Apple's chips in their iPhones & iPads have been outperforming the competition (Qualcomm & Samsung) for a long time now in both power efficiency and performance. Apple has usually been around 2 yrs ahead of the competition. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chip with 8 cores has a Geekbench multi-core score of 3592[1]. The six-score Apple A15 Bionic scored 4673. The Apple chip has ~30% better multi-core performance with 25% fewer cores than the Qualcomm chip. In single-core performance the difference is even larger, with the Apple chips performing ~47% faster. You can get the same A15 Bionic in both the $429 iPhone SE and the $1100+ iPhone 13 Pro Max.
It hasn't really been a huge deal though because people don't develop directly on an iPhone, so it doesn't affect their every day productivity all that much. Also phone's have reached the point of "fast enough" a few years ago, it's hard to tell the difference between an iPhone 13 Pro and an 11 Pro unless you use them side by side. But with the release of the M1 chip, people are getting the performance & energy efficiency gains in their every day workflows.
It hasn't really been a huge deal though because people don't develop directly on an iPhone, so it doesn't affect their every day productivity all that much. Also phone's have reached the point of "fast enough" a few years ago, it's hard to tell the difference between an iPhone 13 Pro and an 11 Pro unless you use them side by side. But with the release of the M1 chip, people are getting the performance & energy efficiency gains in their every day workflows.
[1]. https://browser.geekbench.com/android-benchmarks
[2]. https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks