Google has promised the Pixel 6 will launch this fall, so the arrival of benchmarks on sites like Geekbench shouldn’t be entirely surprising. All the same, the Pixel 6 Pro listing spotted by Phone Arena is interesting for a number of reasons, even if it should be taken with a larger pinch of salt than usual.
The centerpiece of the new phone will be Google’s brand new Tensor chip with reports suggesting that it could in fact be an unreleased Samsung chip. If that’s the case, the Geekbench listing is interesting, because it points to a SoC comprising two Cortex X1 cores clocked at 2.8Ghz, two mid-tier cores at 2.25Ghz and four cores set to 1.8Ghz. Samsung and Qualcomm flagship chips, meanwhile, feature one main core, three middle cores and four high-efficiency ones.
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Still, the leaker Digital Chat Station seemed to back up the listing in a recent tweet, adding that it will come with the Mali-G78 GPU.
#DigitalChatStationSuspected Google self-developed chip: 2*2.8 GHz+2*2.25 GHz+4*1.8GHz, Mali-G78 GPU.Two 2.8GHz X1 super cores, Snapdragon 888 and Exynos 2100, and one X1 can't hold it down. It would be a bit brave if the mass production does not change. pic.twitter.com/bGEtHiYzkHSeptember 11, 2021
According to the listing, the device will come with Android 12 — unsurprising, given it’s made by Google — and will pack 12GB RAM. The actual raw performance numbers are somewhat underwhelming for the time being, with a single-core score of 414 and multi-core performance of 2,074.
That’s considerably weaker than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888, which tends to score around 1,000 and 3,500 by the same tests, but you shouldn’t read too much into that at this point. Pre-release phones on Geekbench frequently underperform, before they’ve been fine-tuned for better performance: a case in point being the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE, which first appeared in May with underwhelming numbers, but has steadily improved with each subsequent appearance.
The new Tensor chip will, according to Google, be a game changer, with a special focus on machine learning and AI which will translate to what the company describes as a “transformed experience for the camera, speech recognition and other Pixel 6 features.”
We should know how well these claims stand up to scrutiny very soon indeed, with reports generally suggesting the Pixel 6 will be unveiled next month.
Prolific leaker Jon Prosser has predicted that the handsets will be unveiled on October 19 and available to buy on October 28, and that first date has been given extra credence, as “Tuesday 19” appears on pictures of the device published this week by Google itself.
All eyes are on an October event for Google then, and who knows — we may even see the long awaited Pixel Fold make an appearance too...
