[00:00] Apple spends a lot of time talking about how powerful their new iPhone 18 Pro is, but how does it back up to an actual console? Back when the iPhone 8 came out, we did a comparison with it versus the still current PS4 of the time, and while the iPhone did fairly well, the PS4 was just on another level.
[00:17] The since then, handhelds like the Switch 2 have shown that mobile hardware can get damn close to something like a Series S, and Apple continues to show off true flip-away games for the iPhone, like Red Dead, Resident Evil, and Assassin's Creed.
[00:29] But consider most people playing Monopoly Go on the $1200 iPhone, because Apple really made this a platform for gamers. Now they claimed a 20% performance bump on the CPU, and they pulled 40% leap on the graphics, which is actually quite a lot,
[00:43] as the 17 Pro was already a big step up over the 16 Pro before it. Now we'll have to wait for the Jerry Riggs Everything teardown to get a good look at the inside of the phone, but Apple did spend quite a lot of time during the keynote talking about their bigger vapor chamber,
[00:57] to copper heat stem to dissipate more heat, and especially considering they do have that bigger GPU this year, on paper at least, it is a big jump. And while it's hard to love Geekbench on a Switch 2 or Series S, the iPhone has a far more powerful CPU than either, and enough graphics horsepower that theoretically it
[01:12] should clear the Switch 2 in handheld mode, and it has much more modern upscaling tech than something like the 6 year old Xbox Series S. But you would know it from looking at it, as the size of the new colors and a fancy new variable aperture camera, this year's
[01:25] iPhone looks nearly identical to last year's. In fact, it even sits in an iPhone 17 Pro case. But who wants to use last year's case? We even have this! The entire lineup of our sponsor Dbrand's brand new cases, including the brand new minimal case for the iPhone 18 and 17 Pro.
[01:40] The minimal case will still give you a good amount of protection, but importantly it is going to be a lot thinner than some of the other bigger, bulkier options. They also have another color which looks great for some purchasing. There's also the ghost case if you want to make sure that you have a clear case that never yellows. You also have the good case for when you don't
[01:54] don't want to drop all of your shit. This is their tank case if you want to make sure your phone is protected no matter what. And you also have the Christmas screen protector. And last but certainly not least, you've got to... Ow. If you too want to protect your
[02:08] iPhone 18 Pro, whatever phone you're using right now, head over to eBrand.com. So we have a Switch 2 in dock mode. We have an iPhone 18 Pro Max plugged into a display. And we
[02:21] have an Xbox Series S, so let's play some games head-to-head. So to make this as fair as possible we have three identical 4k 120Hz monitors. Now you will see that the iPhone does have some letterboxing because the screen is wider than 16 by 9 but it should give you a pretty good sense for not like on the phone screen which obviously makes games look better but actually on a full 4k monitor how close these really are
[02:44] We're gonna start out with Resident Evil Village. When it comes to the twitch 2 once you have it docked mode there are no settings but it should aim for 60fps. Now on the iPhone I'm actually curious because this is a game that was designed for I
[02:57] think the iPhone was it 15 Pro or 16 Pro or something so it's a little bit older by default. On the iPhone, I was just a lot of settings. I don't know if it's gonna work, but I basically cranked it largely all the way up and it's 1080p. And then on the Xbox, let's see here, so we have two options, ray tracing on and off.
[03:13] So I believe ray tracing on locks at 30 FPS. I'm going to turn it off to try to hit 60 because this is also reaching 360. To make things as fair as possible, the iPhone has already been up and running with the gaming for almost an hour now, so
[03:26] So the phone is very warm to the touch and it's also outputting via USB-C so this should be a pretty representative test. So the iPhone is softer, right? It's definitely running at a lower resolution. You also can see a little bit of the upscaling on the hair as the baby's moving around, but
[03:42] you can kind of see that on all three. I mean, this one looks pretty good. The OSS actually looks very clean. You know, something else that's impressive, once you actually turn up all the settings on the iPhone, you are getting a lot, like the Indian occlusion looks good, the shadows
[03:56] actually looks pretty good. The light, like, I'm legitimately impressed with how close the iPhone is. The fact that I'm playing this on a 4K screen, it feels good. I mean, if I look at it on the iPhone screen, it looks even better. Um, let me actually see, can I tweak settings while I'm in a game?
[04:10] Ooh, I can. 120! Wait! The iPhone has 120, wait, really? Dude, that's like actually a really good at 60 FPS. Holy! I don't think those put 120 on the phone,
[04:22] so... The iPhone's outputting 120 to the screen. Dude, you're right! Okay, so, after doing a little bit of research, the iPhone doesn't support 4K 120 out.
[04:35] So, our next game actually will have a proper frame rate counter, but for now, we've got ourselves out of the world's darkest part of Resident Evil, and now we're in a spot where you can actually see a little bit farther, and again, the iPhone's holding up well.
[04:48] Now, after we've been playing for a while and we hit the thermal image, the iPhone is dropping frames now. So it is, I would say, very, very hot to the touch. Can you tell that it's a brand new phone?
[05:00] No, thank you. You gotta tell the comparison here. I thought this was gonna be like the iPhone, hopefully matching Switch 2 a little bit, but probably staying behind and the series is walking away with it But at least in Resident Evil The iPhone is putting up a damn good fight I think a better example of a game that we can actually properly measure
[05:19] in all three is Fortnite. So as you can see here, all three of these consoles are in the same lobby. These two are dead, which means they're spectating the iPhone. So this should be pretty much a one-to-one
[05:31] of the settings and everything between these devices. The iPhone right now is running at 60 FPS. We have TAA on, we got full resolution, epic textures, and as you can see, it is a pretty much rock solid
[05:43] 60 FPS. Now, if we look at, say, where the heck is your grass? Yeah, yeah, yeah, actually, that's a good point. So, actually, this is a great example. So, even though Fortnite is the same across these three platforms, you can see that on
[05:56] epic settings on phone, it is still a notch below. So, as a perfect example, Series S has some nice grass, so does the Switch 2, and we've got nothing on the iPhone. Like this tree looks like it came off of an Xbox 360 and this looks like it come off a
[06:09] PS5 right? Like that being said though, if you ignore some of the visuals for just a second, the performance is fricking fantastic. So this is 60 FPS and it is, I am not seeing a single drop screen.
[06:22] This looks so smooth, so responsive. So we have now rebooted the game and we switched both the Xbox Series S as well as the iPhone into 120 FPS mode. Unfortunately I did actually realize the Switch 2, even though the console is capable of it,
[06:35] There is no Fortnite mode to hit 120 FPS, so this one is stuck at 60. The problem is, to hit 120 FPS on iPhone, they lock you out unless you're on to medium settings, which, I mean, the resolution is still high, but if Epic looked bad before, medium looks very bad.
[06:50] And again, I don't know why they cap it. This is a dead smooth 120 FPS, even though it gives me the little warning that the device is too hot, and I will tell you, it's very toasty, but it's not dropping frames even at 120 FPS.
[07:02] 120 FPS, let's go! Oh! When it comes to Fortnite, clearly the iPhone is running a lower end version of the game.
[07:15] There's no question about that. I think while Resident Evil showed that the iPhone has the performance to get pretty close to these guys, Fortnite, it shows they can run incredibly well, but I just don't have the things. I literally can't turn the graphics up any higher.
[07:29] So I think what we're seeing here is that there's no doubt that the series is more powerful when it comes to games, it's not as big of a jump as you might think. And also, part of it is, games are not taking full advantage of the iPhone 18 Pro yet.
[07:44] The thing is this has no access cooling whatsoever and it is really in the same ballpark of the Switch 2 and not too far off of a whole ass Xbox Series S is really impressive to me Okay so it clear that the new iPhone is fast but what exactly is going on here
[08:00] Well, a big chunk of the credit goes to the new A20 Pro chip inside. So there are a few big improvements, but maybe the biggest one is what Apple didn't mention at the keynote, clock speed. Last year's A19 Pro CPU hit 4.3 GHz.
[08:14] But the A20 Pro is just under a full 5 GHz. When you pair that with the additional GPU core, the new 2nm process, and 50% more memory bandwidth, there is just a lot more raw firepower than the iPhone has ever had to work with.
[08:29] The upgearing tech is better too. Just like how DLSS makes a big difference on the Switch too, Metal FX upgearing works well on the new iPhone. And when you pair it with the new Neural Accelerators in the GPU, it helps to make games not only
[08:41] look better, but also push higher frame rate. And when you pair all of this with the new vapor chamber and the all-aluminum build, the iPhone 18 Pro is able to dissipate more heat, which means we're able to push that new chip even harder.
[08:54] So more performance, more power to throw at it, and better up-galing is a hell of a combination. Now if you talk about just the CPU, it is the most powerful phone we've ever tested. The multi-core performance almost beats the M3 in a mass bulk air, and it does outright
[09:09] pretty much everything in single core. But, while all of this is incredibly impressive, it is worth putting it all into context, because this phone really, really does look and feel almost identical to last year. And look, the biggest issue is finding games that actually
[09:26] fully take advantage of the hardware. If Apple shipped this A20 Pro and a handheld console with a controller and especially a fan, it would be properly competitive with stuff like the Steam Deck and the RG Xbox allies. But instead, I mean, yes, Apple has done some
[09:41] work here, you can navigate between some games with the controller, but there is so, so much more potential here. Imagine if they put this chip in an Apple TV, it would be a legitimately killer little console. The performance is really the big story here. We just need more
[09:57] games to take advantage of it. The last time we did this, the PS4 ran rings around the iPhone 8 of the time. And this time, while there is still a gap, it is nowhere near what it used to be. So, buy yourself an iPhone 18 Pro my friends and candy crush like you've never candy crushed before.
[10:15] If you enjoyed, make sure to subscribe to the channel and ring-a-ling-da-ding-a-ling button. Stay tuned! I've heard, and this is just a rumor, so I'm not sure if it's true or not, but there's some kind of like foldable iPhone coming soon. I'm trying to figure out what happened, but uh, let's go ahead and find out.