During Apple's last Financial Conference Call, Apple's CEO Tim Cook stated: "I think people are willing to really stretch to get the best they can afford in that category." He further noted that the iPhone had become "integral" to life. Rumors surrounding this statement has given rise to a possible iPhone Ultra is in-the-works. While this is a rumor, a recent report about the possible power of Apple's next-gen A17 Bionic is insane. Obviously Apple is going to raise the bar significantly higher to stay ahead of the new Qualcomm chips that will be coming to Android smartphone models at CES from their NUVIA team.

Leaker Max Tech reportedly got the Geekbench 6 scores for Apple's upcoming A17 Bionic chip coming to the iPhone 15, and if they're to be believed, will give Android phone fans something to grind their teeth over. The single-core A17 Bionic running score hit an astounding 3986 points, and the multi-core score was 8841 points.

Compared to the iPhone 14's A16 Bionic chip, the power increase for the A17 Bionic clocks in at about a 60% increase on single core and 43% on multi-core.  The current MacBook with the M2 chip has a single-core score of 2604 and a multi-core score of 9751 on Geekbench 6. In other words, the M2 CPU has been beaten by the single-core running score, with a very close multi-core score … for an iPhone!

In contrast, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is the industry’s top flagship chip right now for Android. This chip scored 1953 points in single-core performance and 5449 points in multi-core performance on Geekbench 6. Apple's A17’s multi-core score testing is 1.6 times higher than that of the Android flagship. Its single-core running score is nearly twice as high.

A lot of the advancement to the A17 Bionic will come from Apple's use of TSMC's 3nm processor. The chip's logic density and speed of the 3nm process have grown by 70% and 10-15%, respectively, over the 5nm process, according to official data from TSMC. Moreover, power usage is cut by 25–30%.

When you combine the A17 Bionics' huge power bump along with the iPhone's first periscope camera lens for next-level zoom power and other features, it's a little easier to see why Apple's CEO is convinced that pro Apple fans will be willing to shell out more for the highest iPhone Pro (or Ultra) model.

While the iPhone 15 won't be a folding phone or even provide a dramatic redesign, the speed of the A17 Bionic alone may be worth the upgrade, especially if Apple introduces advancements to gaming. With Triple-A games like Resident Evil Village coming to M2 Macs, the A17 Bionic is likely to showcase Triple-A gaming coming to the iPhone 15's high-end model. The A17 Bionic is also to introduce a powerful next-gen GPU. This alone could spark some real excitement.

While every new iPhone claims to offer a new level of performance, it appears that the iPhone 15 Pro (or Ultra) may actually deliver a major leap forward. While the progress of the iPhone has been a little boring of late, the iPhone 15 Pro promises to deliver a real power punch that could be a game-changer, literally.