Apple has officially released iOS 18 to the public, and like every other major annual update, the company has introduced a slew of changes. However, one area that was not touched on was an improvement in battery life that happens due to the CPU entering a boost frequency delay state. Unfortunately, this can give the impression that the software update has reduced the iPhone's performance because Geekbench 6 is now posting lower single-core and multi-core results compared to when devices were running iOS 17.

Notable reviewer Geekerwan has a habit of publishing in-depth reviews of consumer electronics, and his insights are well-received because there is always some of layer of information that was previously obscured and has now been brought into the light. On this occasion, the information below reveals that Apple's iOS 18 has introduced a slight delay to the CPU boost frequency compared to iOS 17.

In short, it means that the A17 Pro and A16 Bionic, which belong to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, respectively, will now have their performance cores touch their maximum operating speeds a little late. This change in CPU behavior has been implemented in iOS 18 to preserve battery life but at the cost of lowered single-core and multi-core Geekbench 6 results.

In the image above, you can see that with iOS 17 installed, the iPhone 15 Pro Max obtained a single-core and multi-core score of 2,999 and 7,779, respectively. With iOS 18 running, Apple's top-end model from last year attains a slightly lower 2,885 and 7,476 score. We highly doubt that this delay in CPU frequency will have an adverse effect in real-world scenarios.

On the contrary, the battery life is expected to receive a decent boost. Sadly, iPhone users will now have to live with the fact that they cannot use Geekbench 6 to gain bragging rights over their devices' performance superiority, not that they had to in the first place, but it is still worth mentioning.