The A19 Pro is a transcription beast

I happen to have a new app on the App Store that is a pretty good benchmark for a certain type of processing across Apple's devices. Quick Subtitles is a pretty simple app that uses Apple's new speech frameworks to transcribe audio and video files on an Apple Silicon device running OS 26 or later (Mac version coming soon-ish). It works exactly the same on each platform, so it should be a pretty good test of the processor speed and neural engine performance.

I've run quite a few test across 4 devices:

1. MacBook Pro (M4 Pro)
2. iPhone 17 Pro (A19 Pro)
3. iPhone 16 Pro Max (A18 Pro)
4. iPhone 16e (A18)

The file being transcribed is a 92MB, 50 minute MP3 of the next Cozy Zone episode (it's a banger, get subscribed 😁). Here are the results again:

I ran the test several times on each device, and the above numbers are an average across all runs. The numbers were pretty consistent, never varying by more than a couple seconds.

• Generating a transcript in one minute on a phone has been blowing me away all summer.
• The new iPhone's A19 Pro demolishes the outgoing A18 lineup at this task, nearly matching my high-end Mac.
• The A19 Pro transcribes about 60% faster than the A18 Pro.

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