I moved from a 6 to an 8 last fall. The newer processors, especially the jump with the 7, make HUGE performance improvements in every day tasks like loading emails, maps and web pages. I can imagine with this having a few generations newer than the 8 that you’d see even better performance.
It may feel like we’ve reached the point where mobile CPU performance shouldn’t matter, but I notice quite a bit less time spent waiting with the newer phones, which helps in not spending as much time on them.