On Price Pony, we have talked a lot about smartphones and provide a list of specs for our readers to know which smartphones best fit their taste. Gradually, we would love to discuss more about each important specs in detail to give you and idea of what effect these specs bring to your smartphone’s performance.

I. CPU, smartphone processors, cores

– The CPU (Central Processing Units) is the “general manager” of your phone, which controls the performances of the device, like the brain to your body.

– The CPU contains many core units. And those core units are smartphone processor by nature.

II. How important is smartphone processors compared to RAM?

A strong processor helps the handset to process/manage data faster. That leads to smoother performance when running apps, web loading, games ect.

Bigger RAM support better multi-task execution.  This allows opening more tabs in an internet browser without slowing your phone down, or faster response to many aps at the same time.

Although both RAM and processor are important to your phone, it is clear that each of the two has very different functions. Check out our previous article about RAM to compare with the importance of processor if you are interested.

III. Which are the strongest smartphone processors available?

We have collected the result through AnTuTu’s test to list out 4 highest performance smartphone processors. The result is based on their Benchmark scores. And we will label them from the 4th to the best.

4. Qualcomm Snapdragon 810

• 64-bit octa-core processor (2.0GHz Cortex-A57 quad-core/1.5GHz Cortex-A53 quad-core)
• Benchmark score on AnTuTu – 53,518
• Found in: Xiaomi Mi Note Pro, Sony Xperia Z4
• Problem reported: over-heating

3. Samsung Exynos 7420

• 64-bit octa-core processor
• Benchmark scores on AnTuTu – 69,856/68,079 (S6/S6 Edge)
• Found in: Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge

2. MediaTek MT6797 Helio X20

• Deca-core processor (2.5GHz Cortex-A72 dual-core/2.0GHz Cortex-A53 quad-core/1.4GHz Cortex-A53 quad-core)
• Benchmark score on AnTuTu – 70,000+
• Upcoming CPU for smartphones

1. Tegra X1

• 64-bit octa-core processor
• First mobile chip to provide a teraflop of processing power
• Benchmark score on AnTuTu – 74,977
• Upcoming CPU for smartphones