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Top 10 fastest smartphones: Surprise! Apple and Samsung are nowhere near the top

Think the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, the LG G5, or maybe the iPhone 6S would be at the top of the list? Think again!
Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Contributing Writer
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Xiaomi Mi 5. Image: CNET

Which smartphones do you think would top the list of the fastest smartphones? If you thought that the iPhone 6S or the Samsung's Galaxy S7 would be atop the list then you'd be wrong. So very wrong.

See also: iOS 10: Ten features it needs to stay ahead of Android

AnTuTu, one of the most popular mobile benchmarks, has released a list of the top 10 fastest smartphones for May 2016, and leading the list are several smartphones from China.

The top 10 fastest smartphones list

The top 10 fastest smartphones list

AnTuTu

Interestingly, the top three smartphones are all powered by the Snapdragon 820 chipset, and have 6GB of RAM, while the top four are all from Chinese manufacturers.

Samsung's flagship Galaxy S7 Edge doesn't enter the list until the number five spot, and the LG G5 at number eight (skipping over the two iPhones on the list - we'll come to those in a moment).

By the time we reach the ninth and tenth spot on the list there's a substantial drop in hardware performance. But to be fair the fact that these are on a top 10 list as opposed to some of the other big named smartphones out there is quite an achievement.

It's also interesting to note how close in performance to the iPhone 6S the budget iPhone SE actually is, and how close in performance the top four mainstream smartphones - the Galaxy S7 Edge, the iPhone 6S, iPhone SE, and LG G5 - actually are.

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