great.

Wonderful. Helps a lot, does a lot.

If you're using an iPhone, a cooler like this

either does not give you any performance benefit at all,

or actually makes the performance worse

than without a cooler.

Now the other thing is

the iPhone 16 Pro, generally speaking.

And I gotta say, I didn't think I was gonna say this

when we started this video,

Apple are kind of doing a good job here.

If you look at it on the surface, the Galaxy S24 Ultra

has better gaming performance, right?

In the Solar Ray benchmark,

it outperformed the iPhone 16 Pro.

However, if you do a real sustained test,

so we did the 20 minute stress test,

and at that point, the S24 Ultra can't keep up.

Even with this vapor chamber, it throttles a lot,

whereas the iPhone while it throttles a little bit,

has a much higher level of sustained performance.

So if you take that as a benchmark, right,

of what a phone can deliver

after 20 minutes of hardcore gaming,

the iPhone 16 Pro is 20% faster than both the iPhone 15 Pro

and the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which means this iPhone 16 Pro

is an actually good gaming phone.

It gets a little bit warm,

it does do a little bit of throttling,

but it throttles significantly less

than something like the S24 Ultra,

mostly because it is an incredibly efficient chip.

That is a fascinating result

that I did not expect when we started this video.

What do you think about the iPhone 16

and all of Apple's very many claims

to be an excellent gaming phone?

I was very skeptical when we started this video,

but now that we spent some time and tested it, it's legit.